20 Most Hated Heel Moves In Wrestling History

In January 1983, future Horseman Tully Blanchard - pretty much the meanest heel in wrestling in the early eighties - won the Southwest Heavyweight Championship, Southwest Championship Wrestling’s top title. A month later, he still hadn’t yet defended it: an issue that his nemesis, babyface Bob Sweetan took great pleasure in raising on the night that the thirty days was due to expire.

The (kayfabe) small print said that the champion had to defend the title within a month or be stripped of the belt. Blanchard’s thirty days was up that very evening… and he wasn’t on the card wrestling to defend the title.

Desperate, Blanchard rushed to ringside, paying off Len ‘The Grappler’ Denton to allow him to take his place in the match about to start. His opponent was a slice of white bread rejoicing in the name of Eric Embry (masquerading as a rookie, Embry was actually a six year veteran of the territories and would later go on to book WCCW in Dallas for several years).

To get around the legal technicality, Blanchard took on and defeated the younger man for the title. To get back at Sweetan, Blanchard makes it hurt - at a certain point Embry gigs, and is soon covered in blood, drenching his bleached blond hair scarlet.

The brutality of the beating the heel champion gave the ‘rookie’ was so severe that after the match was over, Sweetan dragged the hapless Embry over to the mic to scream, practically frothing at the mouth, that Blanchard was an animal, and that he would pay dearly for this.

Meanwhile, the network were horrified. Rumours persist that it’s either this match, or another similar bloodbath that the network refused to show, that were the cause of Southwest being dropped and Vince McMahon stepping in to take their time slot - a major factor in the WWF’s expansion to become a national concern.