3 Drastic WWE character changes that worked and 3 that did not

#5 WWE character change did not work: Dean Ambrose

Dean Ambrose betrayed Seth Rollins on WWE RAW

On the same night that Roman Reigns announced that his leukemia had returned, Dean Ambrose (now known as Jon Moxley in AEW) turned heel by attacking Seth Rollins following their RAW Tag Team Championship win over Dolph Ziggler and Drew McIntyre in the main event of WWE RAW.

In theory, the timing of the betrayal should have made Ambrose the biggest heel in WWE, with The Shield’s demise becoming the top storyline on RAW in the last few months of 2018.

In reality, Ambrose's new character was booked to wear gas masks and take rabies jabs to protect himself from WWE audiences, and his storyline with Rollins was so badly received that WWE fans chanted “Boring! Boring!” during their match at TLC 2018.

Speaking on Talk Is Jericho in 2019, Moxley discussed the creative frustrations that he had when performing as the Ambrose character in WWE during that period of time, especially when he received a memo from Vince McMahon saying he had to stick exactly to the script.

“Notes from VKM: Dean needs to understand why he needs to insult the audience. Dean needs to read his promos verbatim and not try to rewrite them.”

Moxley left WWE in April 2019 and debuted with AEW one month later at the Double or Nothing pay-per-view.