The Heel Report: 09.12.13: Cody Fired Cody

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

The Game just loves to flex his muscles, both in terms of his character and his person. His posturing against Edge must have made him feel good and it was a nice chance to put himself across as a generally ‘good guy’, who is just doing…wait for it…what’s best for business. I enjoyed his statement of ‘My show, my city!’ to tell Edge to leave town as I don’t think I have ever heard that logic used before and it was interesting. Still the best part of this week was HHH stating that ‘Cody Fired Cody’, making it clear that he is becoming the new Vince McMahon, complete with a new and shiny ‘Asshole’ chant from the crowd.

2nd Place: Randy Orton

The WWE champion is still being booked to win and that really is always a good thing. What’s more at the end of Raw we saw Orton try to flex his political muscle in making the Big Show KO Daniel Bryan. Of course that all backfired and he ended up for the first time since becoming champion on his back in the middle of the ring. Despite this though we got to see the entitlement that ‘the face of the WWE’ feels he has in the company and it made anticipation for the match on Sunday that much greater. This has to be the first time in a long time when many are actually rooting for the face but hoping that he gets screwed at the PPV since it is what makes sense, this time the only way the WWE could mess things up is if someone wins clean. If Orton wins clean then it kills Bryan’s momentum like Orton’s own was killed when he went up against HHH after his first title win, and if Bryan wins clean then it will be too soon to get the real payoff needed from him getting screwed out of the title at Summerslam. Then again we all thought that it was okay that Ziggler didn’t win at Money in the Bank in order for a bigger win at Summerslam and look how that turned out, so who knows what is the right move here really.

3rd Place: The Shield

The bodyguards for the Corporation 2.0 are getting a hell of a lot of TV time from their new role and it came at just the right time as they were really starting to lose momentum after the debut of the Wyatt Family. The question is whether or not the WWE think that the group need their titles to keep them over as surely at some point the audience will want to see these bullies taken down a peg, but when and by who? It could come this Sunday, although giving Ziggler the US title again probably won’t help him much, and what other team is really big enough to run with the tag titles at the moment and make them mean any more than Rollins and Reigns.

4th Place: Ryback

I’m not sure why but at least for now it seems like Ryback has become unbeatable again, despite the fact that he has nothing to do for the PPV and no discernible feud occurring right now. He is just company muscle and they already have that in the Shield, and possibly now the Wyatt Family, so where does Ryback fit in? It doesn’t help that all the heels hold the gold right now and there are no real faces to be a threat to the Corporation 2.0 that the Ryback has to go up against, maybe he will have more luck in October.

5th Place: AJ Lee

Attention ladies and nerds! The Divas champ has a pretty important match on Sunday, where we will see if a relatively good rating on a reality shot can equate to enough to take the title away from arguably the best female champion in years. AJ on commentary was pretty on fire and she wouldn’t be too out of place as part of the Corporation 2.0 after saying that her being champion is ‘what’s best for business’. Although having said that there is also the case of Paul Heyman, a heel force outside of the new regime that is being screwed over just as much as everyone else, so she probably will fit in more with that category, especially if she ends up having crossed words with Stephanie McMahon again,

6th Place: Paul Heyman

Speaking of the Walrus one himself, desperate times call for desperate measures, and apparently those measures involve a wet floor and a fake doctor. I really like the way everyone was employed in this since they all had interesting roles. Heyman played the part of the classic cowardly manager, Axel played the part of the loser who has no hope in preventing Punk from getting his hands on Heyman on Sunday, which sure doesn’t help the title or him but it certainly sells the match at least, Maddox reinforced the idea that the Corporation 2.0 aren’t all about helping the heels and hurting the faces and Punk played the role of the guy who watches over the show like a hawk and comes out with a kendo stick as soon as Heyman tries to pull some bullshit. The whole thing just went very well to sell the match and you have to wonder if this thing will finally come to an end here or if Heyman has something else up his sleeve to extend things further. For the first time in a long time we have two potential storylines that lend themselves perfectly to the traditional Survivor Series match in a couple of months, and if it is not regime vs. rebels then it could easily be team Punk vs. team Paul Heyman guys.

7th Place: Bully Ray

The TNA champion is in a bit of trouble after the turning of the one half-decent remaining member of Aces & 8s, unfortunately this means yet another near-arbitrary Anderson heel turn as he fills the role meant for DOC and is almost certainly coming up on the losing end of their match on the No Surrender edition of Impact. Still it gives the Bully something to do before Bound For Glory, and there is always the possibility that TNA is screwing over either Bully or AJ Styles in favour of being retarded once again.

8th Place: Antonio Cesaro

The king of the big swing is continuing to stand out despite being very little to work with on the creative front. This seems to be a trend with guys from ROH, and each time things seem to happen faster and faster, Antonio Cesaro; Your next world champion…in a year.

9th Place: Damien Sandow

However the man who actually could be the next world champion managed to actually win a match this week, even with the MitB briefcase in tow. Honestly Sandow is pretty lucky with how things turned out as most people were all up for Cody Rhodes taking the briefcase away from him but now that the Rhodes family are involved in something bigger I am guessing that Sandow is free to cash in his case whenever he wants, possibly at Night of Champions.

10th Place: Alberto Del Rio

Last place goes to the current world champion, while I really hope that he loses his title soon I’m not sure if giving it to RVD would be the best thing. Sure his current run has been nowhere near as half-assed as his run in TNA, but I still wouldn’t trust the guy with the title until he has been around and performing for quite a while. I don’t know how Del Rio continues to chalk up title runs, he has made a deal with the devil!

(Week 009)

1. HHH (40)

2. AJ Lee (38)

3. Bully Ray (34)

4. Randy Orton (34)

5. Alberto Del Rio (33)

6. Dean Ambrose (31)

7. Paul Heyman (27)

8. Ryback (26)

9. Damien Sandow (25)

10. Bray Wyatt (25)

Heel Centurions:

Stephen Randle recaps the week in The Wrestling News Experience

Nick Marsico has the cutting edge news in The Tuesday Communique

Joseph Lee goes over the history of Troma in A Bloody Good Time

Evan Daniels lists the top promos of all time in The Ten Count

The 411 Staff rate The Wrestler of the Week

That’s all for this week, Night of Champions is coming up and I am really looking forward to tag team turmoil, even if it is on the pre-show. If there is one division that could benefit from more multi-man and specialty matches it is the tag team division. I’m wondering how Cena and Sheamus’ absence will impact the PPV and it will be a good chance to see just how many buys the WWE can garner without three (including Orton) of their top babyfaces not there to attract the ‘straight’ audience. All this and more will be discussed in the next report, for now though this is James Wright signing off.