The Heel Report: 03.07.14: Fallen Idols

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: Batista

So the WWE finally went into damage control mode this week as first of all they moved up Batista’s heel turn to Smackdown (Watry can shut up about Batista always being a heel since his return, sure he hasn’t changed much, but neither did Jericho or Ziggler, however their booking changes, Batista is now going against faces and no longer being booked as the dominant babyface). You have to like the Animal’s new crusade to destroy all of our heroes before Wrestlemania, I mean it is a douche-bag, elitist (in terms of excluding all those superstars who are not the size of big Dave) move, but at least now Bootista will get heat for an actual reason, rather than simply not being Daniel Bryan.

I really was convinced that Punk was going to come out in the main event and interject himself into the main event title match somehow. I just can’t believe that after finally uniting the belts they are going to let the only world title match at Wrestlemania 30 be between two heels, even if they are HHH’s best buddies. As the writer of the ‘Heel Report’, I am not sure how to feel about this one. I mean sure I generally favour heels in matches due to the entertaining lengths they go to, especially to win matches, and seeing two heels against each other, such as in Roode vs. Aries in TNA about a year ago, can be really fun to watch, but in this case I am not so sure.

I think the reason for my hesitation is that there is a type of heel at the moment where they garner all their heat from what they say on the mic, which still can be entertaining, while not really changing their in-ring style. When it comes to watching a heel vs. heel match, you want eye gouges and low blows and all types of shenanigans, and I just don’t think that will happen with Batista vs. Orton. It will just be the two guys, throwing clotheslines and chin-locks, and getting the hell booed out of them, which certainly doesn’t make for a great main event.

I honestly don’t know what the WWE are planning if they are not adding another wrestler to the WWE title match, especially now that they have turned Batista heel. Maybe they are just hoping to slip it in between Brock-Taker and Bryan-HHH and hoping that no one really cares enough to shit all over it…which actually might work, but it would be a damn shame to waste the first WWE World Heavyweight title match at Wrestlemania on that piss poor effort, but then again they made Orton the first champion with the belt so perhaps at this point the company just doesn’t give a crap, as long as HHH is in the main event of course.

2nd Place: The Authority

Speaking of HHH, along with his wife Stephanie, they stepped up their heel game this week as well, and by quite a way. The whole Bryan vs. the Authority thing is interesting because it is the literal embodiment of the perceived IWC versus WWE backstage, where we back someone and the WWE deems them ‘not HHH or his friends’ and so they do their best to show them up, even while giving them a push. Whether or not this rivalry is actually real, it is certainly perceived as such by some and this storyline taps into that perception in a big way, and could be the next Austin-McMahon if done right.

The problem is that so far that hasn’t happened because sure Austin would get screwed every now and then, but he almost always left laughing and made the fans feel like they were vicariously fighting against the man. Daniel Bryan on the other hand ends most weeks by being laid out and being called a loser, making the fans feel powerless and disheartened by the state of things in the business. It really does seem like The Authority, both as characters and perhaps in real life, feel like even giving Bryan the chance to be in the ring with them should be enough to make him and the fans happy, so it doesn’t matter if he keeps on getting battered and screwed over.

However a lot of this will hinge on Wrestlemania. There is a chance that Watry and others are right in that ‘Bryan’s moment is coming’, although there is still the point that the moment could have easily been at Summerslam and continued with the Authority trying to get the belt off him and failing, rather than simply screwing Bryan, and the fans, in month after month of $60 PPV. Still it is possible that he will triumph against HHH in the main event of Mania and then go on to face the Authority’s heel champ, whichever of Orton or Batista it is, and finally manage to wrestle the title from the group. If this is the case though then the WWE need to continue with what they did this week, stop all the shades of grey rubbish where one week these people are heels and the next they are acting like faces, we need a (mostly) united heel faction leading into Wrestlemania so that the focus is Bryan, and possibly Punk, rallying against them for the sake of the fans and the company at large, I just hope there isn’t a swerve and we end Wrestlemania 30 with HHH standing tall over the prone body of the IWC.

3rd Place: The Wyatt Family

The Wyatts continue to go from strength to strength, once again defeating the Shield at their own game and taking advantage of the continued cracks in the group not long for this world. I really hope that we get Bray versus Cena at Mania, rather than any type of six man tag, since that really would feel tacked on.

Cena has been touting how any new star will have to go through him and clearly the star of the Wyatts is the leader himself, so Harper and Rowan shouldn’t really enter into the match itself, at least not in a wrestling capacity. Although of course you could have people in Cena’s corner to ‘make sure’ that there is no interference.

While there is lots to be displeased with about Wrestlemania 30, it is possible that the stories told there and leading up to the event could provide some good television, and this match certainly has that potential. Although this could be another year where the WWE throw a figure who questions Cena and what he stands for, but ends up looking the worse out of the two, which is getting a bit samey, especially after the Rock for the past two years.

4th Place: Cesaro

We are getting to a point where Cesaro will no longer be able to qualify for the heel chart, what with his showing respect to Sami Zayn after their stellar match this week, and his nearly swinging Swagger on Raw. It seems like the Shield will not be the only team to receive their breakup on the road to, or at the event of, Wrestlemania, thus leaving the WWE’s tag team division quite severely depleted in terms of talent.

Still hopefully with the Usos as the new tag team champions we will at least get a multi-team tag match at the event, and who is to say that the Real Americans won’t be a part of that before their breakup. I think the team needs to move away from Big E., who isn’t really benefitting for being associated with them in a storyline in which he is rapidly being reduced to a prop.

Cesaro as a face could work pretty well and if his coming out party is at Wrestlemania, along potentially with Roman Reigns’s, then there could be a window of interesting new rivalries in the WWE’s mid-card leading into the new year, which is always a good thing for the future.

5th Place: Ethan Carter

Douglas Williams finally made his return to TNA television, only to lose to the nephew of the owner of the company. EC3 is having a better career in TNA then half the other wrestlers that come over from WWE, and he wasn’t really even on the main roster!

Having a cage match with Kurt Angle is still a pretty big deal in my book, even if he does seem to be looking for greener pastures. In fact, if Angle is indeed looking to move on it is more likely that he will give Carter the win to help the kid, who has already beaten Sting in their short rivalry.

On that note it was pretty funny seeing Carter read his statement in front of Kurt about his injured leg and have a note on the back of the page reminding everyone how he has beaten Sting. More of that type of stuff would be nice.

6th Place: Brock Lesnar

The beast is back and he has a beef with the Undertaker. This match typifies the general problem with the WWE at the moment; they have great things happening all the time, but for the most part they are executed poorly and thus nowhere near as good as they could have been. Just look at the Nexus, or the Second Summer of Punk, or potentially Daniel Bryan’s push. This match has been building for several years, ever since Lesnar and Taker looked each other eye-to-eye at a UFC event.

Now sure you can’t make plans too far in advance in wrestling, but why not last year, when Punk faced off with Taker, have Brock and Taker have some kind of interaction, no matter how small? Even if this match had never happened it would have made for interesting television, and if they’d have kept if vague enough it wouldn’t have mattered if there was no real payoff, it just would have been nice to have a little more than: “Oh look, Brock’s back. Oh, he’s facing the Undertaker” only a few weeks before the event.

Still the match itself might be great, although I like many have my concerns over the Undertaker’s physical condition compared to Brock’s physicality, and if Lesnar can’t wrestle his style of match then you have to wonder if he can pull off the same type of magic that he used to with Kurt Angle back in the day. Whatever the case he did a good enough job on the mic, especially against the hostile Chicago crowd, and destroying Mark Henry once again helped him look strong, at least for now.

7th Place: The Shield

“When you mess with the hounds, you get the teeth!” It is stuff like that which makes me wish that the group were not breaking up in the near future; also it shows that Seth Rollins should be fine once they do. Not only that but his flurry in their tag match with the Wyatts on Raw show that he could be a great babyface if the WWE lets him.

I was surprised that it was Rollins that walked away on Monday, but once again it was a really smart decision because now all men have reason to have beef with each other, rather than it just being Reigns vs. Ambrose with Rollins in the middle. Also it makes sense that Rollins would have had enough of playing peacekeeper, since that shit gets frustrating after a while.

I am still somewhat against a three-man match at Wrestlemania since I don’t think it will be as good as it could be, but right now I’m not sure what the WWE could do in the place of such.

8th Place: James Storm

The Cowboy has renewed his rivalry with Gunner, this time on the firm heel end of things. Hopefully though this will end in the cage at Lockdown since I have seen enough of Gunner for a lifetime, and also cage matches should be used for the end of a feud so it would be nice to see that actually being the case here.

It is a shame that now that Storm has turned heel it looks like Roode will be turning face in the near future because that means no Beer Money reunion, but ah well. I wouldn’t mind seeing another round of Roode vs. Storm at some point, with both men on the opposite end of things this time around, although you have to wonder how something like that would go.

9th Place: Paul Heyman

If you are the WWE, and you don’t have C.M. Punk in Chicago, then Paul Heyman is pretty much the best choice for someone to send out to placate, and also berate, the crowd. Imagine if someone like John Cena had gone out there at the top of the show! It would have been chaos.

Heyman did a nice job of bringing up Punk, and then threading the whole situation through the ongoing storyline between the two of them and then connecting it to the current match of Brock vs. Taker, a nice job all around, even if actually having Punk there would have been a thousand times better.

10th Place: Robert Roode

While he is still a heel Roode continues to show that he is one of the best things going in TNA today. His position as team captain at Lethal Lockdown shows that, hell he even beat MVP in the main event this week and convinced Austin Aries to turn heel once again and join his team for the PPV.

Now I just can’t wait for Roode’s inevitable breakdown and true turning on Dixie Carter to become a big time face in the company.

(Week 034)

1. Randy Orton (183)

2. Bully Ray (120)

3. HHH (96)

4. Dixie Carter (93)

5. Bray Wyatt (93)

6. Alberto Del Rio (86)

7. AJ Lee (85)

8. Dean Ambrose (82)

9. Roman Reigns (72)

10. Robert Roode (68)

Heel Centurions:

That’s all for this week, I’m still not convinced that Punk won’t be back before Wrestlemania, the WWE would have to be stupid to think that turning Batista heel would be enough to save the title match from getting shat all over. Then again look at the Lesnar-Goldberg match at Wrestlemania XX, maybe it is supposed to be a tradition that one of the matches on the card is supposed to be booed to all hell. Then again if they had put Daniel Bryan into the match it would have echoed the Benoit-HHH-Michaels match of the same PPV so either way we could have gotten a glimpse of history repeating itself, although there one match was a classic, and the other was garbage, so I know which one I would have wanted to see more. For now this is James Wright signing off.