The Heel Report: 03.14.12: World’s Strongest Vegan

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.

This is a place where the heels of TNA and the WWE can be praised for all the hard work they do trying to get us all to hate them, so without further ado let’s get on with the report…

Weekly Top Ten

1st Place: Mark Henry

Well isn’t this a turn up for the books, I honestly thought we had seen the last of Mark Henry on the chart for the foreseeable future, but low and behold, not only is the World’s Strongest Man back on the chart, but he comes storming into the number one spot. He did this by sticking to what he is good at; pure in-ring dominance. First of all he took out the Personification of Domination; Ezekiel Jackson, proving that little moniker wrong (not that this has been all that hard to do as of late but still. Then he managed to take out Santino Marella, Kofi Kingston and R-Truth on raw, with the help of David Otunga of course (just in case I get sued). While none of this is anywhere near the main event a month ago we all thought that Henry was going to be put on the shelf to heal. Apparently this is not the case and he isn’t going anywhere, at least not until after WrestleMania.

2nd Place: Daniel Bryan

The World Heavyweight Champion comes in second this week, despite losing a big tag match on Smackdown. This high ranking is all down to the amount of heat he can generate in a short time on the mic. Apart from the usual points of being a role model and being superior due to his vegan lifestyle, he also dropped a pretty hefty bomb when he told AJ to shut up. Now while it doesn’t sound like much the tone and delivery of how he did it was actually pretty controversial. It was done with a complete contempt and lack of feeling, as if AJ was nothing to him but a prop, which she is, and it got him massive heat from the audience, women’s activists everywhere will probably be citing that one quote as the reason why wrestling still promotes harmful messages of masculine superiority to this day. These are the type of things that get a man points!

3rd Place: Chris Jericho

Next up is Chris Jericho, who followed up last week’s pinfall victory over Punk by revealing a deep, dark secret about the WWE champion. I am glad that they are expanding the storyline beyond simply fighting for the title of ‘Best in the World’ because while it is a nice idea and makes a good tagline, the outcome of the match itself will actually go very little to proving who is the best. It’s not like the title match will be taking center stage at the event, hell it will be lucky to be placed third in line for the main event, therefore the psychology going in needs to be a bit more personal, and boy did it ever get personal this week. It was a good move to have Jericho not only expose an element of Punk’s past, an element that will probably paint him much more as the sympathetic face going into their match, but also expand upon it and promise that he will be Punk’s downfall as it could lead to the feud expanding beyond WrestleMania, having Jericho trying to drive Punk to break his Straight-Edge vow and take to the bottle. I don’t think it will ever happen, but the storyline and booking write themselves.

4th Place: David Otunga

While he might have been more an accessory it can’t be denied that Otunga played a large enough part in the destruction of Long’s team captain and potential members to pick up the points to put him into fourth place. Otunga has come up leaps and bounds in the past couple of months, and while he is still for the most part a joke, he is almost equal to Santino in the eyes of the company and unlike Santino he has the size and look to take him out of the joke category and right into that of the legitimate superstar. I’m not sure if it will happen overnight, but leading Johnny’s team to victory on the Grandest Stage of them all couldn’t hurt.

5th Place: Drew McIntyre

Guess who has his job back. Well I say that but since Drew was fired about five times and never actually stopped working matches there is pretty much no difference between when he was fired and now. I’m just hoping that there is some type of clause in his new contract that gives him the right not to be fired for a year, just so long as Long is gone by the Raw after WrestleMania, that way we won’t get a repeat of last time ‘The Chosen One’ felt untouchable in terms of storyline, but Drew can finally realize his potential as an arrogant heel with nothing to lose.

6th Place: Johnny Curtis

A high placing for the NXT alumni, but to be fair he has become a main focus of the show and is pretty much the most talented guy on that particular roster, apart from perhaps Tyson Kidd, definitely not in terms of in-ring capability but perhaps if we are talking about ‘all-rounders’. For those of you who don’t read my other report I said there that the WWE were a bit dense for not teaming Curtis and Truth together instead of Kingston since the two have a legitimate claim to a tag team title shot and their dynamic of crazy and creepy would work well together. Could this be something we see post-WrestleMania? I doubt it, but the WWE really does need to start taking its promises and stipulations more seriously, after all they are the ones that specify them in the first place, so they must want to do something with them, after all in the end they are the ones in control, so why does so little seem to make sense going week to week, it’s as if they have a senile old man running things, weird.

7th Place: Kurt Angle

The Olympic Gold Medalist might not have been successful in completely schooling Garrett Bischoff this week but he gave a damn good effort and that gets him onto the chart. Angle has eased his work schedule quite a lot in the lead up to the Olympics, whether or not he actually gets in remains to be seen, although I’m leaning towards the ‘not’ side of things. Then again the fan in me hopes he gets in since I would actually be able to see him then since he’d have to come to my neck of the woods for the games themselves, so there are some benefits to living in merry old England, not many, but a few: we’ve got the Olympics and banning the Westboro Baptist Church from ever coming to our country, that’s about all I can think of right now, still good though.

8th Place: Austin Aries

All the TNA placings this week should come with asterisks since they all are here despite not really achieving anything much in the way of momentum. Austin Aries for example actually lost an X-Division title match this week, but he did so in such dominant fashion that he comes above the number one contender who beat him. Aries took the best of Zema Ion and in the end ducked his spray can and blasted him in the face with a taste of his own medicine, sure the move cost him the match via disqualification, but he kept his title and he didn’t look like a fool on national television. It’s also possible that this pairing may lead to a face turn for Aries, although I’m not so sure since the guy clearly works so much better as a heel. Then again the same could be said for Punk, and he seems to be doing pretty well for himself, people going on about falling numbers seem to think it has anything to do with who is champion, Cena is still the face of the company, titles don’t matter anymore.

9th Place: Zema Ion

Here is the victorious number one contender himself, who seemed just a little too pleased with his DQ win over Aries despite losing out on the title. Of course this just means that they will have a rematch at Victory Road, but they were going to fight for the title then anyway, so really Ion hasn’t gained all that much from this match, he just didn’t lose, which I suppose against Aries is a good enough thing to claim since the man is on fire right now, he’s not even in the doghouse for the whole Sorensen incident, if anything it has gained him recognition within the company, I know it wasn’t exactly his fault but it is still a strange state of affairs.

10th Place: Bully Ray

The final place on the chart goes to the man with the largest calves in the world. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what happened this week, first of all I’m not completely certain if Bully had a title match or not, but I don’t think he did, and also I’m not sure if he won or lost the match since he was chased off and Roode was super-kicked by Storm but no bell was rung, so technically the match is still going on, get to it Bully, knock Roode out in his hotel room and pin him Hardcore title style!

Rolling Chart (Week 32):

1. Mark Henry (160)

2. Cody Rhodes (157)

3. Robert Roode (121)

4. The Miz (98)

5. Alberto Del Rio (96)

6. Daniel Bryan (93)

7. Wade Barrett (93)

8. Bully Ray (88)

9. Dolph Ziggler (81)

10. Austin Aries (69)

The Wright View

The Face-Off: Joseph Parks, Sting in the Mirror & Eric Young as Knockout tag team champion

Someone call the police, the inmates are running the asylum once again. Now exactly how many people have been jumping for joy thinking that the departure of Vince Russo meant an end to the wacky storylines and twists in TNA? Well so far under the new watch we have a Schizo Sting who talks to himself in the mirror about nothing whatever, claiming to have snapped and yet is still in charge of the company and has a title match(?) this Sunday at Victory Road. Is this going to be an ironic twist where Sting comes to the ring incapacitated and Roode pins him in about thirty seconds, because I wouldn’t actually mind seeing that. Going back to the lack of wacky plot twists, we now have a guy going about claiming to be Abyss’s brother, who is clearly just Abyss himself without the mask, and don’t be surprised if this ends up in a brother vs. brother match or something at Lockdown. But the cherry on the top of the cake of ridicule is Eric Young as one half of the Knockouts tag team champions. Now I get it, you had to shift the belts off Gail Kim and Madison Rayne since the two are feuding at the moment, I’m not sure why but they are ok so let’s just accept it, but why do this? Now I personally like Eric Young, but even I am getting tired of his shtick, all he does is lock up with the referee and look like a homeless man, that isn’t all that entertaining after the fortieth time of seeing it. And the announcers are always like ‘oh he’s so unpredictable.’ No he isn’t, he’ll lock up with the referee, take off his trousers and then probably lose, end of. He has no business being in the woman’s division, TNA needs the Knockouts as its special attraction and right now the division looks to be going the way of the WWE, which is not good.

Face the Facts: The Rock & John Cena

I have to admit it, while a lot of what they are doing is quite repetitive, to the point where last week I was thinking that it would have been better if they would have just kept Rock away until WrestleMania since he could probably garner enough buys on his own without even selling the match, I now think different. Cena’s rap, while short, was a nice blast from the past to when he was actually entertaining, and the Rock concert was a great segment, even if every song had exactly the same tune. I quite like how the WWE seems to all but abandon the PG rating when it comes to WrestleMania, it makes things more special, even if it does also make them look like complete hypocrites and surely drives away the viewers and sponsors that the PG rating is supposedly drawing to the company, because taking away the swearing and boobies from wrestling makes the show hugely respectable all of a sudden. Anyway the point is that these guys were actually entertaining last week, even if they were doing things that they used to do over half a decade ago. Sometimes if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

On the Rise: Cody Rhodes

While he didn’t appear on the chart this week and Mark Henry managed to steal the top spot back on the rolling chart, Cody Rhodes is still progressing by leaps and bounds. When Rhodes came out this week for the tag match he was greeted with a huge amount of heat, I’m not sure where it came from but the audience really seems to have taken to hating the guy, which is never a bad thing when it’s your job to turn the fans against you. Rhodes also continues to come out under his hood and reveal his perfectly formed face as if he is sticking it to everyone who laughed at him while he had his face mask on. Rhodes is a fully developed character who has gone through his shallow stage and his dark period and is now aggressive and flashy enough to be his own man. I just hope he manages to beat the Big Show at WrestleMania and take another step closer to solidifying himself as one of the longest running Intercontinental champions of all time, now if only he could just find some more people to defend it against before he moves on to the World title picture.

Flat-Footed: The Miz

Wow, just wow, the Miz is screwed. Maybe he will actually be allowed onto Johnny Ace’s team in the end but as it stands it looks like his losing streak storyline is going to cost him a spot at WrestleMania. The Miz doesn’t really deserve the plunge he has been on, first of all he lost the title to Cena in a pointless effort and then instead of getting a face turn to freshen up his character he played whipping boy to his former protégé, who then went directly to Superstars after a couple of Raw main events and PPV matches. This was not worth the Miz losing his spot in the main event, then The Awesome Truth fell apart due to no fault of his own and since then he has been kind of stranded, while still required to parade around to every talk show and news outlet out there to promote the company to a bunch of snickering idiots that think that wrestling is one big joke. Frankly the guy deserves more, but at this point I’m not even sure if it matters, the best the guy who won the main event of WrestleMania last year will now at best be a meaningless part of a multi-man tag match, what a shame.

(So Santino and Otunga are the team captains for the Long vs. Laurinaitis match, I wonder how that happened…)