Kick the Dog/Professional Wrestling

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • A very common Heel tactic is to draw heat by either ambushing the Face during a match, during interviews or non-wrestling ringside appearances when the Face often has his or her guard down. Chris Jericho, Randy Orton and a couple others have made a career out of doing this tactic.
  • Triple H from WWE Monday Night Raw joked about this trope saying, "I'm gonna beat Batista like a bag of puppies."
  • Authority figures in Professional Wrestling often Kick the Dog by placing commentators, referees, valets, and other non-wrestlers into wrestling matches with particularly brutal heels (villains), who then proceed to demolish the hapless non-wrestler with glee. This is a sort of double-dog-kick, as it serves as a kick-the-dog moment for both the authority figure and the wrestler who does his dirty work.
    • An example of a wrestler bullying a commentator was used to kick off The Undertaker's Face Heel Turn in late 2001, when The Undertaker forced Jim Ross to join Vince McMahon's Kiss My Ass club. Also, when the WWF was desperate for Stone Cold Steve Austin to be considered a heel and not be cheered after Wrestlemania X-Seven, he crossed the Moral Event Horizon by beating up J.R. Basically, if you need your wrestler to be a hated heel, have him beat up the guy with Ball's Palsy who's the most kick-ass commentator in the business.
    • Ross has also been involved in matches against Triple H, including a no-holds barred match on WWE Raw where then-blatant heel commentator Jerry "the King" Lawler was so disgusted by Triple H's brutality (he had a bloodied Ross pinned several times, only he pulled him up repeatedly to continue punishing him) that it began a slow Heel Face Turn in his commentary style. (Batista, with whom Triple H was feuding, eventually ran in for the save, knocking out Triple H and draping an unconscious Ross over top.)
      • Taker's first Heel Face Turn was brought about by then-partner Jake "the Snake" Roberts trying to take a steel chair to Miss Elizabeth, the wife and manager of "Macho Man" Randy Savage, with whom he had a serious feud.
  • During his Iraqi-sympathizer heel run in 1991, Sgt. Slaugther once kicked and beat a ring paramedic with his swagger stick after Slaughter had already pummeled his hapless opponent (a jobber) so badly he "required medical attention," helping to push Slaughter as a Monster Heel.
  • More literal, when Chris Jericho needed to make a Face Heel Turn before his WrestleMania match against HHH, he was given the responsibility of watching over HHH's dog. His negligence of the dog led to its Off Camera Death.
    • A Real Life example for Jericho: after years of being denied a push in World Championship Wrestling, a gift from his girlfriend (action figure set of him and Kayfabe rival Dean Malenko) showed up on his receipt as Hulk Hogan and Sting, meaning that Hogan and Sting got all the residuals from selling Jericho and Malenko toys.
  • Another method for this involves a tag team or stable splitting with one member pulling a Face Heel Turn and absolutely brutalizing his partner for whatever petty reason the new villain has been stewing over. Examples include Edge and Christian, Shawn Michaels and Marty Jenetty, the Hardys (at least twice), Jericho and the WWE team during Survivor Series 2001, Rey Mysterio, Jr. / Eddie Guerrero (again, at least twice), Rey Mysterio, Jr. / Chavo Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Jr. / Spike Dudley...
    • Let's not even go into how many of these Rey's gotten. The Big Show slamming him into the turnbuckle while in a stretcher, Eddie Guerrero's brutal Face Heel Turn...really sucks to be the smallest fish in a tank full of piranhas, especially when the Cruiserweight Title's been dropped.
  • Randy Orton from 2006 onwards. Talk about a Generation Xerox...and he takes it one step further by having a punt as his other Finishing Move.
  • Matt Hardy turned on his brother Jeff by knocking him in the head and costing him his first-ever WWE Championship against their mortal enemy, Edge. Jeff refused to fight him. Matt verbally assaulted and berated Jeff for two weeks and beat up a mutual friend mercilessly. Jeff refused to fight him. Matt called Jeff out and backhanded him to the ground. Jeff refused to fight him. Matt cost Jeff a chance to be in the Money In The Bank Ladder Match at Wrestlemania 25. Jeff STILL refused to fight him. Then Matt came out, carrying the burnt collar of Jeff's dead dog, and admitted he was the one who had killed Jeff's dog (and burnt his house and tried to kill him several times, but it was mostly about the dog here). At this point, Jeff finally snaps and proceeds to open the proverbial can of whoopass.
  • John Laurinaitis big time on the 12/05/2011 episode of Raw by forcing a Sadistic Choice on John Cena, forcing him to choose between getting a WWE Title Shot for himself or giving his close friend Zack Ryder a chance to get a shot at the US Championship he's been hunting for a long time. When Cena chooses to give Ryder his shot, Laurinaitis puts the already tired Ryder against Mark Henry in a No-Disqualification Match, making it clear he had no intention to give Ryder a fair chance and intended to screw Cena.
    • Laurinaitis is getting good at these. On the 4/6/2012 episode of Friday Night Smackdown, after winning control over both Raw and Smackdown, he offered Teddy Long a job after Teddy told him to drop dead. Not so bad, right? The dog-kicking came when he said that if he didn't accept the job, he'd cut off the college fund Teddy's grandchildren were getting. (The condition was that the college fund was controlled by the Smackdown general manager, which Laurinaitis now was.) And to add insult to injury Laurinaitis made Teddy say that he (Laurinaitis) was better than him.
  • There have been a few examples of women wrestlers being forced to take on male wrestlers in singles matches, usually as punishment for a minor offense and/or for the male wrestler's sadistic pleasure. One of the most famous examples of the former was when WWE Diva Maria bumped into Eric Bischoff and spilled coffee over his jacket; Bischoff immediately demanded that Maria wrestler sadistic madman Umaga, and if she refused she would be fired. Maria (predictably) was beaten to a pulp ... until John Cena ran into the ring and knocked Umaga out of the ring just before he was able to finish her off.
    • During her occassional face runs, Stephanie McMahon has had to wrestle Brock Lesnar and her father, Vince McMahon, the storyline always being that she was to assert her independence, and the heels (Lesnar and McMahon) accepting ... and creating match-types (usually, no holds barred) to hurt Stephanie as much as possible.
  • The Divas of Doom Beth Phoenix and Natalya really enjoy hurting the Face divas especially The Woobie AJ, Kelly Kelly and Eve Torres.
    • To be more specific, Beth normally will announce "it's cry time" and lock said Diva in a painful looking submission hold while Natalya holds the microphone up to her face so the crowd can hear her scream.
  • Ted DiBiase offers $500 to a small boy to dribble a basketball 15 times, then kicks it out from under him at the 14th bounce.
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