wrestling / Columns

The Heel Report: 07.04.13: Shades of Grey

July 4, 2013 | Posted by James Wright

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: Mickie James

That’s right, in a week where seemingly both the WWE and TNA decided to go several shades of grey in how they portrayed their top guys, on the girls side of things the newly heel-ed Knockouts champ Mickie James successfully retained her title and took passive-aggressive bitchiness to a whole new level. You have to appreciate James’s work, being all smiles and sunshine and then striking viciously whenever someone, namely Velvet Sky, lets her guard down, she made her cry! I see some similarities between this rivalry and the one between AJ and Kaitlyn, although this one has a lot less ‘drama’ and forced attempts at humour. Instead we have a ruthless woman and another struggling to somehow overcome her and failing at every turn, boiled down to their basic elements these are the same stories, but I know which one I prefer right now.

2nd Place: Dean Ambrose

There is a slight amount of bias in this placing as while Ambrose evened things up by being pinned by Christian on Smackdown and then getting his win back on Raw that shouldn’t place him so highly. However aside from his general presence and great in-ring style, what earned him second place this week was the promo he delivered on the WWE website after the match on Smackdown. It is a shame that the video was not shown on Raw or some other show since it shows just how good of a talker Ambrose is and why he has a very bright future in the WWE. Use your initiative and go see for yourself, then come back here and try to argue why he doesn’t deserve to be in second place.

3rd Place: Curtis Axel

Axel finally got a pinfall victory on Raw that wasn’t against Sin Cara, so well done to him. But it was the way he went about it that earned him his place on the chart. First refusing to tag Punk in and then stealing the victory right from under him later in the match. This is a nice slow build that could easily run until Summerslam where Paul Heyman finally turns on Punk outright. The best part is that this is all about egos, something that is very true to life in the world of sport. Punk has a habit of calling himself the best and putting himself above everyone else and face or not that is going to breed resentment and cause guys to try to prove him wrong, or just shut him up.

4th Place: Bully Ray

The leader of the Aces and 8s is up next, his intimidation of Sabin followed by his claims of being the reason why he lost his X Division belt later in the night showed just how much of an arrogant prick the Bully can be. I’m still not sure what TNA is playing at with the Aries swerve, or even if Aries is supposed to be a face now, one thing is for sure though and that is that if he were to win the title from Bully Ray on the Destination X edition of Impact then it would be even more surprising than his win over Bobby Roode at the same time last year.

5th Place: Ryback

Speaking of surprising, I was all ready for the rebuilding of Ryback after his defeat of the Great Khali, then on Smackdown he seemed to have trouble beating Justin Gabriel of all people. Then on Raw against the Miz he decides to wave the match off, making himself look super weak, then to top it off he even takes a Codebreaker from behind. This is the tip of the ‘shades of grey’ iceberg that seemed to emerge this week, here for all intents and purposes Ryback is too injured to compete and so Jericho decides to sneak attack him, in what way are these the actions of a face? And yet we all still clearly know who to root for in this feud. Actions like this, while confusing for a few reasons, show that heels don’t always have to be dastardly and faces don’t always have to be chivalrous for the audience to get the story.

6th Place: Austin Aries

The Aries-Suicide swerve has many people wondering where TNA will go from here, and commiserating the denial of a Sabin title shot, but what has me all confused is whether or not to count Aries as a heel. Sure at the end of the night he proclaimed he would take the title away from the Bully, who is the biggest heel in the company right now, but a couple of months ago Matt Morgan had the same aims. What’s more for most of the show his actions were painted out as being particularly despicable, attacking Perkins from behind and stealing his way into the match and then onto winning the title. It was pretty split; therefore I gave him points for his title win, but not for his promo to close the show, if I had done so he would probably have been at the head of the chart. I’m sure we’ll find out more next week.

7th Place: Alberto Del Rio

Once again it seems like it is easy to forget that Alberto Del Rio is the World Heavyweight Champion, it is only the regular Ziggler attacks and being beaten over the head with the fact on Raw that reminds me. The champion vs. champion match on Raw was a decent one, but I’d have loved to have seen the same with Ziggler as the champion, going face against face with John Cena where he might have actually been allowed to wrestle Cena on a near equal level. Then again that match would have no doubt seen Ziggler lose like Del Rio did, so maybe the way things were was the better option. I liked how ‘subtle’ Ziggler’s interference was, sure he was high profile by standing right on the turnbuckle, but it is the fact that it only took a split second of Del Rio’s break in concentration for him to lose the match, rather than staring at Ziggler for about a minute before he got taken out, as would be the usual. It felt more real to me, and that is never a bad thing in wrestling.

8th Place: Antonio Cesaro

Aligning himself with Coulter seems to be paying off somewhat as he has actually started winning matches again, although on Raw he only beat Cody Rhodes, who seems to be going through his own losing problems at the moment. With Swagger back but a convicted felon I don’t think there is much danger in Cesaro being upstaged by the Real American, on the flipside I have no idea what the WWE is planning to do with these two as even as a tag team there will be little competition for them outside of the Usos when they get done with the Shield.

9th Place: Mark Henry

Another heel ‘suffering’ from symptoms of shades of grey, Henry came out this week and gave a very earnest promo about how he was going to earn the title at Money in the Bank against John Cena. While this wasn’t exactly heel gold I appreciated Henry’s sincerity, throughout this whole thing he has played it all very seriously, and even if he walks into MitB to lose, it will be hard to say that he hasn’t given it his all and shown how in many ways he really could and perhaps should be the WWE champion in the near future.

10th Place: Fandango

The returning Fandango was fed to Sheamus in his first match back, not so good for the fancy man of the WWE, still it’s not like he actually took a Brogue Kick or anything, or even suffered a loss for that matter, so really you could say that he is still in good stead after his recent absence. Then again it might have just been concerns that another blow to the head could do the poor fella in for good.

 photo RollingChart-Ziggler_zpsd131d755.jpg

(Week 99):

1. Dolph Ziggler (308)

2. Robert Roode (307)

3. Alberto Del Rio (297)

4. C.M. Punk (288)

5. Mark Henry (282)

6. Daniel Bryan (274)

7. Cody Rhodes (272)

8. The Big Show (271)

9. Bully Ray (265)

10. Austin Aries (215)

Cheap Pops:

Nick Marsico brings the news in The Tuesday Communique

David McGregor creates some controversy over the most overrated matches in The 8-Ball

Craig Stevens Handicaps the MitB PPV in The Pay Window

Michael Benjamin runs down the best TNA matches in The Top 5

And finally the 411 staff rack ‘em and rank ‘em in The Wrestler of the Week

That’s all for this week, I am still enjoying the seemingly new writing style of Raw, it feels like a much better show for the most part (apart from that weirdly shot Total Divas segment, am I right?). I hope whoever is responsible for this change carries on and it bleeds over into Smackdown, which seems to be pretty uneventful these days, even when they are trying to make it seem like anything can happen on the show, this is what you get for devaluing your world title and its necessity on the show so much that even when it changes hands in a Last Man Standing Match it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. I’m looking forward to the Wyatt Family’s apparent debut next week, I only hope that they make a big impact as while the style of Wyatt is good I can see them fading into obscurity before long if they can’t sink their teeth into a juicy feud right away. What would be awesome is if with this new ‘shades of grey’ booking style they put the group against the Shield sooner rather than later. After all after the group get done with the Usos and Christian they will have little or no one to face, but a big old feud with this new group could be just the ticket to elevate both groups and keep them ticking over until at least after Summerslam. Everything is up in the air, for now though this is James Wright signing off.

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