10 Times WWE Tried (And Failed) To Make You Cheer For Former Heels

Ask a wrestling fan about their personal history as a WWE fan and they'll either give you an ungodly figure counting the years in which they've clung to the product in spite of themselves, or refer to "going dark" at a particular point where other things got in the way or priority, and the product, changed.

It's something WWE have accepted with cyclical familiarity, and why older heads insist to this day that the business' natural course is an intentionally irregular one. So the theory goes, there requires something of a bust to create a boom, a dark age to see the light, as it were. It's why, following WCW's 2001 collapse, Vince McMahon began shrewdly began hoovering up video libraries - he was thinking way beyond how to look after his company today, when there was an entire Network to think about tomorrow.

Fans don't - and shouldn't - have those concerns. They're permitted to switch off even if Vince McMahon can't. On screen, this failure to cope often results in a gimmick gear shift that completely excludes a longer-term fan. Unconvincing turns are a cringeworthy side effect of a business in decline - a visual representation of creative or commercial desperation in an effort to try and capture what has already been lost. Especially when a once-hated heel attempts to take a transparent short-cut into the wallets and hearts of he audience...

It's a kiss of death at the best of times, but Randy Orton's babyface turn coming as result of his mates turning on him in 2004 was made worse for the fact it had Triple H's politicky and sticky fingerprints all over it.

World Champion for all of three weeks in between dethroning Chris Benoit and losing it to 'The Game' himself, the cool credibility Orton had built up over a year as one of the show's most over heels dissolved quicker than the spittle he left on his former Evolution colleague's face.

Unlike when he gozzed on Mick Foley months earlier, Orton literally took his belt and ran after the fact. Much of Orton's assaults seemed to involve him hitting and running - like a good hero wouldn't - as WWE limply implied that he wasn't noble enough to make his own saves from Hunter's cronies.

The turn went so badly that fans began organically gravitating towards Batista to take 'The Legend Killer's planned WrestleMania 21 spot instead. Orton could hit his pose and his RKO as often as he liked, but he'd been almost immediately positioned as a loser compared the winner the fans actually wanted to back in 'The Animal'.

Positioned instead against The Undertaker, he was already a heel again by the time the 'Show Of Shows' went Hollywood.