8 Babyfaces The WWE Universe Turned Heel

3. Randy Orton

Batista promo 2014
WWE.com

This one was something of a misguided decision by WWE creative. Randy Orton experienced one heck of a rise in 2004, starting the year a bland nobody before benefiting hugely from a fabulous feud with Mick Foley. His rise continued all the way to SummerSlam that year, where he defeated Chris Benoit for the World Heavyweight Championship and became the youngest champion in the process.

The crowd were firmly behind Orton on that night in Toronto, and WWE took this as a sign to move ahead with plans to turn him babyface. The turn came the next night on RAW, as Orton was betrayed by his buddies in Evolution.

The problem was that that the Toronto crowd was firmly based in Bizarroland, and Orton as a face was as bland and generic as they came. The crowd turned on him practically instantly, and once he dropped the title to Triple H it was back to the bad side for the Legend Killer.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.