20 Most Hated Heel Moves In Wrestling History
2. Breaking The American Dream
While it’s true that Dusty Rhodes feuded with more than one version of the iconic heel stable The Four Horsemen, it was the first time, back in autumn 1985, that everyone would remember the most.
The hero of Jim Crockett Promotions and the National Wrestling Alliance, ‘the American Dream’ had become a wrestling icon, but he was a babyface without a heel to make money with. Ric Flair had abandoned their feud to turn babyface, and with stars like Flair, Rhodes, and Magnum TA all squarely on the side of the angels, that left a significant gap at the top of the black hat side of the roster.
The WWF had officially become contenders that year with the success of WrestleMania. It may not have been over Monday nights, but the war was just as real as it would be a decade and some change later. Back then, it was Vince McMahon who was the unscrupulous maverick trying to make a name for himself, and the complacent NWA who’d find themselves in trouble.
Bonnie Tyler was holding out for a hero… but JCP urgently needed a villain. They found one by going back to the well again, to the man who more than any other would carry the NWA on his back throughout the eighties. Ric Flair heard the call, and turned heel again.
On 29 September 1985 at the Omni in Atlanta, Flair had just blown off his hugely popular feud with Cold War antagonists The Russian Team, beating Nikita Koloff in a steel cage. After the match, the Russians attacked Flair while the Nature Boy was still inside the cage, and the Dream was there to save him, the former rivals teaming up to oust the Russians together.
Ostensibly a feel-good moment to round out the show, things then took a turn for the ominous when Flair, far from embracing Dusty Rhodes for saving his behind, began arguing heatedly with the Dream in the centre of the ring, lambasting him for interfering in matters that didn’t concern him. Suddenly Rhodes’ own opponents, the Andersons, materialised, beating the Dream down… and Flair joined in.
It was three-on-one, and the cage door was locked: the three men brutalised Rhodes, targeting his ankle in a beatdown that turned the crowd into a mob. At one point, Anderson legitimately feared for his life, as the fans wouldn’t let them leave the cage, and it took them twenty minutes to fight them off long enough to escape.
There’d be another beatdown angle, this time for television. The newly minted Horsemen (with Tully Blanchard and manager J.J. Dillon rounding out the faction) would film themselves tailing Rhodes by car to a parking lot, where he was ambushed and his arm (kayfabe) broken with a baseball bat.
However, my money’s still on Flair’s heel turn in the cage at the Omni as one of the biggest heel moves in wrestling.