How did the “Rocky sucks” chants start?
Orginally, Rocky Maivia was brought in as a future superstar and instead of slowly building him up, the WWF immediately labelled Maivia as a bigtime “babyface” despite the fact that he was never over with the fans. What made it even worse is that Maivia was declared the WWF IC champion after a victory over HHH in 1997, which annoyed the fans so much that they started chanting “Rocky sucks, Rocky sucks” whenever Maivia appeared. Not good to have your babyface, Intercontinental champion get booed and a short while later, we all witnessed the inevitable heel turn as Maivia joined the Nation. The WWF turned what was a horrible situation into a huge advantage.
