The Heel Report 12.20.13: Ropes and Handcuffs

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: Randy Orton

Some called this from the start, others saw HHH pulling a fast one and walking out as the undisputed champion, while others claimed that the belts would not be unified at all, I myself thought that Cena would be the one left holding the gold. But in the end it was indeed Orton who became the new World Heavyweight WWE champion, which admittedly is a bit of a mouthful.

While some did rightly pick Orton as the new ‘face of the WWE’ I don’t think anyone really saw it happening with as little interference or shenanigans as it did. Sure Orton used handcuffs, but really there is nothing illegal about doing so in that type of match so for the environment he was in it is hard to describe this as anything but a clean victory, hell Cena even seemingly managed to bypass the handicap of being handcuffed before Orton pulled the inventive move of taking the ropes and using them to pull Cena off of the ladder and into a table for a painful looking landing, allowing him to win the match.

While I can’t really see Orton having all that momentous a title run, he isn’t off to a bad start, having a great match with Daniel Bryan and then using the great heel move of a blatant low blow to make sure that he didn’t end up losing to the new ‘people’s champion’. You could even argue that this was a great move to help legitimise Orton as champion since it shows just how important it is to him to keep challengers at bay. Usually such a move would be reserved for title defences as a way to let the heel champ keep his title, here it was used to stop Bryan even getting a fair shot at the title, helping to hammer home that Orton is going to have to constantly watch his back against new challengers for the title, let alone Cena, who is waiting in the wings with his rematch.

I like that Orton is basically Punk as champion now when he was a heel, feeling like he is not getting the respect he deserves and demanding it despite not actually wanting to do anything to get it, at least not on a weekly basis. The best part of this is that like Punk he is sort of right, as the champion it should be for the most part undisputed that you are the best in the business at that current time and above everyone else on the roster, but also much like with Punk that is not always the way that the WWE actually works and just because you are the one holding the gold does not mean you are the one who most ‘deserves’ to.

However he does deserve to be the top heel of the week, and telling the WWE Universe and everyone in the back to kiss his ass was a nice touch as well, befitting of the new undisputed heel champ.

2nd Place: AJ Lee

The Divas champ is still here! AJ not only saw off Natalya in one of the better diva matches of the year but she also managed to pick up the victory in a six-woman tag match on Raw so the champ shows little sign of running out of steam despite whatever rumours are circulating out there. Not only that but I remember another little rumour that was going around a little while ago about AJ being featured more prominently in the second series of Total Divas, so perhaps that backstage altercation was actually all part of a storyline for the new series that they have probably already started shooting for. Either way everything of the such is just speculation right now, what is for certain though is that AJ is the best thing going in the women’s division today and is actually for the most part being treated as such, which is nice.

What’s more it seems like young miss Lee is closing in on being the longest reigning Divas Champion, soon to beat out Michelle McCool and Maryse, which after getting the date of her first title win tattooed on her neck she rightly deserves in my opinion.

This all begs the question though; what is next for the champ? Sure she might continue her rivalry with Natalya, but at this point she has faced all of the Total Divas, those with any wrestling talent anyway, to death. I somehow doubt that this storyline will go away but I wouldn’t mind seeing a Tamina turn at some point soon, although I would still prefer for AJ to retain throughout this it would be a nice little rivalry to stick in between the next series of Total Divas when this stuff will surely all start up again.

3rd Place: The Wyatt Family

The Wyatts were just too much for Daniel Bryan at TLC and really showed how great they can be in the ring, especially Bray Wyatt who once again did his creepy spider walk and had some great lines such as ‘Don’t judge me son!’ when the ref started to count him out in the corner, and to top it off his cradling Bryan in the middle of the ring after the match was just plain disturbing.

With the Wyatt boys booked in tag action against the champs on Smackdown it is quite possible that they will be competing for the titles at some point soon, however since the Rhodes Brothers also lost to Mysteri-show on Raw it looks like we might be getting another multi-team tag match at the Royal Rumble, which would actually be awesome, I just wish they could do the opposite of TNA and actually throw in some stipulations there, because if there is one place that needless stipulations can actually be pretty fun, it is in multi-man tag matches.

I am slightly worried that the much rumoured Shield vs, Wyatt feud has been all but forgotten about, but the Shield have not broken up yet and so there is still time to get it going, the only problem is that either team might have to turn face for it to happen, and I’m not sure if or when that will ever happen.

4th Place: Ethan Carter III

Another high placing for the ‘nephew’ of Dixie Carter, especially considering that this was a PPV week for the WWE. This is because his stuff really is some of the best heel work going right now, he is such a naturally arrogant character that he really doesn’t have to do all that much to garner heat from the crowd and being involved with Sting is a big step up for the former Derrick Bateman.

Bateman has a real good shot at making something of himself in TNA, especially since it looks like Sting is not long for the company and has been known to be alright with putting younger guys over, especially as he has nothing to lose. Not only that but he also picked up a feast or fired case, which I’m guessing doesn’t contain a pink slip since the guy is pretty much getting the biggest push in the company right now, unless this is a type of ‘Joey Ryan push’, which I don’t think anyone should advise.

The thing with Carter/Bateman is that he has a good sense of comedic timing that can serve him well in his promos with various talent, such as when Sting challenged him to enter feast or fired, or face him right there, and he accepted…to enter feast or fired, and it was delivered at such a time as to really drive home his presence as the smarmy, arrogant and yet overall chicken-shit heel, and also assisted his quick exit from the ring without any awkward tussling, which was nice.

5th Place: The Shield

With TNA having barely any wrestling for the majority of the show and the feast or fired match being a little bit of a cluster Jeff, as well as mostly face wins at TLC, the actual field for viable heels for the chart this week narrowed considerably more than I thought it would, hence despite their loss to Punk at the PPV, the Shield made it to the upper half of the rankings. Not that there is anything wrong with that of course.

And despite losing on Sunday to Punk when the odds were three on one, somehow they managed to beat Punk when the odds were evened up. Now that either means one of two things; either the Usos are actually more of a handicap than a help in tag matches, or the loss of one of Roman Reign’s eyes means that the Hounds of Justice are diminished by more than a factor of two men, which actually I might be able to buy.

Reign’s spear is one of the best moves in the business today, and that is almost wholly due to the fact that the camera is almost always positioned so that it looks like it comes from out of nowhere, thus making it look way more devastating, not to mention unexpected. That move alone will guarantee that he does well on his own, then again it might be a bit harder to deliver off camera if he is wrestling singles matches, uh-oh career over!

6th Place: The Authority

They only really talked this week, and half the time it wasn’t even clear if they were trying to be heels or faces, but what is important here is the menace behind the façade. They have the power and they will continue to wield it without letting any one wrestler get the better of them.

Sure Orton might be the champion now, but if that changes then these guys will still be in charge, they aren’t subject to change like some other heel power groups, hell they are in possession of so much power that they can add Kane to their relatively small stable and have him simply dress up in a suit and tie and not do anything for weeks on end, now that’s power! Seriously what is the deal with Kane, is he ever going to do anything?

7th Place: Bully Ray

While Ethan Carter might be taking up some of the heel spotlight, lurking in the shadows of that spotlight, Bully Ray managed to make a big enough impact, delivering another pile driver to Mr. Anderson and talking all biblical and about rape and stuff. Take note, apparently using the word rape makes you super cool and lets people know you are super serial.

All that aside this thing between the two men really does have the makings of a blood feud and in TNA you just know that a bunch of stipulation matches are round the corner to keep this thing going, and best of all they probably won’t be dictated solely by the arbitrary themes of multiple PPVs.

8th Place: Rockstar Spud

A lot of people don’t seem to like this character, and sure it can get a bit annoying, but at the same time it is actually pretty entertaining what with him being the simpering heel toady and all. My only question is when will the guy actually wrestle again?

At this point TNA don’t seem to be caring that much about being the place ‘where wrestling matters’, and yet the WWE now seems to be having Cena cut promos short and promoting long and decently wrestled matches on a regular basis, has the world gone mad?!

9th Place: Tamina

One giant superkick to Nikki Bella and Tamina is back on the chart. Will such a stiff kick get her in trouble? She did deliver it to John Cena’s girlfriend, she could have popped one of her implants and ruined the entire second season of Total Divas!

The insanity!

10th Place: Damien Sandow

He failed to capture the Intercontinental title from Big E. Langston, but at least he didn’t get a five count. Oh and also he is the bad Santa, accompanied by creepy sound effects and music for some reason, weird.

(Week 023)

1. Randy Orton (131)

2. Bully Ray (101)

3. HHH (85)

4. Alberto Del Rio (76)

5. AJ Lee (76)

6. Dixie Carter (66)

7. Damien Sandow (61)

8. Dean Ambrose (56)

9. Bray Wyatt (52)

10. Robert Roode (49)

Heel Centurions:

That’s all for this week, TLC didn’t exactly shake the foundations of the WWE in the short term, but in going back to having one champion the opportunities for guys to even get shots at the big belt becomes fifty percent less and that could mean all manner of things for the talent of the WWE. Hopefully mid-card feuds will be given more time and have more importance, and maybe those who aren’t getting title shots right now could fill some holes in the still developing tag team division, see Mysteri-Show. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out, for now though this is James Wright signing off.