10 Wrestlers We Had To Hate Before We Could Love

3. Corey Graves

There was nothing particularly great about the Corey Graves character on NXT. Had he been a superlative wrestler, the infelicities of style caused by his appropriation of every single square inch of alternative culture at once might have been forgiven. Had he been a mesmerising talker, the fact that he wasn't a superb wrestler might have been forgiven. Had he been astonishingly good-looking - you see where we're going with this. None of these things were true. Graves was good but not great in the ring, good but not great on the stick, good-looking but not great-looking. When he was shelved with a nasty relative of our old nemesis, post-concussion syndrome, it ended Graves' forlorn hopes. The NXT crowd seemed to feel the same way.

Then he appeared on the E60: Behind The Curtain TV special, and suddenly we all found a reason to like Graves - or rather, the man behind the STAY DOWN knuckle tattoos. Matthew Polinsky had a wife and kids, and this was all he'd ever wanted to do - and now it was being taken away from him. When Triple H broke the news that he'd be unable to wrestle again, there were no dry eyes to be found anywhere. Graves was finally over - and Graves was over.

The silver lining of the documentary for Polinsky was that he was being offered a two year contract as NXT's new announcer. It was small beer, but it was something - and then it turned out that the guy who was good, but not great on the mic was great, not just good, as a heelish colour commentator. Today, Corey Graves is easily WWE's finest announcer - for whatever that's worth. Talk about a turnaround.