Heel turns gone wrong

By Scott Keith on 25 June 2012

So at the ROH I-PPV best in the world Kevin Steen cut a Heel promo eviscerating the crowd for being hypocrites and going so far as to yell FUCK NEW YORK! in the Hammerstein. all i could think of when the crowd refused to boo him regardless of what he said was the monster pop Austin got after beating the Rock at wrestle mania as the result of going heel. If you've commited to a big heel turn where you say Fuck the fans (literately in Steen's case) and the crowd won't hate them, how do you fix it. I only know about the Austin example through DVD's and the near universal agreement heel Austin didn't work since it was before my fandom, so i can't even look back on that for comparison in the long term. I guess my question is this, if you turn your top baby face Heel, but the crowd still reacts like he's the top baby face how do you fix it, you can't just take what they said to turn heel back can you?

The first time Austin had that problem they just turned him into the top babyface and drew billions of dollars. I don't see ROH drawing significant money with Steen, but I don't see why they can't just run with him as a babyface who insults the crowd. What booker in their right mind would look at the top guy in the promotion getting monster reactions and go "Shit, we gotta FIX this!"?

The Austin thing was different, because it went beyond the heel turn at Wrestlemania and carried into changing the character into something that people didn't want to pay money to see, the spineless and self-loathing jellyfish who needed emotional support from his former arch-enemy. It was an awesomely nuanced character played by completely the wrong person for the role.