The Heel Report: 08.29.13: Double-Stuffed Goodness

This is the Heel Report. A weekly chart spanning from Tuesday’s NXT to next Monday’s Raw, 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, after 100 weeks naming the reigning wrestler a ‘Heel Centurion’.

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 (or in other words the smarkiest chart of smarkdom ever to smark), so without further ado let’s get on with the report…

1st Place: HHH

With the new Rolling Chart only just developing I wouldn’t be surprised if before long the King of Kings ascended to his heel throne, speaking of which I love that they changed his music to that much more arrogant theme, it didn’t really work before, but now it does. This week HHH got to steer the ship more by himself, Stephanie and Vince not appearing so that we can see that while they are all united, HHH is now the man running the show. This totalitarian regime has developed so suddenly, and with only one shot fired; a pedigree to Daniel Bryan, and yet already there is a sense of just how much of a grip of terror HHH has on the locker room. Guys like Ziggler and Miz have nothing to say and even a giant with an Iron Clad contract can’t bring himself to lift a finger to help Bryan. Many people have been complaining about Big Show’s ‘Iron Clad’ contract and it is a fair point, on the surface it does seem like he should be able to actually do something without fear of being fired. However once you scratch that surface first of all you could say that ‘Iron Clad’ is just a term and it is pretty likely that HHH and his lawyers could find a way around something like that, more importantly though even if they could not, the ability to not get fired becomes only so useful when you consider that if Big Show had helped out the Bearded underdog, his life from then on in the WWE would have been hell; beat downs and humiliation on a weekly basis, possibly to the point where we get a reverse of the Johnny Ace scenario where Show is begging and crying to actually get fired, unlikely but possible. On the other hand it is not like anyone at the announce booth actually pointed this out, so there is still some mud to be slung at the WWE for not flagging up this point, I’m sure they will say something in hindsight. Overall this Corporation 2.0 is off to a great start, and with HHH at the helm, giving his champion gifts and claiming that business is booming thanks to his genius, it is easy to hate him as the dictator that he is, also kudos to Daniel Bryan for taking a shot at the Game’s nose, you know that had to rub him up the wrong way.

2nd Place: Paul Heyman

I love the structure that the WWE have created here, with one ultimate boss who barely appears in the ring and has a lackey with a belt to do his bidding; i.e. HHH and Randy Orton, and another lower down the card in the form of Paul Heyman and Curtis Axel, both worked together this Monday night to provide an entertaining three hours of programming. It’s so nice to have faces that everyone wants to root for and heels that we all think are dicks, not just the kids and teenage women. This is why the whole ‘big guy’ attitude of the WWE makes no real sense to me, because the world loves an underdog, and an undersized underdog is much more believable than a ‘big man’ one. But as much as a good underdog is necessary in telling a great story, a good villain is just as important, and Heyman this week more than any other shined through, especially in terms of his conviction and emotion when it came to actually physically striking Punk. The whole thing was just beautifully done and the fact that Heyman was teary eyed in his backstage promo after the assault really sold how much of a personal issue this has become, I just hope this storyline continues to grow from here.

3rd Place: Randy Orton

The Viper was super beefed with Daniel Bryan this week, partially for the vandalism done to his new car, but more to do with the vicious name calling he was subjected to in the form of being called both ‘twinkle toes’ as well as ‘pretty’, multiple times. Still he got his own back, namely by delivering two RKOs to the challenger for his WWE title, both times being at the end of the broadcast, this can only mean that he is losing the title twice over at Night of Champions! Until then though he is making good headway at rediscovering his inner heel and becoming much more compelling than his bland and for the most part nonsensical face persona.

4th Place: AJ Lee

The Divas champion had a pretty good week for herself; first successfully defending her title on NXT against Bailey, then making Naomi tap out on Main Event, and finally she dropped a diva-sized pipe bomb on the cast of Total Divas to start a rivalry that could see her working her way through the entire rest of the division besides Kaitlyn, with personal issues running through each match. Hopefully this won’t result in her losing the title to one of them any time soon just because their show has gotten some relatively good ratings in the first few weeks, also who would win the title? Brie I suppose. Probably better to let AJ keep the belt since she is clearly the best all-round woman in the division at the moment, also AJ vs. Paige could be an interesting future rivalry, or even an eventual teaming of the two. Whatever the case I have to believe that the WWE recognises what they have with AJ and how having the ‘Total Divas’ chasing the belt and failing is just as good for business as one of them actually winning it.

5th Place: Curtis Axel

At first I was pretty sceptical as to how good Curtis Axel could look when standing across the ring from C.M. Punk, but after seeing it a couple of times I am convinced that his new role is going to help his character greatly. This is because he is for the most part playing second fiddle to Heyman, who is actually of use in talking for him while he continues to develop his character. Furthermore his role is necessary since while Heyman’s actions against Punk are motivated by personal feelings, Axel is just there to inflict damage on Punk for the sake of his manager, so the way the two have been able to go after the Best in the World has been flexible and can allow for one to berate him as not being good enough, while the other one basically screams ‘You were the chosen one!” while beating him with a kendo stick.

6th Place: Antonio Cesaro

While most of Cesaro’s week involved jobbing to the newly turned Prime Time Players we also finally got to see the much talked about 2 out of 3 falls match between him and Sami Zayne on NXT and it didn’t disappoint. If we take the examples of Jericho, Punk and now Bryan for indie guys who put on great matches but don’t seem to catch their big break until sometime later we can see that each time the half-life of that period has lessened significantly each time, so this time next year Cesaro should be the WWE champion, we shall see.

7th Place: The Shield

The Gauntlet match, how could we forget about the Gauntlet match? Last week we saw two incarnations of the Handicap match with the Shield and both worked a treat, but a Gauntlet match thrown in every now and again is something I could really get used to. I liked how the group didn’t fall to Bryan in unrealistic style, if it had been Cena in the ring then I reckon that’s how things would have gone down, but still Bryan was made to look strong, first by having a gruelling match, then by the other two members having to resort to getting DQ’d to make sure that they didn’t actually lose to him, which probably wouldn’t have helped their new relationship with the powers that be.

8th Place: E.G.O.

As pointed out last week in the comments section this group of gentlemen do indeed have a name already, and it is a pretty good one. Unfortunately they could not make it a clean sweep in the 20 point BFG Series specialty matches, after all there was not an appletini in sight so how were they supposed to win? But they did manage to win a tag match against the tag team champions, if that actually means anything anymore, so we might once again see a team of cocky heels as the tag champs, which is pretty much the only thing that could potentially save that division in TNA at this point, and even then I am not so sure.

9th Place: Bully Ray

Perhaps an even bigger reveal than his alliance with Tito Ortiz is the Bully’s relationship with a second Brooke, a much hotter, if just as manly-looking one at that. In two weeks the whole appearance of Aces & 8s has changed and could potentially continue to develop leading up to and past Bound For Glory. Will the Bully still be champion at that point? I can’t say, however all I do know is that the man is a two time world champion and is pulling a Larry David/Jerry Seinfeld in terms of ‘unattractive guy who gets to be seen hooking up with relatively attractive women due to position on a TV show’, the lucky bastard.

10th Place: Zeb Coulter

Well most weeks this man delivers some kind of hate speech, but the line ‘If you can’t feed ‘em, don’t breed ‘em’ is taking things to a whole new level. Add to that what could be construed into racist and homophobic tendencies and Coulter really could be a massive figure of hate for the WWE if he were actually associated with a major player in the company, say like a man who will be the WWE champion in about a year’s time.

(Week 007)

1. AJ Lee (32)

2. Alberto Del Rio (32)

3. Bully Ray (26)

4. Bray Wyatt (23)

5. Damien Sandow (23)

6. HHH (20)

7. Dean Ambrose (20)

8. Paul Heyman (19)

9. Curtis Axel (18)

10. Robert Roode (16)

Heel Centurions:

Stephen Randle gives you your first weekly dose of information inThe Wrestling News Experience

Nick Marsico delivers the second in The Tuesday Communique

Joseph Lee lists the most influential vampire movies in A Bloody Good Time

Ron Martin bemoans the lack of Horror Icons in A Fool’s Utopia

Finally the 411 Staff give their usual mix of WWE and Indie bias in The Wrestler of the Week

That’s all for this week, as things seem to fall apart for TNA in terms of finances the WWE has turned a corner and now is producing some really compelling television that could be the basis for a renewed interest in the product. After all each Raw for several weeks now has seemed to have at least two decent to great promos and two decent to great matches, and with their ‘outside’ show Total Divas pulling in a significant audience from a whole different demographic there is actually some potential for the company to be relevant. This could all just be wishful thinking but in the end as a wrestling fan I really do want to see the company succeed, the same is true for TNA, however I am now less optimistic with them since it is clear that the person who really holds the purse strings, i.e. Dixie’s daddy, actually doesn’t care enough to open his pockets too wide for his daughter’s pet interest and without oodles of cash to back them up I honestly doubt if TNA can compete with the WWE on any level since sooner or later they are going to lose all their real stars while paying for a bunch of washed up retirees. It is still possible for the company to make a turnaround but honestly unless they can find some serious revenue fast I am not sure how that is going to happen. We’ll just have to wait and see, for now though this is James Wright signing off.