Villainous Breakdown/Professional Wrestling

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The feud Edge had with The Undertaker in 2008. He went from a rather calm and collected fellow to an Ax Crazy raving lunatic. Edge performed the breakdown without any assistance from The Undertaker at all.
  • Eddie Guerrero used this as part of a Face Heel Turn in 2005. He claimed to be the biological father of Rey Mysterio, Jr.'s son, Dominic, among other things. It was truly a sight to behold, since Eddie had been a face for so long that he had to nearly take Rey's head off to get fans to boo him.
  • Vickie Guerrero gets one when Edge gets her fired after she abused her power to make his life a living nightmare. She breaks down in tears and starts begging everyone, even a cameraman to help get her job back. She finally ends up begging at Edge's feet for him to help her. He doesn't listen.
  • Hulk Hogan has been showing signs of this since the network began interfering with his Immortal stables domination of TNA. While he puts on a facade of a Smug Snake in the ring, a backstage scene had him in a paranoid rage over the networks interfering, claiming they "know too much" about how wrestling works and demanding Eric do something about it. It's been getting worse each week and Eric has also began to head into a Villainous Breakdown of his own for the same reason.
  • Michael Cole has one on the April 11th Raw. After Jerry Lawler defeats Jack Swagger, earning himself a match at Extreme Rules with Cole, with Jerry chosing the match, Cole for the first time in weaks is left completely speechless. After a few minutes of silence, he snaps and explodes on his Dragon Jack Swagger, blaming him for everything and slapping him. This instantly comes back to bite him when Jerry reveals their match will be a tag team match, and Cole's partner is the man he just ticked off.
    • Had another one on the July 27, 2011 episode when Triple H reveals he'd rehired Jim Ross. Michael goes on a major tangent, screaming his head off about how he refused to work with Ross at all. Too bad for him, Triple H was already about nine steps ahead of him and knew he'd probably do that.
  • On the May 23 episode of Raw, Kharma, a monster heel Diva who had been tormenting and bullying the roster for weeks, comes out to the ring as per usual. But this time, she finds the entire Divas locker room surrounding her, having been fed up with her attacks, showing no fear. While confedient at first, she has breaks down in tears and has an emotional breakdown when she realizes they no longer fear her and she can't beat all of them at once. The announcers even refer to it as a breakdown afterwards.
    • Actually, that wasn't the reason why she had that breakdown. In the next week, she reveals that she's pregnant and will be out of action for about a year. She gains sympathy from the audience as she talks about how she made it here in WWE.
  • CM Punk has one on the July 11th episode of Raw. After showing his Magnificent Bastard self the whole night, John Cena comes out and gives Punk a perfect Kirk Summation, calling Punk out on his chronic Hypocrite status and asking him an Armor-Piercing Question: if you care so much about the WWE Universe, why are you walking out on them? Punk's response is to get furious and try to find something to one up Cena's arguement, but his comeback ultimately devolves into trying to pin his leaving on John Cena, which due to the contract he had wrote up, no longer makes any sense because he'd been offered everything he'd wanted that Cena had on a silver platter and kept Moving the Goalposts (something Cena had already called him out on), supporting Cena's point of him being a Hypocrite instead of countering it. He ultimately angerly tears up the contract, doing exactly what Cena was calling him out on.
  • R-Truth's Face Heel Turn consists of this. He lost his title shot and then...well his mind. He's been getting steadily more and more insane since then.
  • Mark Henry has one after being beaten by Sheamus. He snaps and goes even more berserk than he already was.
  • CM Punk, himself an earlier victim of a breakdown (see above), causes Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and Interim Raw General Manager John Laurinaitis to suffer one hell of a breakdown, as he unleashed the mother of all "The Reason You Suck" Speeches to the guy on the 1/16/2012 edition of Raw.
  • Vince McMahon infamously suffered a breakdown in 2007 after losing the ECW Championship at One Night Stand 2007[1], with Vince acting increasingly erratic in following weeks. This ultimately culminated on a Raw that was billed as "Vince McMahon Appreciation Night", where the complete opposite happened and anyone and everyone got their shots in on Vince. The night would end his "death" after his limousine exploded[2]
  1. Though one could argue it began after his hair was shaved at Wrestlemania by Donald Trump
  2. Of course, the untimely Chris Benoit incident put the kibosh on the angle before it could truly continue on.