20 Most Hated Heel Moves In Wrestling History
7. The Devil's Favourite Scumbag
In a major inversion of the usual wrestling tropes, WWE gave us a different kind of wedding in 2004. Instead of two babyfaces trying to have a fairytale marriage ceremony in the middle of a smelly wrestling ring surrounded by thousands of jeering rednecks and having that wonderful moment ruined by a pitiless psychopath, we saw a babyface forced to marry a pitiless psychopath while her babyface boyfriend was powerless to prevent it.
This was apex of one of the most weirdly disturbing storylines in wrestling history, as part of a messed-up 'romantic' storyline that lasted for over a year. It featured a hapless, helpless Matt Hardy, barely consensual sex, a pregnancy that resulted from that horror show of a union, and that shotgun wedding, breaking all the rules of pro wrestling engagements.
Babyfaced Lita was originally presented and promoted as what the real life Amy Dumas actually is: a highly individual, focused, and motivated punk rock pro wrestler with a reckless streak a mile wide, a role model to young girls, an iconoclast who'd competed against men in the ring, and a formative member of Team Extreme.
Here, however, Lita was reduced to the level of damsel in distress (and worse, a quivering victim), in order to put over a recently unmasked Kane as a genuine psychopath. Being forced to marry her abuser was one thing, of course, but having the whole storyline play out as it did, with her boyfriend Hardy and Lita herself powerless to do anything about any of it, was seven kinds of f***ed up in a one pint glass.
Kane was essentially playing a huge, sadistic stalker and rapist. Despite this, he got to come out on top of the feud. As the supposedly heroic babyface, Hardy was about as useful as a chocolate teapot; Lita herself wasn’t capable of much more than the occasional passive-aggressive ‘foiling’ of one of Kane’s evil schemes.
In some of the worst writing in WWF/E history, it took Kane bizarrely turning babyface and then Lita turning heel on him for her to have her power and agency restored to her.