The Heel Report: 03.22.12: Did Bobby Roode Stand Tall?

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: Robert Roode

Barely making it into the top spot this week is the TNA champion Robert Roode. Not only did he not have to defend his title at Victory Road, but he was barely able to beat the Insane Icon; Sting. It was nice to see Roode work on Sting after the match and attempt to terrify Dixie Carter, no matter how much of a mess that whole ending appeared to be. Whatever the case Roode came out on top and will most likely remain that way until his match with Storm at Lockdown, where I would be very surprised if he manages to retain. Still I’m sure Roode won’t just disappear from the title picture all together, I can see him and Storm feuding for the title for a good chunk of the year, with others thrown in at various points, at least I believe that would be the best direction for TNA to go in since it would give their title and main event scene have more meaning.

2nd Place: Daniel Bryan

Of all the heels competing in professional wrestling right now Daniel Bryan may be the easiest to hate. While Kevin Steen is cool and Robert Roode is commendable in his tactics to keep his title, Daniel Bryan’s stand out characteristic at this time seems to be just how disrespectful he can be to the girl that loves him; AJ. Bryan stepped things up last week by telling her to outright shut up and this week he is attacking her self-esteem by pushing her on to greater things but pulling her down at the same time. Bryan comes across as the ultimate control freak, he has everything he wants and now he wants to keep it that way, the question is how will he react when Sheamus comes in and tries to take it all away?

3rd Place: Austin Aries

The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived took the twitter trend to a whole new level this week by actually tweeting while in a match. While I’m not counting Aries as having turned face as of yet he was clearly the man the fans were behind in his match with Zema Ion. Aries showed that he can work against anyone, heel or face, and get the crowd firmly behind him, a very useful trait. Not only did A-Double retain his title this past Sunday, but he also continued his reign as the longest running X-Division champion in the history of TNA, something deserving of a man who is basically carrying the division at this point.

4th Place: Kurt Angle

Just like with Roode, while he might not have laid the unholy beat down that I was hoping for on Jeff Hardy, he did manage to get the three count, and that is something I guess. Jeff Hardy didn’t deserve to get his hand raised at Victory Road and for once the Charismatic Enigma (a name I hate with a passion) didn’t get what he wanted and more despite his various failings. This is because he was going up against the man who has all the stroke in the world, the Olympic Gold Medalist; Kurt Angle, oh it’s true and it’s real, it’s the damn real truth!

5th Place: Chris Jericho

Next up is a man who managed to pin a count out loss on the number one contender; Sheamus. More important than his in-ring work this week was Jericho’s insistence on making his feud with C.M. Punk more personal. Leaving off from the idea of Best in the World vs. Best in the World, Jericho is now bent on destroying Punk by driving him to the very vices that he has sworn never to fall to. I personally like that jericho is taking this feud to the next level, although I will admit that all this could have been saved until after Wrestlemania. If Jericho lost to Punk and needed some other way to get to the champion this would have been it. The WWE could have easily booked the lead up to their Mania match as the two trying to upstage each other to try to prove who indeed is the ‘Best in the World’, ending with the match at Mania, but apparently they were hesitant on this idea, maybe it would take too much air time away from the builds for the other main events, but at least it could have been more match-based, which would have been good at this stage, but there are still three shows until their match, so we’ll see what happens up until then.

6th Place: Gail Kim

Despite not having too much time to talk on the subject, Gail Kim did a pretty convincing job of retaining her Knockouts title at Victory Road, as well as beating Mickie James, a constant threat, on the Impact before the PPV. Gail Kim is a solid champion and a good worker, although the Knockouts division itself is a little flimsy and I’m not really sure who her next major challenger is going to be. At this point I would be surprised if there was enough depth to build up any decent rivalry heading into Lockdown and more likely the Knockouts will just give that one a miss.

7th Place: Cody Rhodes

After defeating the littlest underdog at last year’s Wrestlemania, Cody Rhodes is establishing himself as a heel giant-killer. First he beat the Great Khali with a flash kick on Smackdown, and then on Raw he taunted the Big Show, cost him his match with Kane and proceeded to box the Big Show’s ears to where he could barely stand. While the gloves were a little out there for Rhode’s character they served him well in the end, I just hope next time that he doesn’t come out in a mawashi and use it to distract the Big Show, because that sight would be unpleasant at best, no matter how ‘dashing’ the guy is supposed to be.

8th Place: Kane

The Big Red Machine comes in eighth after getting a nice win on the Big Show with a top rope chokeslam and managing to find a reason for his seemingly random feud with Randy Orton. Kane seems to be lashing out at all things that made him feel human before he decided to don the mask again and that is understandable motivation for a man who used to be so dominant and so feared. Really Kane could work this angle for a whole year, targeting guys that made him show his more human side, like the Big Show or perhaps Edge if he were still here. Of course he could just go after people who are guilty by association or just stumble into another unrelated feud and explain that one away in his usual comic book villain style, it seems to work for him enough so whatever.

9th Place: Crimson

After his actions at Victory Road I am officially classing Crimson as a heel, mostly because he acted like a complete dick and of all the four men he is the one who the audience seemed to dislike the most. Crimson not only betrayed his tag team partner and cost his team the match due to his ego, but he has also been carping on about being undefeated in such a way that it would be hard to see him as anything else but a heel. I’m interested to see where this heel turn will take ‘the undefeated one’, although I am pretty certain that it will take him into territory that makes his moniker of being undefeated not last too much longer.

10th Place: David Otunga

In last place is the muscle-flexing, but in no way meat-headed attorney at law; David Otunga. While he might have been taken out by team Long’s Kofi Kingston, he did manage to knock off the team’s captain; Santino Marella, this week on Raw, which in this topsy-turvy world might be called an upset. Otunga is coming up leaps and bounds in my estimation and while he might be a little bit too much ‘masterpiece’ for my taste, he is developing some nice flashy moves that go along to support his powerful image and could serve him well as he progresses through the ranks of the WWE.

Rolling Chart (Week 33):

1. Cody Rhodes (161)

2. Mark Henry (160)

3. Robert Roode (131)

4. Daniel Bryan (102)

5. The Miz (98)

6. Alberto Del Rio (96)

7. Wade Barrett (93)

8. Bully Ray (88)

9. Dolph Ziggler (81)

10. Austin Aries (77)

The Wright View

The Face-Off: Cheap Shots: The Rock and Teddie Long

These guys both deserve to be in this section this week, after the Rock delivered a passable promo playing on the Philadelphia theme his ‘message’ to Cena was a simple Roc Bottom to an already defeated Mark Henry. Now in context Cena had been in a car accident earlier that day and yet still was determined to have his match with Henry and win with an FU, which once again shows the one reason why Cena is sometimes worth cheering for and that is that he can display great feats of physical strength once in awhile. The Rock on the other hand did little more than sit on the people’s hands until it was time to come out for two seconds and deliver a pointless move that really meant nothing. The whole segment just served to reinforce Cena’s statements that the Rock is here for himself and not the people, not necessarily to make money or help promote his movies like some people have been saying (although that is of course a product of his ‘return’), but more for the ego boost that comes from stepping out in front of thousands of fans and hearing them chanting your name, there aren’t many places in the world where a performer can have that happen, the glory usually being eaten up by a collective group or achievement, but in professional wrestling a man can feel like a king, and the Rock needed another fix. While there is nothing strictly wrong with that it would be nice if he made a little more effort to disguise it from the fans. Then there is Teddie Long, the supposed face in all this GM squabbling, and yet week after week he is setting himself up as a cheap shot artist. This week was the worst though as not only did he slap the taste out of Johnny Ace’s mouth without any real provocation, but he also then ran out of the ring and up the ramp like a little bitch before proceeding to do that stupid little shuffle of his when he knew he was safe. So basically the guy is a coward who mocks guys that he cheap shots, and yet he’s the face? It makes no sense!

Face the Facts: C.M. Punk

This is quite a simple one, Punk brought something personal to the table this week when he passionately replied to Jericho’s insinuations about his father, and then he went on to break PG in one of the most effective ways since it was put in place. Punk’s outburst at Jericho proves that swearing can be justified and helps to show when PG can be useful since in the Attitude Era such an evocative outburst would have been lost among everyone else swearing for no real reason. Hopefully this storyline is helping to turn the female and child fans more towards Punk as they feel sympathy for his plight and see him as a guy wrestling with personal demons rather than a smart mouthed Punk.

On the Rise: Hunico

Now for those of you who don’t watch Superstars, Hunico put on a great performance against Justin Gabriel this week that mixed lucha libre moves with the hard hitting style of the WWE. He also won the match with a top rope FU and rode off on a bicycle, so whether or not things are actually looking up for the Hispanic superstar remains to be seen. Either the company greenlit such a move and want the guy to step up in the world, or he pulled it out of his bag of tricks and the company is going to come down on him like a ton of bricks. Alternatively he could have just pulled off the move on his own and he will get away with it because no one in the company actually monitors NXT or Superstars so the guys on there can pretty much get away with whatever they want. Whatever the case it was a good match and Hunico deserves some praise here.

Flat-Footed: Bully Ray

Wow, just wow. Way to kill any momentum Bully Ray had as of late. I can’t believe what should have been a nasty grudge match between the Cowboy and the Bully turned into a two minute squash where Bully Ray came out at the top of the show and demanded that his match with James Storm be for the number one contendership, James Storm agreed and proceeded to kick Bully’s teeth down his throat and cover him for the 1-2-3. I honestly thought that we would get a rematch later in the PPV after Bully kicked up a fuss but instead that was it, the whole deal. I’m not sure if this is due to any nagging injury or recent surgery, but it seemed a bit cheap and robbed us all of one of the more anticipated matches on the card. Basically this match summed up the entire PPV, for the most part each match felt like it had something lacking and that we were robbed by what looked to be an entertaining card. I remember when TNA used to have terrible televised shows but then great PPVs to make up for it, now it looks like the tables have turned.