The Heel Report: 03.21.13: Commander and Chief
Posted by James Wright on 03.21.2013
Later than late, no time for teasers, it’s Bully Ray, the best of all possible Aces & 8s leaders!
This is the Heel Report. A weekly chart spanning from Tuesday's NXT to the Raw Super Show, ranking the heels in professional wrestling based on their actions, wins and losses.
After a massive PhD deadline last week this report got pushed back further and further and I apologise, and what a week for it to happen after TNA finally pulled the trigger on Bully Ray as the leader of Aces & 8s!
This is a place where the heels of wrestling 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: Bully Ray
The President of Aces & 8s has been revealed, does this mean we finally have the leader of the group? I'm not entirely sure, but either way I am glad it happened as now most of the pieces of the puzzle that is the group are falling into place. When Bully started his association with Brooke you had to hope that it was some kind of swerve towards his leadership of Aces & 8s and while I assumed that Brooke herself would be in on it, it is just as good having Bully Ray con her, maybe even better than the other scenario because it makes Bully look like more of a bastard and distances this turn from the HHH-Stephanie association so it doesn't just look like the angle was stolen from the WWE. The only question now is whether the group will prosper and honestly all I care about is that all the other jobber members of the group do everything they can to keep the title on Bully Ray, if they do that then their presence in the Impact Zone will be worth it.
2nd Place: Greatest ‘IT' Factors
After some cocking about on the part of TNA management, Bobby Roode was back for Lockdown and the tag team champions were reunited to successfully defend their titles at the event. Luckily for Roode, Aries did more than his fair share for the team while he was away, almost to the point where I am tempted to say that Roode is holding him back, at least on the Heel Report that is. After all with Roode away Aries has all but interjected himself in the title picture, this week attacking Jeff Hardy and calling his belt a piece of crap, well at least we won't have to worry about that anymore. Nevertheless the duo are still the tag team champions and hopefully will get into a feud with Bad Influence before possibly going against Aces & 8s in their inevitable face turn.
3rd Place: C.M. Punk
With the Rock away, and Cena not featured, Punk got the time to prove that he can lead Raw, starting the show by disrupting the Undertaker's tribute to Paul Bearer, then finishing up by stealing the sacred urn and clocking Taker's brother Kane with it before mocking the ‘family' on the ramp to close out the show. Last week I wondered how they were going to build this feud in the short time they had and now the feud couldn't really get more personal, it is a shame that it had to come at the real life departing of a great entertainer. Still this could have been a much tackier tribute and as it was I think there is little to complain about considering the nature of the business. At least we didn't get Paul Bearer ‘speaking from beyond the grave' or something like that.
4th Place: D'Lo Brown
‘All the cards are on the table' as Taz said, and with Bully and the VP revealed they pretty much are, there could always still be a ‘Higher Power' but for now I think these members of Aces & 8s are enough. Sure the group isn't made up of TNA's best talent, but if you'll remember there was a couple of groups called Fourtune and Immortal that were like that and they turned out to be shit and did nothing for TNA. I like the structure of Aces & 8s, now that the leader is confirmed at least, because as long as they make Bully Ray the top star in TNA then they have served a purpose, even if they are a bunch of jobbers, has-beens and never-truly-was-es.
5th Place: Wes Brisco
Somehow the kid did it, without much help of his own sure but still, a win over Kurt Angle in a cage match is a pretty big deal. I personally would have had Brisco lose and Aces & 8s win the Lethal Lockdown, or have both lose so it looked like Aces & 8s were on the way out before Bully's title win, but whatever.
6th Place: Aces & 8s
This refers to the unit team of Devon, Anderson, Garrett, Knux and DOC as they did pretty much everything together this week with no man completely standing out, they won together, lost together and stuck it to TNA management together. Sure they could have looked stronger by coming out of Lethal Lockdown on top but at the end of the night they stood tall and whether started by plants or not by the end the crowd were all throwing trash into the ring at them, which doesn't happen all that often. Set ups and crowd prompting is common in professional wrestling, whether the crowd will actually go for it is something else entirely, so I am giving the group the credit for being hated enough, not cool or funny as heels, just plain douchebags. Being a group of actually dislikeable heels makes them okay in my book as they might actually serve a purpose in TNA to get some guys over when they go up against them, which will hopefully start to happen now outside of already established guys, it already helped Eric Young get a big moment at the PPV and Magnus could come out of this looking strong. There is potential here, and I highly doubt that this group of misfits will be burying TNA talent any time soon.
7th Place: Bad Influence
They may not have won at Lockdown but as per usual Daniels and Kazarian were damn entertaining. It is a shame they had to eat the pin though as it perhaps puts them further away from feuding with The Greatest ‘IT' Factors without Chavo and Hernandez being thrown into the mix, no one wants to see them involved.
8th Place: Kenny King
The X Division was out in full force at Lockdown…as all three members went face to face in a decent contest where Kenny King came out on top. I'm not really sure what the thinking is behind TNA's lack of X Division talent, I'm also not really sure who Kenny King will feud with after he inevitably goes up against Christian York, who nearly got him killed in the match when he wasn't there for a moonsault spot on to the guardrail, I wish Kenny King all the luck in the world.
9th Place: Mark Henry
Turn up, squash people, stare down Ryback, leave.
10th Place: Wade Barrett
Five seconds of screen time in a movie or not, Wade Barrett was able to talk a lot of smack this week, even if he was in a segment on Raw that was unnecessarily panned by King and Cole under orders from Vince Crabby-McCrabberson. There have been segments so much worse than that on Raw on a weekly basis that it is irritating that there was so much beef directed towards this one. What about the other month when Cena came out and died on his arse? Or anything to do with Hornswaggle or the Great Khali, oh wait those were probably Vince's idea, so they must be great right? Play a record!
(Week 84):
1. Robert Roode (296)
2. Alberto Del Rio (281)
3. Dolph Ziggler (277)
4. Daniel Bryan (274)
5. Cody Rhodes (267)
6. The Big Show (266)
7. C.M. Punk (262)
8. Mark Henry (207)
9. Austin Aries (192)
10. The Miz (188)
That's all for this week, come back in a couple of days for the next edition, which should actually be on time now that things are less hectic on the home front. Will Bully actually manage to keep a hold of the rankings and make his way back onto the Rolling Chart? Or will Wrestlemania, its build and its aftermath eclipse the heels of TNA after their Lockdown surge? Tune in next week to find out! For now this is James Wright signing off.
