The Heel Report: 01.11.14: Old School Justice

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: The Shield

The Shield were out in full force this week despite their impending break up. Sure they lost a tag match on Smackdown, but they owned Piper’s Pit and then Roman Reigns got the win over CM Punk in the main event. Say what you like about Orton and Cena being in the title picture but slowly, but surely, the names that were in the main event seem to consistently read; Reigns, Rollins, Ambrose, Punk and Bryan, and since the title still means very little at this point it might actually be better to be out of the picture, as long as you are still getting main event matches of course.

It is nice to see the WWE take their sweet time over the Shield breakup as I almost expected Ambrose or Rollins to accidently cost Reigns the victory so as to lead to a swifter break up. Instead concerns were raised over the two holding him back by Piper but then they were the mean by which he managed to spear Punk for the win, so clearly that isn’t really the case.

Of course later on Reigns can crow about how he beat Punk, with the other two reminding him that ‘he couldn’t have done it without them’, pushing it too far and saying that he is ‘nothing without them’, which would help lead to the breakup. But the point is that this could take place at any point in the future and now the WWE have control over it, rather than booking something dramatic that needs to be responded to as soon as believably possible, much like with Bryan’s turn towards the Wyatts, where he has been with them a week and there is already dissension in the ranks in their first match.

2nd Place: Chris Sabin

Once again your X Division champion; Chris Sabin! Although having said that it really doesn’t feel like that much of a big deal considering that there is barely anyone in the division anymore anyway. Still if you look at Sabin’s career in the last year since TNA started getting shakier and shakier he has actually been benefitting more than most. After all he has won the X Division title on three occasions and even the World Title after cashing in said belt for a shot at Destination X. Most other champions have been lumbered with their belts for long, but for the most part uneventful title reigns.

Now I’m not saying that Sabin has been a great champion, especially considering that with the current taping schedule he has actually barely appeared on TV in the past month, but at least he has been doing something.

There are also his issues with Velvet Sky, which look to be ongoing as TNA probably have no clue what they are going to do once the two finally break up, if that indeed happens. Sabin has been showing some great heel flair throughout these dealings with his girlfriend and maybe some point soon he will actually get a chance to shine, rather than appearing briefly on every other episode of Impact.

3rd Place: Magnus

The TNA world champion came home this week and had his official coronation, of course he didn’t actually get a whole lot of time himself before being interrupted by both Gunner and AJ Styles. Still Magnus managed to make his presence felt as champion and hopefully will be able to do more in the spotlight in weeks to come.

Magnus really does have a decent amount of potential as the TNA champ, but to truly bring it out in him he is going to need a great opponent to work off of. Right now I’m not sure who that could be. Perhaps Samoa Joe given their history, but then again Joe has been damaged so much in TNA that it might not even be all that believable to have him as the major threat to Magnus’ title.

We know Sting can’t challenge for the title, and Hardy will not be present on the upcoming UK tour, so maybe Angle will be squaring off against the home-grown favourite at that time. I just hope to christ that it is not Gunner who TNA picks to be the major challenger for Magnus, as that would be bad.

4th Place: Paul Heyman & Brock Lesnar

The Brains and the Beast were in full effect this week as once again they came out to declare Lesnar’s dominance and God given right to challenge for the WWE World title, and they do kind of have a point. There is a problem here though and that is that if Brock challenges for the title at the Elimination Chamber and loses that will make him look even weaker than he has in is general run going into Wrestlemania.

Then again if he were to win the title then it would leave Orton with very little to do come Mania, although I’m not sure who would actually care if that was the case. It certainly looks like Lesnar will be facing the Big Show at the Rumble after what occurred this week on Raw, which is an interesting choice to say the least, but a massive beat down on the giant would certainly make Lesnar look strong again so there isn’t actually too much wrong with the match itself.

While I would not expect a five-star classic from the two it could certainly be interesting to see them square off again seeing as how Big Show is probably in the best shape of his career and Lesnar still has something to prove after his relatively lackluster run so far. What remains to be seen is whether or not Lesnar will also be appearing in the Rumble match itself since the WWE have been keeping the actual participants for the match pretty close to their chest this time around and anything is possible.

5th Place: Robert Roode

Week in and week out Robert Roode continues to find a way to succeed when faced off against the Olympic gold medalist, Kurt Angle. This week it was in a tag match that saw the reunion of Beer Money, something that can only be a good thing.

It looks like we will finally be reaching the end game to this feud in a steel cage, which is nice, and since Angle’s contract isn’t up for another eight months I would expect him to be the eventual winner, although I have to say that Angle going back to the WWE would just about be the best thing I could hope for, just so long as he stays clean now of course.

6th Place: Randy Orton

You have to have some serious stones to come out on Raw and call Ric Flair overrated, and it was nice to see how quickly Orton turned on Flair after their initial seemingly friendly meeting when he came down to the ring.

Having Cena come down to defend Flair from Orton was a little weird and still we have Orton’s on-again-off-again relationship with the Authority, where he says something against them, proclaims that he doesn’t need them, and then the next week he is out apologizing for his actions.

7th Place: Ethan Carter

Once again TNA gave the supposed nephew of Dixie Carter a whole bunch of mic time to the relative rookie to strut his stuff. His meeting with Sting is drawing closer and you have to hope that the Icon will do the right thing since if TNA is going to survive they are going to need new stars and to stop relying on the fame of others.

It will also be nice to see Carter in a real match for once rather than a squash set up, although Sting isn’t exactly the best for putting on top quality matches at his age. Either way the question hangs over the head of Carter of who will he face once he is done with the Stinger?

8th Place: Wade Barrett

Bad News Barrett has still yet to have a match or even an interaction with anyone else on the active roster since his return, but he has managed to insult the entire audience at New Years, as well as the legends on this week’s Old School Raw.

Barrett’s gimmick could get him into feuds so easily, but apart from that I really don’t see the point. This is a clear case of people in the back seeing the gimmick on the JBL & Cole show and then thinking it would be a laugh to have it on TV, without any real thought to how it would actually work.

9th Place: Sam Shaw

Years after it first aired on Showtime, someone in professional wrestling finally decided to create a wrestler with a Dexter gimmick, right down to his wardrobe. Now personally I think a character like this has some legs; slow, methodical, enjoying the infliction of suffering as well as mind games on his opponent. The only problem is that it seems like it is a few years too late to be truly relevant, plus I have no idea if this Sam Shaw guy can actually pull it off. For now we will have to just wait and see.

10th Place: Dixie Carter

The Queen Bee was clucking very loudly this week, both for Magnus and against AJ Styles. It is nice to see that she is trying to protect her champion from the likes of Gunner as it shows that she is firmly behind him. This is opposed to the Authority and Orton where he is their hand-picked champion, but at the same time they seem to take great efforts to screw him over and test him week in and week out, which only slightly makes sense at this point, especially after his win at TLC.

(Week 026)

1. Randy Orton (145)

2. Bully Ray (105)

3. HHH (85)

4. AJ Lee (79)

5. Dixie Carter (77)

6. Alberto Del Rio (76)

7. Damien Sandow (61)

8. Bray Wyatt (61)

9. Dean Ambrose (61)

10. Robert Roode (61)

Heel Centurions:

That’s all for this week, I am counting the days to the Rumble and the match itself. Who knows who will be the winner, or even who will be in the match, there are so many possibilities! There is still a big question mark over Daniel Bryan and what his involvement with the Wyatt Family means for his character going forward. Will it spell him a Rumble victory? Or is this yet another way to distance him from the title picture? We’ll just have to wait and see, for now though this is James Wright signing off.