Kick the Dog in Professional Wrestling.
- 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 Raw joked about this trope saying, "I'm gonna beat Batista like a bag of puppies."
- Trips is quite good at forcing Heel Face Turns doing this, especially if it looks like he'd become a good guy himself. However, Batista didn't suffer the same fate as Randy Orton (and a year later, Ric Flair) did.
- 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 got heat by beating up J.R. 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.)
- The Undertaker'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 Randy "Macho Man" Savage, with whom he had a serious feud.
- During his Iraqi-sympathizer heel run in 1991, Sgt. Slaughter 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 needednote 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 WCW, 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 Janetty, 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 Jr., Rey Mysterio Jr. / Spike Dudley...
- Let's not even go into how many of these Rey's gotten. 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.
- He didn't actually kill the dog, or set the house on fire, that was faulty wiring, but he did find the dog after it had died & stole its collar.
- 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 face women wrestlers being forced to take on heel male wrestlers in singles matches, usually as punishment for a minor offense and/or for the male wrestler's and authority figure's sadistic pleasure. One of the most famous examples of the former was when WWE Diva Maria Kanellis bumped into Eric Bischoff and spilled coffee over his jacket; Bischoff immediately demanded that Maria wrestle 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. This was not the first time she was involved in such a match, as she faced Kurt Angle a year before, although Angle admitted he didn't want to hurt her because she was a woman. It was a ruse.
- During her occasional 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.
- Actually subverted on the March 30 (taped March 28) episode of WWE SmackDown!. Vince, in an attempt to punish Stephanie for her Heel Turn and association with Triple H, put her in a match against the WWE Women's Champion
Jacqueline. The "match" consisted of Jacqueline chasing Stephanie in and out of the ring until Stephanie's DeGeneration X cohort Tori (Terri Poch) DDT'd Jackie. That this turned out to be a really bad idea was evident when Stephanie clearly had no idea what she was supposed to do and had to be TOLD that she needed to cover Jackie. Of course, she won the title in her FIRST EVER match.
- The Divas of Doom Beth Phoenix and Natalya Neidhart really enjoy hurting the Face divas especially The Woobie A.J. Lee, 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.
- CM Punk and Paul Heyman insult Jerry The King Lawler after he returns from the hospital due to a heart attack. To make things worse, Heyman fakes a heart attack and CM Punk "saves" him, intending on screwing with the Hall of Famer.
- Then there was the time when he interrupted The Undertaker's tribute to Paul Bearer so he could put himself over as the guy who would beat 'Taker at 'Mania. Even Vickie Guerrero was disgusted. This is also crossed with Bullying a Dragon and Too Dumb to Live, something Punk more or less admitted in his Villainous BSoD promo the night after WM. Indeed, the Lawler and Bearer angles were back-to-back "Most Digusting Promotional Tactic" winners.
- Even after The Great Khali sang a hard-to-hear yet heartwarming Happy Birthday song to Natalya on her birthday, the Bella Twins beat Natalya and sing a nasty version of the birthday song to the upset diva. The worst part was that they got away with it.
- And they recently do it again in 7/29/13, where they call Natalya an ugly duckling and distract her to cost her the match. Once again, no one calls them out on it.
- AJ and Big E. Langston set up the Kaitlyn's Secret-Admirer scenario to humiliate her in public. During this, AJ gives her the same "The Reason You Suck" Speech Dolph Ziggler gave her during the AJ scandal, insulting her with the same words her boyfriend once gave her.
- And on Smackdown, Big E Langston took Teddy Long's Hardees burger and ate it in front of him, perhaps relishing that Long wouldn't get to eat it.
- On 9/9/13 of Raw, Goldust fights Randy Orton to get his brother's job back...and loses. What makes it worse? After the match, when he was already upset, Stephanie McMahon gives him a heartbreaking and cruel Breaking Speech, saying that he let Cody Rhodes, his family, and the entire WWE down. The look on his face when she said that...he was already close to tears.
- The Authority have been masters of this trope.
- Seth Rollins doing it many times to Dean Ambrose, his cruelest being a Curb Stomp through some cinder blocks with the aid of Kane.
- Stephanie McMahon to both Daniel Bryan and Brie of The Bella Twins (It also resulted in Nikki's Face–Heel Turn on Brie).
- Triple H to anyone who crosses him.
- Candice LeRae and Johnny Gargano on the 4th November edition of WWE NXT when they ran over Shotzi Blackheart's tank. Thankfully Shotzi got a better tank at NXT Takeover: War Games 2020.
- Rhea Ripley since her Face–Heel Turn in April 2022 and joining The Judgment Day in May 2022. Her targets have included the likes of Liv Morgan (her former tag team partner), Natalya Neidhart, Edge and Beth Phoenix.
