Carpathian Florist
Pre-Show Stalwart
The first heel turned I properly experienced was The Rock's turn at Survivor Series 1998. Although I am not 100% sure if this really counts, because I know he was a heel for a long time prior to this and even when he was a face before this barely anyone cheered him. I'm not even really that sure on his status as a face at that point either, because I was a full on WCW fan and only watched WWF PPVs during 1998, so I missed all the build up on Raw and relied on second hand information from friends as to what was going on.
However, I have always been that fan who loves the heels and hates the babyfaces, I saw The Rock as quite bland to begin with and some of his stuff struck me as really cheesy (like his terrible overacting in the N.O.D. interview for No Way Out 1998 for example), although I did enjoy some of his antics such as presented Farooq with the picture of himself, stuff like that. Anyhow, I was more predisposed to like The Rock simply because he was a heel but I lost all interest when other kids were talking about how great he was and by the time I saw the Breakdown PPV when he was being heavily cheered I figured he'd become another cheesy face character (it always seemed to me like most of the people who were cheered were the suck ups who tried to hard on pleasing the audience than winning the matches). So when I saw Survivor Series 1998 I was shocked, in a good way, that he'd reverted to a full heel again. At the time I had no idea about faces/heels/turns etc, I just knew Rock as an ******** who didn't care about other people's opinions who sometimes made me laugh, but his turn affected me a lot in that I really loved how this ******** had managed to get everyone cheering for him only to turn around and stab them in the back for their support. It was upsetting for a lot of the people I knew, so for slapping them all so blatantly in the face The Rock was greatly elevated in my opinion.
However, I have always been that fan who loves the heels and hates the babyfaces, I saw The Rock as quite bland to begin with and some of his stuff struck me as really cheesy (like his terrible overacting in the N.O.D. interview for No Way Out 1998 for example), although I did enjoy some of his antics such as presented Farooq with the picture of himself, stuff like that. Anyhow, I was more predisposed to like The Rock simply because he was a heel but I lost all interest when other kids were talking about how great he was and by the time I saw the Breakdown PPV when he was being heavily cheered I figured he'd become another cheesy face character (it always seemed to me like most of the people who were cheered were the suck ups who tried to hard on pleasing the audience than winning the matches). So when I saw Survivor Series 1998 I was shocked, in a good way, that he'd reverted to a full heel again. At the time I had no idea about faces/heels/turns etc, I just knew Rock as an ******** who didn't care about other people's opinions who sometimes made me laugh, but his turn affected me a lot in that I really loved how this ******** had managed to get everyone cheering for him only to turn around and stab them in the back for their support. It was upsetting for a lot of the people I knew, so for slapping them all so blatantly in the face The Rock was greatly elevated in my opinion.