10 Times WWE Stars Were Scapegoats For Bad Booking

As human beings, we have an ingrained psychological need to assign meanings to everything. Often times, this means baselessly blaming someone else for the things that go wrong in our lives.

We call this someone a "scapegoat" - somebody who gets blamed for something they didn't do so that those doing the blaming have a place to direct their frustrations.

In professional wrestling, scapegoating works one of two ways - either a wrestler gets heat from officials after one of their angles doesn't go as planned, or a wrestler gets heat from fans because of either really weak or overly-strong booking. Either way, the proverbial "blame game" is almost always unwarranted, as it's usually due to reasons beyond their control.

Nevertheless, scapegoating has had a palpably pernicious effect on the public perception of several talents over the years. For some, that means unavoidable derision from fans whenever they show up on television, while for others, it means overwhelming ennui surrounding their character.

If, by now, you're still confused as to what I'm referring to, here are ten wrestlers who acted as a whipping boy for something that wasn't their fault. And no, I am not referring to Gene Snitsky.

At first glance, it's hard to understand why Vince McMahon would look at a guy like EC3 and not want to push him to the moon. After all, he was everything Vince apparently wants - a good-looking, charismatic guy with gigantic muscles. But sadly, his potential in WWE would never be realized.

See, EC3's first main roster match was against Dean Ambrose. Normally, this would be a really good thing, but because WWE had announced that Ambrose was not renewing his contract following WrestleMania 35, the fans figured that they would bury him on his way out. So, after EC3 won the match in about two minutes, the fans used that opportunity to boo the heelish 1-percenter.

The problem with this, however, was that he was supposed to be the babyface.

So, of course, the first issue here is presenting an entitled rich boy character as a babyface. The second issue, though, is that they booked him to beat Dean Ambrose. Though this is a hell of a rub for a debuting talent, the fans were sad to see Ambrose go, and they surely didn't want to see the former WWE Champion looking so weak on his way out. So, the fans turned on it, EC3 was punished, and he was effectively never seen again.

How nobody in the company knew that this would backfire is beyond comprehension.