WWE's Worst Person of the Week: John Laurinaitis

John Laurinaitis is no Vince McMahon, but that hasn’t prevented him from becoming a very good heel authority figure.

The new General Manager of both Raw and SmackDown has developed into arguably the WWE’s top antagonist, especially over the last several weeks, as he has made a habit out of targeting the company’s top baby faces. 

It started off with Laurinaitis going after the face of the WWE, John Cena, by trying to use Brock Lesnar take him out, by forcing him to face Lord Tensai in an Extreme Rules match on Raw and by beating him down on his own. 

With Cena off of TV last week, though, Laurinaitis needed a new target. He found two of them. 

After CM Punk interrupted his show-opening promo on Raw, Laurinaitis decided to get a little revenge on the WWE Champion by booking him in what was an unwinnable bout, a two-on-one handicap match against Lord Tensai and Daniel Bryan. 

As you probably expected, Tensai and Bryan rather easily took care of Punk, and following the match, Bryan put Punk in the Yes Lock to close the show. 

And where was Laurinaitis when all of this was going down? Just enjoying the show, of course. 

Laurinaitis loves nothing more than to see top-tier baby faces getting screwed over by heels, and that was made pretty evident when he also began targeting The Big Show on last week’s Raw. 

After Show was seen mocking Laurinaitis’ voice in a backstage segment on Raw, Laurinaitis made sure that he was going to get a little payback on the World’s Largest Athlete. 

He set up a match between Show and Bryan on Friday’s SmackDown, and sat ringside during the bout, ultimately calling for the bell in a “Screwjob”-like finish when Bryan had Show in the Yes Lock. 

So, by the end of the week, Laurinaitis had put the baby face WWE Champion in a match that he had no chance to win, and actually prevented another top baby face from winning as well. 

While I couldn’t stand Laurinaitis when he first got on TV, he has developed his character very well over the last six months or so and is doing a good job of creating sympathy for the WWE’s top baby faces. 

He’s so hated as a heel that the fans are forced to cheer for any face he has beef with, and that’s precisely why he’s the WWE’s Worst Person of the Week. 

Drake Oz is the WWE Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions (to be answered in the B/R Mailbag) on Formspring.