10 Wrestlers The Fans Turned On

Getting over with any wrestling fanbase is the second biggest battle facing any wrestler. The biggest, is staying over.

How many times have you watched a more than competent match play out to almost near silence from the crowd? Being great between the ropes can bring its own glory, but with great wrestling almost expected nowadays, developing a genuine connection with the fans is what propels a wrestler up the card.

Once there, a wrestler (and the writers/booker) need to work hard to ensure the ensuing story nurtures that connection in the right way. Otherwise, that hard work can be undone almost instantly. Case in point is the current trajectory with Liv Morgan.

This past year has been a breakout one for Morgan, with the fans firmly behind her push to championship contention. But through her cowardly cash-in and subsequent dusty retention with Ronda Rousey, the fans have started to heckle her. You can see that it unsettles Liv, and her reaction isn’t exactly going to get them back on side.

It's not a lost cause however, as Drew McIntyre was facing the same backlash when live crowds returned last year but has since course corrected by going back to what originally got him over in the first place.

But sometimes, the fan backlash is irredeemable, and whilst Liv Morgan looked like she struggled with it, there are some who have bounced back well. Others... not so much.

Let’s start with the most obvious example.

From late 2003, John Cena’s ascent to the top of WWE was inevitable. As the ‘Doctor of Thuganomics’ he became the most over babyface in the company, with his street smarts and freestyle raps pulling the entire WWE Universe behind him. But when he won the WWE Championship in 2005, something changed.

Positioned against established crowd favourites like Chris Jericho, or under-utilised team players like Christian, the fans quickly bored of what would soon become the ‘Super Cena’ booking, where despite being against the odds, Cena would always rise above it and win. It didn’t help that Cena certainly wasn’t the big match player he would later become and that better in-ring wrestlers were fed to him on a monthly basis.

Although beloved now by the fanbase when he returns, which is great considering how hard he worked inside and outside the ring for the company, the fans never came round to John during his run as a full-time talent. WWE dressed it up as being ‘divisive’, but the clear split was that he embodied the PG-era and was too kid friendly to be seen as cool in the eyes of the adult fan base.

Pushing a talent relentlessly as a babyface despite a clear rejection by the fans is a harsh lesson learnt for WWE. Or so we thought…