Traditionally, pro wrestling storytelling boils down to a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, and fans are meant to cheer the heroic babyface and boo the villainous heel. However, sometimes that doesn’t always work out, and the hero draws the ire of crowds.
There are countless times in wrestling history where the villain has won over the crowd to the point where fans boo the hero, or a specific matchup has resulted in fans preferring the much cooler heel over the less-cool babyface. Let’s take a look at 10 moments where this happened, starting with one of the most recent instances.
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10 Cody Rhodes
After a disappointing run in WWE, Cody Rhodes proved in the promotion he co-founded, All Elite Wrestling, that he could be a top babyface, beloved by the fans — at least, at first. It seemed like his old school (in the bad way) patriotic feud with Anthony Ogogo led to crowds turning on him, a trend that grew worse as he started feuding with the recently debuted death metal heel Malakai Black. The fans didn’t just prefer Black in these matches — they also openly booed the babyface Rhodes.
9 Bayley
Bayley spent her time in NXT as the protagonist of the women’s division, a naive underdog who fought her way to the top amid countless betrayals and antagonism from every heel in sight. But the mainstream WWE tends to struggle with booking pure babyfaces like Bayley, so her main roster run — before turning heel — was less than stellar. On top of that, Bayley was subject to an odd incident on a Raw in 2017 where, during a promo in which she talked about taking time off due to injury, the Toronto crowd ripped her apart with jeers.
8 Roman Reigns
Of course, there’s no babyface that fans hated more than Roman Reigns. An awesome powerhouse in The Shield, post-breakup it was obvious that WWE was going to push him into the moon, which the vocal crowds couldn’t accept after a decade of Super Cena. The nadir of this run came during the conclusion of the 2015 Royal Rumble.
RELATED: If Cena Wins We Riot & 9 Other Times The Crowd Was HostileAs Roman Reigns stood tall at the end of the Rumble, the crowd intensely booed, even as Reigns’ cousin and longtime WWE darling, The Rock, came out to celebrate. The hate was so intense that even The Rock was visibly surprised.
7 John Cena
As alluded to, John Cena is the undisputed king of overpushed babyface heat, as the crowds seem to have been divided on Cena ever since he transitioned from goofy white rapper, to hulking faux marine. Cena has been booed as the babyface on a number of occasions, including against Rob Van Dam in front of a hostile, loyal ECW crowd at One Night Stand 2006, and against CM Punk in Chicago at Money in the Bank 2011. Few have had to deal with such vocal vitriol as the face of a wrestling company as John Cena, and it had been so constant that WWE began to acknowledge it.
6 Hulk Hogan
WWE's top babyface of 1980s, Hulk Hogan was the original John Cena, but started drawing the ire of fans by the 1990s. As early as Survivor Series 1991, fans started booing Hogan as he took on The Undertaker, forcing the latter to embark on a face turn in the months that followed. In early 1992, fans audibly cheered Hogan’s shocking elimination from the Royal Rumble, and that growing fatigue with Hogan continued into his time with WCW, making a heel turn a necessity. Even as a “WWE Legend,” Hogan got a shocking amount of boos just appearing at WrestleMania 37 in 2021.
5 Seth Rollins
Unlike his Shield buddy Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins was actually a popular babyface, at least up to a certain point. His babyface run ended up backfiring in late 2019 thanks to his infamous Hell in a Cell match with “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt. The Fiend was the coolest thing happening in WWE at the time, but the character’s credibility was tanked in a poorly conceived match that ended illogically, with good guy Seth Rollins getting too violent in a match known for its violence, confusingly causing a no contest finish. It was impossible to recover from that, so Seth had to turn heel instead.
4 Batista
After ditching WWE in 2010 and becoming a movie star, 'Ruthless Aggression Era' pillar, Batista, returned to WWE as a babyface in early 2014 to a surprising lack of enthusiasm from fans. This enthusiasm turned into actual hostility from crowds by the end of the 2014 Royal Rumble.
RELATED: 5 Times A Hostile Crowd Got What They Wanted (& 5 Times They Didn't)Fans expected WWE to complete the story they appeared to be telling, with underdog Daniel Bryan winning the Royal Rumble so he could recapture the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 30, but this was not in the original plans. Batista won the Rumble, ensuring a main event bout against Randy Orton at ‘Mania, which had the crowd booing “The Animal” mercilessly.
3 Rey Mysterio
Big Dave wasn’t the only hero that got an angry reaction from fans at that fateful Rumble. As the match went on, it seemed obvious that Bryan would enter the Rumble at No. 30 and come out on top in the end. But the final entrant turned out to be poor Rey Mysterio. Despite being an icon and beloved babyface, Mysterio had become a stagnant midcarder by this point, so his entry into the Rumble made Bryan’s exclusion feel even more egregious for the live crowd.
2 Goldberg
For a guy who couldn’t wrestle for more than a few minutes at a time, Goldberg was massively over during his time in WCW, becoming one of the company’s few homegrown stars to reach the top of the company. He came to WWE for an unspectacular run in 2003 and found himself on the way out at the same time as Brock Lesnar in 2004. The two had a match at WrestleMania XX, but the fans knew both guys were leaving the company, so they practically booed heel (Lesnar) and babyface (Goldberg) out of the building.
1 The Rock
Aside from being booed by proxy with his cousin, there are two notable instances of The Rock getting booed as a babyface. This happened at first during his initial run with WWE as the vanilla blue chipper Rocky Maivia, who got the infamous “Die Rocky Die” chants before shifting gears and becoming the egomaniacal Rock, a heel turn that made him a star. His popularity would make him a babyface in WWE, but found himself booed yet again at WrestleMania 18 when he took on Hulk Hogan, somewhat ironically.
