The Heel Report: 04.26.12: Pain and Suffering

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.

Sorry for the lateness this week, PhD got in the way again, although at least I got to represent professional wrestling at a Classics conference, I might have even won over a few new fans, wrestling sure needs them right now!

This is a place where the heels of TNA and the WWE can be praised for all the hard work they do trying to get us all to hate them, so without further ado let’s get on with the report…

Weekly Top Ten

1st Place: Daniel Bryan

Daniel Bryan is slowly perfecting the complete picture of the bastard. In the era of trolling the WWE are just going to have to accept that a large section of the audience actually finds a person striving to be an annoying little prick amusing, if not admirable. Whether it’s repeating ‘Yes!’ over a dozen times in Kofi Kingston’s face, taunting Sheamus to hit him as a special guest referee, or delivering one of the most painfully brutal putdowns to an ex ever broadcast, Bryan is excelling at portraying the ‘annoying tool’ character. He is being shown as a snide little man who hides behind any devices he can and lives to irritate and put down everyone around him to make himself feel big. It’s a modern character for a modern time and whether the WWE are meaning it to or not, this will only serve to make the ‘Yes!’ chants grow even louder.

2nd Place: Brock Lesnar

I have to say I was never really a fan of Brock Lesnar in his original WWE run, sure I was impressed by his feats of strength and while he was a heel he was sort of entertaining, but I always found it hard to get behind the guy. Now though it is a completely different story, while I’m not marking out and putting him as wrestler of the week every time he appears on a WWE screen, I have to admit that this new “character” of ‘Brock Lesnar doesn’t give a f*ck’ is pretty captivating. There is a lot of potential to having a man who openly looks down on everyone in the company walking around and at least half of that being legitimate feeling, these days any time you can get a grizzled IWC fan to question the kayfabe of something, even for a second, you have won, and I believe that Lesnar as he is could do that. The best part about his contract signing speech, much like Punk’s MitB contract signing, was that pretty much everything he was saying was true; he is a brand, and the WWE do need him to help legitimize the program, it certainly couldn’t hurt. I will tip my hat to Cena for playing the role of the douche that no one in the company really believes in again, you know what they say ‘art imitates life’, so putting Cena in this role makes everything seem more real and not so forced. Whatever happens at Extreme Rules I’m glad that Lesnar is sticking around afterwards, because things can only get more interesting from here on out.

3rd Place: Cody Rhodes

This one was a bit of a surprise entry considering that Cody lost twice this week; however he lost in style, at least on Smackdown he did anyway. Rhodes’s attack on the Great Khali was great, but what was better was the way he played it up so much afterwards, I’ve honestly never seen a heel more proud of his heel actions. Also let’s not forget that he had also cost Big Show a match earlier in the night and so he gets ‘imaginary internet points’ (As some user in the comments section loves to point out – because the power 25 and personal voting is so legitimate, why is having a points system that I devised any less substantial?) for that as well. Cody is getting better every week and would have to be damned unlucky not to get a world title run this year. The only way I can see that happening is if the WWE actually takes this ‘Yes!’ thing seriously but doesn’t wuss out and turn Bryan heel, if that happens he will probably take the championship back of Sheamus and have another significant title run, or they will give him a tiny run to make him look weak, either way it takes more time away from Cody, also Del Rio might get in the way a bit, along with a returning Wade Barrett and Christian. In fact thinking about it Rhodes will have to step up his game still further to have a good enough shot of steeling away the title from all those guys this year, and that’s not to mention Sheamus, the champion, himself of course, is it just me or is for some reason this the least legitimate of Sheamus’s runs, simply for the fact that I and others seem to have a hard time remembering that it is actually Sheamus who is champion.

4th Place: Robert Roode

The retaining champion came out on this week’s Impact as the king of the mountain. No matter how he did it he managed to once again retain his title against his former tag team partner and most promising challenger yet. At this point Roode seems untouchable and I really hope that RVD isn’t the guy to take the title away from him. I’m personally hoping that they feed Roode RVD and Anderson next before putting him against someone really legitimate and have him win almost clean. He can still do something underhanded, but actually use a finisher perhaps? Still no matter how questionable the outcomes of his matches, at least Roode is still the champion and the title isn’t in the constant state of ‘hot potato’ that it has been for the last couple of years.

5th Place: Chris Jericho

Jericho is next with a cunning ploy to pry the WWE title away from the Straight-Edge champion just a few days before their match at Extreme Rules. Now if I was being pedantic I would say that these actions go completely against what Jericho has been saying about proving he is the best in the world. But then if I did that I would also be forgetting that Jericho is a heel and you can never trust what a heel says, especially when they act like they have something to prove, a heel has no pride or shame! While the plan itself fell flat, Jericho did have a pretty decent outing with Kofi Kingston, Kingston is so undervalued by the WWE it is shocking, he is fine on the mic, great with spots, has an innovative style and can pretty much work with anybody given to him and yet they do nothing with him, ever. Hopefully that will change at some point, but I have no idea when.

6th Place: Alberto Del Rio

Frankly I am worried about Del Rio, not because he is faltering, but because it looks like the WWE might be amping him up for another title run. He is following the exact same logic that the WWE used for Sheamus; two failed WWE championship runs on Raw leads to a World Championship run on Smackdown, because apparently they are still good enough to be a champion, just only on the B-Show. I don’t know if you noticed but Del Rio won a match with the Big Show this week, if not by much of his own doing, and then walked away from a tag match before his team lost, thus not being associated with the loss as much, and who ate the pin? Cody Rhodes. So basically what I’m saying is that Del Rio is already being built up for a potential program with Sheamus on the blue brand despite only being on the show for less than a week! Things do not look good for our boy Rhodes.

7th Place: Lord Tensi

Yet another squash for Tensi, although at least unlike Ryback he is moving up each time, not to mention him picking up a win over Cena last week of course. He went from some no-name, to Yoshi Tatsu, to now R-Truth. What’s more instead of ending things via the Baldo Bomb and having the ref stop the match they are now using the bomb as a set up for the claw, which makes Tensi look a lot more dominating. Sure he now has his own four moves of doom, but for a big guy who’s not going to be expected to carry the company on his back it’s not such a bad thing, people always seem to forget the context of Cena as being the main guy as to why he gets such a hard time over his limited ring and mic work, for a regular guy it would be fine, but not for the face of the company.

8th Place: Bully Ray

A somewhat ‘cheeky’ win over Austin Aries this week, Bully Ray might have to settle for an X-Division title shot rather than going against Roode for the TNA world title. Still Ray is doing well as TNA’s second best heel, he’ll just have to watch himself if Kurt Angle ever gets out of the slump that he is in.

9th Place: Titus & Young

After movin’ on up from NXT to Smackdown, the team of Titus and Young represented themselves well by beating the Usos on Smackdown. Part of the WWE’s problem with their tag team division is they keep on throwing these guys together, give them a couple of wins and then something happens to break apart the team or they just lose interest, or they can be found jobbing out to the next thrown together team. Hopefully with the slight amount of attention these two guys have been given they will actually get somewhat of an extended push, but probably not so never mind.

10th Place: Eve

Someone else moving up in the world is Eve, word is that Vince is pleased with her ‘work’ and so he’s given her a larger role on Raw, and a win over Kelly Kelly on Superstars, which is nice for her. I don’t really have a problem with heel Eve as long as she sticks to being mainly a mouth-piece, if she starts to take on Kharma when she returns then things will be getting out of hand, and the less said about the Bellas now the better.

(Week 38):

1. Mark Henry (181)

2. Cody Rhodes (178)

3. Robert Roode (156)

4. Daniel Bryan (137)

5. The Miz (113)

6. Alberto Del Rio (109)

7. Bully Ray (99)

8. Wade Barrett (93)

9. Chris Jericho (86)

10. Dolph Ziggler (86)

The Wright View

Funkasaurus Family

Now maybe this is just my overwhelming hatred for the amount of terrible skits that Hornswaggle has been involved in over the years but to me it seems like the WWE wanted Brodus to fail and since he didn’t they have been trying to shackle him with all the usual tired WWE comedy acts that have well worn out their welcome. Not only did we have that pointless segment involving Brodus’s mother at Wrestlemania, which seriously seemed to be designed to make the Funkasaurus look like a fluke, luckily Brodus has embraced his gimmick so wholeheartedly that it didn’t actually stink up the joint as much as it could have. Then they put Clay with Santino (who was perhaps his cousin?), and now his ‘little brother’ Hornswoggle is in on the deal. The only good part of all this perhaps is that Clay’s matches appear to be sponsored now, which I like since perhaps it will eventually give us the excuse for jokey matches that they are the fault of outside companies, cheapening the product, ignoring that it has always been the WWE itself that loves parody, something great when you have quality writers, and not so great when you don’t.

C.M. Drunk?

Some people have criticised Punk for not being a convincing drunk, I thought for someone who has never actually been drunk he did quite well, and was far more subtle than most people would be. I will agree that the ruse might have gone on just a tad too long, with me wondering when Punk was going to clock Jericho for about five minutes, but I suppose this was to play up to the audience that actually bought into Punk having fallen off the wagon, I’m sure they loved the ‘surprise’ turn around. But still the segment was good and despite Punk actually mucking up S and T, which I’m still not sure if it was a feint or not, I thought it was entertaining for the WWE’s current climate, also you have to give Punk credit for the ‘drunk’ WWF slipup.

Everything AJ and Daniel Bryan

Usually when I do these filler segments I make a list of things in the week that stuck out to me and weren’t discussed in the chart, this week almost every one of those ‘positive heel things’ related to Daniel Bryan and AJ. I’ve already mentioned their epic rejection segment, but apart from that you had AJ snapping on Natalya, which instantly made her character more interesting. Aside from that we also got Bryan, Cody and Henry as a tag team and they worked surprisingly well as a tangent, and Daniel Bryan in full ref gear was a nice touch, further showing that this guy doesn’t do things by halves. The best part for me this week though was the fact that now even little kids wearing Cena shirts in the audience are joining in on the ‘Yes!’ chants, and what’s more since the WWE actually showed that it looks like they have realized that they can’t fight the power and they are actually going to play to it now, even if they aren’t going to admit how over Bryan is with the fans, which is to be expected since they ignored the constant Cena hate from the crowd for about five years!

Beth Phoenix

Work or not it can’t be counted as a good week for the Glamazon, being robbed of having the longest Divas title run in history (not that it is exactly a long or prestigious history but whatever , it’s not like she could have ever beaten the record for longest reigning women’s champion), and being taken out with an ankle injury, dropping the title to Nikki Bella of all people. It really does seem like there is a policy in the WWE where if you are a diva, because it is such a limited talent pool, that you get to be Divas champion at least once, which is nice for the divas but it doesn’t really speak well of their division as a whole. I get that the Bellas are leaving soon, so putting the title onto Nikki and then having her lose it near straight away to Kharma (perhaps in an open challenge match at Extreme Rules?) makes sense in that no one still with the company on May 1st looks weak and Beth Phoenix can come back and challenge Kharma without having ever lost the title. But still it must stick in Beth’s throat that she didn’t clear that record, if it were me I’d rather lose the title to Kharma clean after just making it rather than lose the title just before to keep looking strong, but then I’m a sucker for records.

The Funky Future

That’s all for this week, Extreme Rules is coming up and I have to say that the card looks pretty good, but then again I thought that about Lockdown and Wrestlemania and those PPVs were underwhelming in several parts that looked to be strong due to poor booking decisions so I’m not holding my breath right now. Still hopefully the Cena-Brock match will actually mean something to the company and make some waves rather than just ending in an unresolved way. I think we all know by now that a Cena heel turn is not in the works but perhaps he will get taken out for a couple of months, or maybe somehow he will cross a boundary to where he isn’t a heel but is actually interesting again. Don’t look at me like that, it might happen! Either way I’m watching this one, by whatever means, for now this is James Wright signing off.