The Heel Report: 12.29.11: The Antichrist of Perfection

This is the Heel Report. A weekly chart spanning from Thursday’s Impact to the Raw Super Show, ranking the heels in TNA and the WWE based on their actions, wins and loses.

Each Week there are ten places, with points out of ten awarded based on these positions. These points are then added to a rolling chart that will continue each week to show who is wrestling’s overall top heel.

Season’s greetings from merry old England, here our Christmas trees are upside down to save space and we open presents in the evening to show restraint! Since it is the season I thought that I would do some obligatory awards along with the usual chart, what’s more I actually managed to see the Final Battle in the same time frame that I publish the report, so I can actually feature ROH wrestlers on the chart! The hour shows of ROH are normally a week delayed the way I get them and there is barely any time to show any real heel-dom anyway so that is why they haven’t appeared as of yet despite being on TV again. However I think from now on as long as I can get the PPVs in time then I will include the scores from them on the chart, so watch this space for more ROH! Without further ado let’s get on with the report…

Weekly Top Ten

1st Place: Kevin Steen

With Ring of Honor in the running this week it was clear who was going to take the top spot. Fully reinstated in ROH after a brutal match and now seemingly in the title picture after his promo at the end of the PPV, Kevin Steen has dominated ROH heel-dom despite not even being in the company for an entire year. Now that he is back I hope to see more of him on this chart myself, it all depends on availability at this point, but certainly watch this space, this time next year we could have an ROH heel leading the pack!

2nd Place: Dolph Ziggler

A mixed bag for the Zig Zag man this week as he tapped out to one world champion on Smackdown and pinned another on Raw, despite the first main event loss Ziggler recovered by earning a title shot next week to capture second place on the chart. Beating the champion, even in a gauntlet match, is a big deal and I thought he had a great little backstage moment with Swagger where once again he was brutally honest with his associate. However the most important thing about this week for Ziggler though has to be that the WWE is clearly trying to figure out how he fits into the title picture, I don’t expect Ziggler to beat Punk next Monday, nor do I think I want him to, but I can easily see him winning the Royal Rumble and challenging either Bryan or Punk in the Championship main event at Wrestlemania.

3rd Place: The Young Bucks

An interestingly high placement for the young team of cocky heels but these guys really did bring the heat into their tag team gauntlet match at Final Battle. I’m still not sure what to make of these guys, even after listening to their interview on the Greg DeMarco show last week. On the one hand they come across as reasonable guys, but at the same time they have this slightly arrogant tone to what they are saying that makes me believe they at least think they are the best in the business right now. Of course it’s up to you whether you think that is a bad thing or not, a lot of guys think they are the best in the business and it can make you pretty successful, and hell if your reputation gets you heat as a heel but you are still being booked and talked about then what is the real harm? At least for now anyway, although if they end up like guys like AJ Styles where they spend so long in the business without making it to WWE that they are too old to get there then they will always have to look back on their careers and wonder ‘what if’.

4th Place: John Laurinaitis

Mr. Laryngitis, this far up the chart?! Heaven forbid! Seriously though Johnny Ace is really starting to come into his character as crooked slime ball who tries to play it like it is all ‘in the interest of fairness’. Sure the guy still stutters and mumbles through all his promos, but the concept is there and the story still comes across alright. He works well cast aside C.M. Punk as his lack of charisma compared to Punk’s abundance really let’s Punk shine as a face and goes some ways to hiding the huge streak of arrogance that leaks out of Punk’s mouth when he delivers his promos (I think he slicks his hair with it). I like Punk but against a guy with personality he does come off as a bit of a douche, against Johnny Ace though it is fine because everything he says about him is true and because Johnny is so bad on the mic you don’t care if Punk cuts him off or shouts him down because he deserves it.

5th Place: Roderick Strong

The one thing I don’t like about ROH, and forgive me for saying this because I know I hate it when I read it on other columns or in news reports, but a lot of their top guys are quite generic looking and dull. Now I’ve heard people describe Punk, Ziggler, Barrett and Rhodes as being plain looking and I tend to disagree, but when it comes to Roderick Strong there is no plainer looking man in wrestling today. Even his name is terrible, it’s about as bad as if the company took his first and last name and swapped them around a bit so that one plain name replaced the other for what seemed like no reason, oh wait that was another company, but never mind. Still the guy did get a PPV win over a returning Chris Hero, who hopefully isn’t back for good, so I have to give him some credit, and since most every other heel from here on out lost their matches or didn’t even wrestle he has done enough to earn fifth place on the chart.

6th Place: The Miz

Ah Sir Michael, owning on the mic and getting owned in the ring, business as usual I see. The Miz declared himself better than the Smackdown roster on Friday night and proceeded to get beaten down and pinned by Sheamus, then on Raw he interrupted John Cena, had a brief match with him, which he walked out on, only to get attacked by a returning R-Truth. A Miz-Truth feud seems way too soon and it sums up the WWE this year to a tee, unlike the ROH Kevin Steen angle, which took a year to play out, the WWE seems to think they have to rush everything so that people don’t lose attention. As the biggest company in the business you would think that the WWE would have the confidence not to rush into an angle too hastily and would make sure they have all their bases covered. Instead they seem to just throw whatever they have together and hope for the best, not thinking more than a couple of weeks in advance. This is something that really needs to change heading into 2012, at least until the world ends.

7th Place: Kane

The Re-masked Red Machine did what he does best on Raw; come out and give a long winded promo, trying to explain his confusing actions up to that point thanks to creative’s sloppy writing. Luckily the first part of that sentence wasn’t sarcasm and Kane did actually manage to do a good job of explaining why he has focused on John Cena rather than Mark Henry, of course there are holes; why didn’t Kane go after Henry anyway, why didn’t he mention Henry in his promo or talk about what he was doing on his way off, but that doesn’t really matter. Now we have an established program between Kane and Cena, which should keep Cena away from the title scene for at least one more month. Kane has an interesting look in his new mask, he really does look like a comic book super villain, which is a great pairing against the character of Super-Cena, especially since he is approaching Cena as a friend with a diabolical choice to turn to the dark side, it is something straight from fiction and a solid storyline that juxtaposes the new wave of ‘shoot’ or reality promos and booking that has started up since ‘the promo that shook the world’ this past summer. Compare this to the die hard fundamentalism that religion is experiencing in its death-throes, a big effort to hold onto a fiction before reality comes crashing in, except this is actually a good thing that suit’s the characters, rather than a force for intolerance and an effort to drag everyone down with them kicking and screaming before they drown in the inevitability of their demise.

8th Place: Bully Ray

The Bully comes in eighth after a week not unlike the Miz’s of having a good time on the mic and a bad time in the ring. That is the benefit of being a heel, you can lose a match and still come off looking good just by delivering a bad-arse promo before or after the match, a face doesn’t have that same liberty…At least they didn’t until Punk became champion, witness what happened on Raw, he lost but he still looks strong, Cena could never pull that off, people sometimes forget that when they compare the two.

9th Place: Jack Swagger

The All-American American gets an A for effort this week as he lost as usual but put in great support as Ziggler’s wingman. Someone has to be behind the rising star and at the moment that is Swagger. I really hope that Swagger can step out of Ziggler’s shadow at some point, I’m not too sure if it will happen just by taking off his shirt though. However a web series isn’t a bad idea, perhaps if Swagger can slowly get more face-like in his shows he will gain a following that are expecting him to turn face and he can do so on Ziggler once the Show Off gets hold of one of the world titles. Whatever Swagger tries you can’t argue that air time is air time and as long as he is getting it there is always an opportunity for him to step up his game and get back to being a world champion like he was a couple of years ago.

10th Place: Madison Rayne

The new queen of the Knockouts makes her way into the final place on the chart. Through sheer shrillness alone Madison has gained a bunch of points this week, despite also being attacked at the end of the match she made. Something tells me that the queen’s authority isn’t exactly going to be taken seriously, or last for very long, but despite this it is just nice to see her on television.

Rolling Chart (Week 21):

1. Mark Henry (135)

2. Cody Rhodes (105)

3. Alberto Del Rio (96)

4. The Miz (87)

5. Wade Barrett (62)

6. Christian (59)

7. Dolph Ziggler (58)

8. Robert Roode (56)

9. R-Truth (47)

10. Austin Aries (44)

Obligatory Heel Awards

Heel of the Year: Mark Henry

Much like Kane’s meteoric rise to the main event as a diabolical monster last year, Mark Henry finally came into his own and took out Randy Orton clean to claim his first World Heavyweight title. A lot has got in the way of Mark Henry’s success and even now he has been forced to surrender his title early, but in a way at least now he went out on a high, unlike Kane who by the end of his title run looked like as big a jobber as ever and soon found himself once again turned face and teaming with the Big Show, only now having come back to what could be another successful run. So while Mark Henry might have finished out the year injured, he certainly was on top for the majority of it and gave us some memorable moments and entrants into the Hall of Pain.

Promo of the Year: C.M. Punk drops a Pipe-bomb

Say what you will about what followed but this moment in Professional Wrestling will be remembered for years to come as the moment that sh*t got real. In the years that I have been watching and reading about wrestling I have never seen another moment that had people asking if it was real and guessing what would happen next. In context the whole thing was unexpected and really jarred the fans into waking up and paying attention to the product again. In the Attitude era perhaps saying that the owner of the company dying would improve the show might not have meant anything, but in a PG WWE where everything is censored and scripted to hell it was like a breath of fresh air and really had to make you wonder if the company would have really approved of Punk getting on the mic in front of a bunch of kayfabe-brain washed kiddies and telling them the actual truth about what was going on.

Most Improved Heel of the Year: Cody Rhodes

This was a tough one and a toss up between Rhodes himself and Ziggler, but in the end I went for improvement as a character over improvement in the ring. Ziggler has been having some damn fine TV matches as of late and he is currently nearing the title picture but his character is about where it was a year ago. Rhodes on the other hand started out with a somewhat basic ‘good looking wrestler’ gimmick, which while he made his own probably wouldn’t get him into the main event. Then he became the “disfigured freak” with a see-through mask that helped him win matches but again was too cheesy to ever really succeed with. Despite this Rhodes not only persevered but positively embraced his characters to the point where he was still interesting and we have been able to watch his character develop to the point where he is now part Dashing and part Diabolical, giving him the perfect mix of cockiness and viciousness to make him a convincing main eventer in the coming year.

Heel Turn of the Year: Robert Roode

Despite the terrible job that TNA did with booking Roode as a hero, at least they redeemed him by turning him heel against his former tag team partner and taking the TNA world title in convincing fashion. Roode operates much better as a heel and his turn here allowed him to represent the company in what will hopefully be a lengthy title run, unless of course they actually plan on giving back the title to Jeff Hardy, but TNA would never be stupid enough to do that, would they?

Villainess of the Year: Beth Phoenix

Just like Robert Roode, Beth has managed to succeed as a heel champion despite being booked terribly by the company she is in. Sometimes as a performer you just have to grit your teeth and make the best out of what you are given, in this case that is having to carry Barbie dolls through match after match, only to get rolled up for a cheap victory half the time. Still the Glamazon is the champion and I highly doubt that any other diva could represent the division anywhere near as strongly as she has.

Most Pointless Heel of the Year: Brotus Clay

Apart from still not having debuted on Raw, Brotus was a terrible heel on NXT. All the guy did was stand their with his potato-like physique and yell out that stupid ‘cheeeaaahhhh’, which means absolutely nothing, and then had about a dozen or so squash matches on Superstars to build him up for a debut that will probably never happen, seems pretty pointless to me.

Worst Face of the Year: Triple H

This award is simply for the face who sucked the most this year, one at being a face and two at costing heels deserved victories and ruining what could have been great storyline angles due to their egos. You may think this could only be Triple H but I can easily see Cena, Mysterio, Undertaker or Big Show winning at some point as well. Triple H came in as COO and instead of tuning heel and pulling a Laryngitis so that he could go up against Punk, he had to try to stay a face and go over Punk, killing his momentum and his own character at the same time. Everything good and interesting that happened this year seemed to end with Triple H having a pointless match or making a stupid statement: Punk leaves with the WWE title, Triple H brings him back two weeks later. There end up being two WWE titles, Triple H hogs the spotlight and makes sure they are unified, only to then allow Punk to drop the title to Del Rio. The entire roster walk out on Raw, five minutes into the first show Triple H caves and resigns as GM, but remains COO?! I can only wonder how this year would have gone if Triple H had just stayed the hell away from the ring.

Worst Segment of the Year: JR-Cole Rap Battle

God seriously, I know this was only a couple of weeks ago and that most segments with Michael Cole have been terrible this year, but for me it was JR that made this the worst segment of the year. Not only was this whole ‘should be retired’ announcers rivalry take far too much air time away from relevant stars of the show, but it also served no purpose. Nothing to do with it was funny, exciting or interesting, and what’s more Michael Cole barely actually got any comeuppance so there was really no pay-off and all three guys are still announcing in some way. The reason this one segment wins above the others is JR and his ‘brain-fart’, it was just cringe-worthy and proved why these guys shouldn’t be allowed the announce booth any more. As story tellers you need to keep a lot of details and information in your head and JR just can’t seem to do that too well any more, time for him to lay down the cowboy hat and say goodbye to an on air role, hopefully taking Lawler and Cole with him.

Biggest Disappointment of the Year: The Summer of Punk

Ah the good old days of youth, where summer felt like it lasted only a week…oh wait this one did. After Punk won the title at Money in the Bank we all presumed that we would be in store for a great series of shoot promos and random appearances by the ‘real’ WWE champion, at least I thought we would anyway. Instead we got one amusing picture of the title in a fridge, an appearance at Comic Con and some spiffy new entrance music for one C.M. Punk. Despite several attempts to salvage and extend the angle, due to one factor or another it never happened and the Summer of Punk now remains relegated to the dingy ROH back catalogue, never to be seen by the majority of main stream wrestling fans.

Best In-Ring Return of the Year: Matt Striker

Yeah this award is pretty much just for me. I could have picked the Rock, or Kane or hell even Kevin Nash, but me personally, I got the most excited to see Matt Striker don his trunks once again on NXT to sort out (but mostly put over) some Young rookie Punks. I was always disappointed that Striker had to leave the ring so early on in his WWE career, he was a favourite of mine on the WWE’s ECW, I just wish I had seen more of him in his ROH days and I wonder if he will return to the ring again any time soon.

That’s all for this week, I hope you all had a good Christmas and a wildly destructive New Years. For now this is James Wright signing off.