10 Wrestlers Who Changed Their Perception In A Heartbeat

It's most often a gradual process, changing one's opinion of a wrestler. There's rarely a flashbulb epiphany moment that jumps out at you mid-match.

"Jimminy jillickers, that's the 763rd time I've seen Dolph Ziggler do a superkick. Maybe I was never meant to watch a wrestler go over a decade working in the same company having undergone very little to no character development."

Dolph Ziggler appears to have lost his edge. Maybe there's something else to do on this planet.

*Rubs eyes, ventures outside to fly a kite as Beethoven's 6th, Pastoral plays in one's ears*

It's quite typical of WWE, to make you resent a very capable wrestler for making a living, and this change of perception, for better or worse, does usually happen there. Should they have the temerity to not want to risk their long-term financial security, a resentment creeps in; conversely, years and years of thankless graft is sometimes rewarded by a fanbase when a brush with opportunity helps illuminate how deserving a performer actually is of it - Becky Lynch in 2018, and Kofi Kingston in 2019, for example.

Sometimes, however, a moment of genius - or self-own most foul - can summon success or failure quicker than a Masato Yoshino rope-run...

Before:

Pushed, promoted, presented, posed: Britt always felt so obviously like a plan in the early days of Dynamite, one hatched to charm a mainstream that never did end up watching. Britt Baker: Wrestling Dentist received polite reactions, but you could see the wires; the company very much wanted her to get over big, and with that came a steep expectation. AEW must see something in her, the fans reasoned, and were let down when they didn't. Baker's work wasn't dire, at all, to counter the narrative, but it wasn't major league quality.

In a heartbeat:

Baker turned heel on the Dynamite cruise in a promo loaded with hilarious deadpan disdain. She turned the dial up in subsequent weeks, in fabulous and very effective arrogant spiels. Elevated by her prodigious instincts to extract every morsel of a reaction with an improvised pause and frown, that Baker stood out on those spectacular pre-Revolution Dynamites underscored just what a talent she is. And then the bell rang...

...and she was awesome then, too, working so much tighter, and with a delight on her face at the sight of her own blood. It was permanent ink with which to paint something unforgettable. A wrestling dentist is in fact an incredible achievement, and this was brought into crystal focus when she was incredibly - wonderfully - pious about it.