Pro-wrestling was pretty simple in the good old days. It was a classic case of the good guy vs bad guy – the face and heel divide was pretty well established and everything was hunky dory.
But it all changed as wrestling evolved. While the concept of the crowd cheering the bad guy on had slowly started, it accelerated in the nineties especially with the nWo proving that bad guys were suddenly becoming cool.
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This list takes a look at the top 5 best tweeners of all time.
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#5 CM Punk
Ever since C M Punk dropped his infamous pipe bomb on the squeaky clean John Cena six years back on an episode of Raw, he was a made man. The Chicago native captured the imagination and support of the public despite being a heel.
Punk’s anti-establishment rants led to the crowd cheering him in favour of the babyface Cena and against other fan favourites like Triple H in the coming months.
Even after Punk turned heel with an assault on the Rock nearly two years later, the crowd were still with him. It was never more solidified than when Punk made his return to the company in a match against another baby face in Chris Jericho and got a tremendous pop.
Fans loved to hate CM Punk at different points in his career, but they never actually failed to love the guy.
#4 Brock Lesnar
Brock Lesnar has been cheered on wildly ever since his return to the company despite the fact that he has never turned face. Lesnar’s high-intensity matches and the aura that has been built around the character makes it difficult for the fans not to take notice when he appears on Raw.
Despite battling babyfaces like John Cena, Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose , Lesnar rarely gets booed and is one of the most popular superstars in the roster right now.
Here comes the pain, straight to tweener city.
#3 The Undertaker
Even during his heel ministry days and his equally heelish American badass days, the Undertaker was cheered on by a majority of the fans.
In 2002, Taker had turned heel by assaulting ever one’s favourite Texan Jim Ross and making him kiss Vince McMahon’s ass. Despite ensuing feuds with beloved babyfaces like Rob Van Dam, The Hardy Boyz and The Rock, Taker got more cheers for every entrance than what super baby face Roman Reigns gets currently.
Maybe the character is too intriguing to hate!
#2 Stone Cold Steve Austin
Steve Austin’s Stone Cold persona turned heads almost immediately and the fans ate up the rebellious red neck. Austin’s feud with the hottest babyface in wrestling that time – Bret Hart – made him a household name and he never looked back.
The infamous ‘Austin 3:16’ speech came about when he was a full blown heel and the WWE fans adopted it as well.
Austin was cheered even after his Wrestlemania 17 heel turn and during the invasion angle – but the latter is natural – did the WWE really think that the fans would cheer Vince McMahon over Stone Cold?
#5 nWo
If there was one entity that got more cheers than Stone Cold Steve Austin, it was the nWo. Scott Hall had already built up a reputation in the WWE as being the cool bad guy and he carried his machismo over to WCW as well.
While Kevin Nash could not match Hall’s charisma, he did have an aura about him from his Diesel persona and the Outsiders ran rough shots on Nitro – raising cheers rather than boos from the crowd.
Hulk Hogan’s turn might have been treated with boos and garbage being thrown in to the ring, but the trio became so popular despite being villains that it set off a quantum shift in how wrestling was scripted in the mid-nineties.
