The Heel Report: 05.10.13: Monster Mash

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.

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.

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: Mark Henry

The WWE’s sustained push of Mark Henry never ceases to surprise me. This week he looked like a complete bad-ass, Sheamus having to trick and cheap shot him to get the upper hand in all their confrontations and then ending things by whipping the Celtic Warrior with a leather strap. If the two are heading for a strap match at Extreme Rules then that should be a brutal affair, and it seems like the WWE are actually considering having a whole host of different stipulation matches this year, perhaps to make up for the absence of the Rock from the card. I still, like many others, think that the World’s Strongest Man might as well be wrestling against John Cena for the title instead of Ryback, but I am at least a little more interested in his reignited feud with Sheamus now, even if it did come out of basically nothing.

2nd Place: The Ryback

Speaking of Big Hungry he actually managed to do enough to get into a good place on the chart this week. I’m still not sure how the WWE are playing this one, one minute Ryback seems to be a sort of tweener whose actions are for the most part justified from his perspective, then the next he plays the diabolical heel and his motives seem to mean very little as long as he is seen to be doing the ‘wrong’ thing. Personally I still think they should have booked him as a tweener full stop, but I suppose the WWE thought that they needed to make up for Punk’s absence somehow, although I’m not sure the Ryback is as effective as a heel, which isn’t something you’ll hear from me often!

3rd Place: Antonio Cesaro

This was another surprisingly high entry but for whatever reason the WWE seem to have done a 180 on Cesaro, despite not letting him win back his US title on Main Event. He had a great match with Kofi and then attacked Kingston after the match, keeping him in the title hunt at least a little bit. Then on Raw he absolutely man-handled Zack Ryder, now sure that alone is no difficult feat, but the fact that afterwards he was allowed on the mix without having to act all anti-American or Yodel, which was perhaps the worst thing to happen to a character since Natalya’s fart gimmick, so that shows that his character is actually getting some direction, even if he used his time to simply make the generic declaration that there is no competition for him. The real test will be his match with Orton on Main Event; Cesaro doesn’t have to win the match necessarily, just put up a decent fight when everything is said and done so that people start to see him as a serious competitor again.

4th Place: The Shield

Ambrose, Rollins and Reigns, these three are doing great things in the absence of Punk, padding out the heel action on both Raw and Smackdown. As their match frequency continues to rise I hope they also get more chance to develop their characters so that they maintain an interest for the audience as pretty soon the novelty of the Shield being in action whatsoever will wear off. Still you can’t really complain about how the team have been booked so far, after all they legitimately have gone up against some of the biggest current names in the business and have not as of yet actually received any real comeuppance. Also a special mention has to go to Ambrose this week, who managed to win his singles match against Kane and get the pin on Raw, although nothing any member of this group does can ever really be solely attributed to them, which is what makes them so hard to award points to separately, but I’m sure as time progresses we will see the members breaking off more and more and thus earning their own separate spots on the chart.

5th Place: Brock Lesnar

Another face further up the chart than usual as this week Lesnar actually took some action and smashed up The Game’s ‘office’ at WWE Headquarters. I wonder if this counted as one of Lesnar’s appearances or if he did it pro bono, after all is must be pretty fun to have free reign to destroy an office and Lesnar seemed to relish tearing up that keyboard and laptop. I’m actually pretty looking forward to the Lesnar-HHH cage match, because while the result will have almost no bearing on the landscape of the WWE, it isn’t taking up a place on a card that has any real meaning and will probably end up being just an entertaining match and most likely a chance for Brock to get his win back. I also liked how they hinted at heat between Brock and the Rock in the way that Lesnar regarded his poster, it was subtle enough so that if nothing comes of it there is no real confusion and if the two do end up meeting you can cite the moment as preliminary animosity, at least on the part of Brock.

6th Place: Jack Swagger

Another week where the Real American has been made to look surprisingly good for someone in his situation, which makes me think more and more that the WWE really were planning to put the title on him before his DUI. However there have also been reports that Ziggler’s cash in was set for the day after Wrestlemania for some time so if that is true then it wouldn’t have mattered much anyway. Whatever the case Swagger stood tall this week after going to town on Ziggler and Del Rio with a ladder he got from under the ring, does the ladder match benefit Swagger? I wouldn’t say so, but then I thought that his DUI was going to lead to a suspension after Wrestlemania, so what do I know?

7th Place: Dolph Ziggler

The world champion comes just behind one of his challengers at Extreme Rules, but at least this week he didn’t actually have to tap out to one of them! I still find it crazy that the WWE are seeming to book Ziggler as if he is almost a paper champion, even though he is clearly over with the audience, has a big following and all the skills to back up his position. Maybe the problem is he is too good, the WWE know that he will have his supporters no matter how they book him so why not have him lose? Whereas Del Rio and Swagger need all the help they can get, while that makes some sense I would still rather see the champion win a few matches seeing as how MitB title wins aren’t exactly associated with deserving champions, at least not at the actual time of their runs anyway.

8th Place: Fandango

The Extreme stipulation of a number score match! It could happen. Fandango and Jericho will most likely be squaring off again at Extreme Rules and if the WWE really are putting gimmicks into most of their matches it wouldn’t be the worst thing they could do to use the whole scoring angle a little bit more, although I have no idea how they would structure it. I certainly approve of Fandango scoring his opponents; I just hope that the WWE haven’t already gone too far and made it a parody of itself already like they did with the actual Fandango-ing movement.

9th Place: Big Show

The Big Show vs. Randy Orton at Extreme Rules is another match which for some reason I am looking forward to despite there being no real point to it, I just hope they have some type of stipulation as well, although I have no idea what it would actually be as of yet. I enjoyed how Big Show KO’d Orton out of nowhere after his match on Raw as it really sold the danger of the giant and just made everything feel more ‘live’, more of this please.

10th Place: The Wyatt Family

Last place goes to a group that could very well be called up to the WWE soon, or at least their leader; Bray Wyatt. The problem with bringing up the whole Wyatt Family is that they might tread on the Shield’s toes a little too much, or else be overshadowed by the group and never get a fair chance to truly take off while the other group is still running rough-shot over the WWE. Certainly they are doing good things on NXT and I don’t see the harm in letting the group function as big fish in a small pond for a while before eventually bringing them up to the main roster.

(Week 92):

1. Dolph Ziggler (308)

2. Robert Roode (303)

3. C.M. Punk (288)

4. Alberto Del Rio (281)

5. Daniel Bryan (274)

6. The Big Show (269)

7. Cody Rhodes (267)

8. Mark Henry (257)

9. Bully Ray (230)

10. Austin Aries (201)

The Wright View:

Kaitlyn’s Secret Admirer

I have to say that if this is the WWE’s best way to try to make the Divas division more interesting then it is pathetic. Should we have good matches and properly built rivalries? No. Instead we’ll have secret admirers and relationships that go nowhere. Honestly the WWE is so backwards when it comes to this type of stuff. How about instead of pratting around with all this bollocks you just take the women you have that can wrestle and have them, I don’t know, actually wrestle! I know NXT had a secret admirer angle for a short time, but that was resolved within a couple of weeks and led to the set up for a rivalry, although a short-lived one. This Kaitlyn thing looks like it is going to be drawn out for at least another few weeks in pointless segments and then the secret admirer is probably going to turn out to be Hornswaggle or something, because that is how the WWE rolls. On a side note Hornswaggle must be pretty pissed off considering before AJ was making out with half the roster in the WWE she was his girlfriend and he didn’t get so much as a friendly handshake, the tease!

The Usos & Kofi Kingston

This is partially a separate issue and partially due to their tag match on Raw. First let me start by saying that Kingston looked great in his first defence against Cesaro on Main Event and them selling his new trend of hitting the Trouble in Paradise from different positions could really sell him as champion and make his defences all the more entertaining. As for the Usos, they dominated Saturday Morning Slam this week, wrestling and winning both a singles and a tag match against the Prime Time Players, basically taking up the whole hour. I know SMS isn’t exactly the biggest show but they got a lot more air time than most anyone else ever has so that has to count for something. Now we come to Raw, and why solid booking can have a ripple effect of goodness. The Shield being put up against teams of top superstars in the WWE, and win, makes them have a certain aura around them. Although pretty much everyone could guess the outcome of their match on Raw from the start it still meant something that these guys simply had the chance to be the first people to defeat the Shield, instantly then having accomplished something that guys like Sheamus, Ryback, John Cena and even the Undertaker haven’t been able to do, just having the possibility of such is a pretty cool thing and made Kofi and the Usos look better, especially since it was on Raw that they got this shot. These three might not have shocked the world this week, but they showed that their position in the company is a damn sight more safe than some others in the back right now.

The Beast Unleashed

This is just a further point on Brock Lesnar, more specifically how Paul Heyman presented Brock Lesnar this week after showing the footage of him destroying HHH’s office. Heyman brought up the point that up until now Heyman has held back Lesnar from doing certain things that would cost him financially in the long run, but after taking a Pedigree last Monday night all bets are off and he is now encouraging that bestial side of Brock Lesnar to destroy and maim as he pleases. To me this really sold the importance of this third match and how it is a bigger deal this time even though it is not on the grand stage because even though in reality it is not the case, the kayfabe way of looking at this contest is that all the brutality that has gone before it has been from a restricted Brock Lesnar, he has been toning down his rage and aggression, and now he will be able to let it all out on one man; The Game, inside of a steel cage. It’s a pretty good selling point.

Continued Abuse of Champions

There were three things that annoyed me this week that all fell into the same category. The least annoying one comes from Fandango being booked to walk out on his match with R-Truth, simply because already he has broken his win streak, now sure he didn’t get pinned clean or anything, and win streaks aren’t the be all and end all of a new superstar, but I just think that Fandango needed a few more solid wins to establish him as a legitimate competitor before taking the easy way out, especially when facing off against someone like R-Truth where there is no need to protect him whatsoever. Then there is the more serious stuff like Dolph Ziggler tapping out to Alberto Del Rio. I’m guessing that the thinking behind this is to create a doubt as to who will win at Extreme Rules, but it really doesn’t work for two major reasons; first since the match for the title is a ladder match the submission means nothing and says nothing about Del Rio’s chances against the champion, and second since Ziggler won the title via a MitB cash in there is already a doubt as to whether he will sink or swim in his first defence so why then get him to job to his two challengers? Surely the story should be Ziggler showing himself to be worthy of his championship, not that he clearly could be beaten by these other guys at any time. Then there is the final annoyance, which is mainly a problem because of just how unnecessary it was, I’m talking about Wade Barrett’s loss to Sheamus. Now I know that the IC title doesn’t really mean anything right now, but does the WWE have to remind us of that fact at any given opportunity? Having Barrett lose cleanly to Sheamus just shows that creative have nothing for him at the moment and that these titles legitimately gain a wrestler nothing in their standings within the company. Why have Barrett eat the pin, only to have Henry then storm the ring and attack Sheamus? Why not let Henry cause the DQ and save the IC champion from taking a pinfall loss, there is absolutely no reason things couldn’t have gone down like that, in fact it would have caused more insult to Sheamus, who really doesn’t have any reason to be protected right now. Utterly pointless and ultimately destructive.

Cheap Pops:

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And the 411 staff rateThe Wrestler of the Week

That’s all for this week, the Shield continue to grow but there still hasn’t been a match announced for Extreme Rules, hopefully when there is it will be a stipulation match for the tag team gold. It seems like the WWE are leaving their match announcements really late despite all the time they have had to book them over the past few weeks. Maybe they were desperately hoping that the Rock would somehow pull a John Cena and miraculously recover, or were worried that Cena would be out and their whole main event would have to be reshuffled, which is fair enough I guess. Still though there is a heck of a lot of card still left to fill out and not too much time to do it in. Let’s see how they do, for now though this is James Wright signing off.