The Heel Report: 04.06.13: Crossing the Line

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 wrestling 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: C.M. Punk

Some might argue that Punk doesn’t deserve to get rewarded for what he did on Monday Night Raw, and the angle has now gone to that place where you are actually pretending to bring the dead back to life and perhaps that is too far, but then again it had a damn big impact and from a storyline point of view it fits in so well with everything in the Undertaker’s past. The only problem I have with Punk dominating the Undertaker so forcefully and personally is that with every step over the imaginary line Punk moves further and further away from actually being booked to break the Streak at Wrestlemania. Pretty much the only way I could see it happening now is if the Undertaker has realised that this is his last year, and he wants to go out by making sure that Punk gets to claim an accolade that no other performer will be able to claim, ensuring his place in wrestling history. This is a possibility, but it is a doubtful one. I am firmly in the camp of those who think that the streak exists to be broken as what does it mean otherwise really in scripted entertainment? The real question in my mind is if Undertaker can make it to Wrestlemania XXX and can he find a better opponent to lose to than C.M. Punk?

2nd Place: Fandango

That’s right, Johnny Curtis has somehow managed to dance his way into second place, hell if Punk hadn’t pulled his ridiculous display of heeldom on Raw then he would have been first. Fact is that Fandango has yet to wrestle and yet has also yet to do anything but rule over Chris Jericho, with sneak attacks and more importantly; snooty move scoring. I loved that, screw appearing on the stage or even on commentary, standing ringside and critiquing an opponent’s match in a way that your opponent can actually see is a great way to distract them and get inside their head. Much like the Legends Panel last week on Raw this is something original that I would like to see again, and in a time of rehashes and rematches innovation is a rare thing. What’s more if the reports are true Vince McMahon has taken a personal interest in Curtis’s character, and luckily with the Chairman still recovering we hopefully won’t get another segment where he comes out and gives his seal of approval of the guy as that usually seems to be the kiss of death for up and coming superstars. Once again my only worry is that with so many advantages taken it is hard to accept the idea that Jericho will be losing on Sunday, which I was pretty much counting on up until now.

3rd Place: Paul Heyman

Heyman pulled double duty on Raw, being involved with two of the biggest matches at Wrestlemania. What I liked here was that he got to play completely opposite roles. One was as the mouthy manager, with the silent monster behind his back; the other was the silent distraction, allowing his client to take the advantage and shine. It is hard not to assign a bunch of heel points to a man who appears as the recently deceased and even does a bang on impression of the guy to boot. In some ways the whole thing is in pretty poor taste, but also part of me now thinks that even without Paul Bearer’s death the urn angle was going to be what the WWE was going to go with anyway, which to me makes it less them capitalising on someone’s death and more incorporating it into the storyline, which is almost necessary as purposefully avoiding things to do with Bearer’s death would look forced and arguably makes everything even more awkward than it appears now.

4th Place: Jack Swagger

Wow, this rivalry lost steam in a big way over the last couple of weeks to now when no one really cares about it and is just hoping for a Ziggler cash-in at the end of it all. Still Swagger did brutally attack his opponent this week and while it didn’t add anything to the supposed ‘submission vs. submission’ angle that never got going it does add yet more motivation for Del Rio to get revenge over Swagger on the grand stage. Is it me or do too many angles revolve around dominant heels who will finally get their comeuppance at Wrestlemania? If the old standard holds true then we might be getting a set of pretty face-heavy victories on Sunday, darn-sarn it!

5th Place: Mr. Anderson

Shooting on Jeff Hardy and his multiple chances due to merchandise sales makes you an instant winner in my book, and if you turn out to be a prop to allow Hardy to announce his stipulations to a title match and get the tar beaten out of you later in the night then that is still okay. Anderson stuck out and spoke his mind this week and honestly if Aces & 8s does nothing else but give Bully Ray and Anderson their rightful places on the Impact roster then that is okay by me. Now if only they could actually get rid of Sting and Hulk Hogan.

6th Place: Bully Ray

This is what I like about having Bully Ray as the President of Aces & 8s, he brings the group together. He wasn’t even the main focus of the program this week and yet he seemed to be behind everything, appraising his men after their match, leading the beat down of Hardy at the start of the night, and saving Anderson from too much punishment after the main event. He is the puppet master and everyone dances to the pull of his strings.

7th Place: Mark Henry

The childish game of ‘I’m not touching you’ was taken to a whole new level in the rivalry of Ryback and Mark Henry this week. First off you had Henry, choking Ryback with a clearly fake bar-bell, the bar choking Ryback and so effectively no-contact, and then you had Santino used as a projectile against the World’s Strongest Man on Raw. I would like to point out that while these means of attack are fun, if we are classifying them as ‘no-contact’ then why not just wail on your opponent with a steel chair, so long as it is just the chair that his hitting them it surely still counts as ‘no-contact’, at least by this twisted WWE logic.

8th Place: The Shield

The tight-knit unit let their words speak louder than their actions on Raw and promised the team of Sheamus, Orton and Big Show that they were going down this Sunday. At this point it doesn’t really matter if the Shield win or lose, hell it never did, the point is that they have been booked as being a serious threat and if they continue to be booked this way after the PPV then they will continue to develop, even if some team of guys finally managed to get themselves organised long enough to hand them their first loss, and if they win, well then who can stop this band of rogues?!

9th Place: Wade Barrett

Barrett has clearly been taking lessons from Mark Henry as he was smack talking in the ring this week something fierce. It seems that Miz has really put his nose out of joint, despite this match being relegated to the pre-show. I’m really not sure why the WWE is so bent on putting their secondary title defences either on the pre-shows to their PPVs, or as impromptu title defences not advertised for the card at all. It is as if these belts are a burden rather than a storytelling device, get rid of them then!

10th Place: Zeb Coulter

Just like another portly yet successful manager this week Coulter needs to be acknowledged for the part he played in the success achieved by his client. Coulter put himself in harm’s way by getting in the ring with Del Rio, even if it was all a rouse to beat the Mexican Aristocrat down with crutches before any physicality could actually get under way.

(Week 87):

1. Robert Roode (303)

2. C.M. Punk (281)

3. Alberto Del Rio (281)

4. Dolph Ziggler (278)

5. Daniel Bryan (274)

6. Cody Rhodes (267)

7. Big Show (266)

8. Mark Henry (228)

9. Bully Ray (205)

10. Austin Aries (201)

The Wright View:

Stephanie McMahon Inducting Trish Stratus

This is just a minor gripe but I call bullshit on this whole thing. Now sure there might have been some problems getting Lita, who the majority of fans wanted to see, to induct Trish into the Hall of Fame, although I doubt it would have been that hard, and yes I have seen the tweets were Trish asks Stephanie and Stephanie accepts, but that could easily have been pre-arranged. To me it just seems weird to have the biggest female star of recent memory inducted by the woman who has let the Divas division, first of all be called such and then dwindle down to the point it is at now. I mean sure Trish and Stephanie have a little history together, but compared to Lita it is almost meaningless. Then again there is also the whole Maria Menounos inducting Buckland thing, which you could say is much worse since it is someone who barely has any history in the wrestling industry inducting someone with so much, but then there is the recent professional relationship that the two have, not to mention the mainstream appeal. Speaking of which Schwarzenegger inducting Bruno is even somewhat questionable, although a lot more mainstream appeal and more memorable history with the company. Maybe there are better reasons than business ones for these people being chosen to induct these wrestlers, but I think that the choices will only add more fuel to the fire of those who claim that the whole thing is a joke, despite the most recent addition of Bruno himself.

Daniel Bryan is Obsessed with Bears

This was just ridiculous and for anyone who doesn’t watch Saturday Morning Slam you really did miss a treat. Daniel Bryan was on commentary for an Antonio Cesaro vs. R-Truth match (which Cesaro once again lost) and somehow a conversation started about bears that just escalated and escalated. Bryan mentioned that the only way to be a man was to wrestle a bear, and that he loved bears, with various mentions throughout the match, until Cesaro locked in a Bear Hug and Daniel Bryan absolutely lost his shit, sounding like he was having an orgasm at the commentary desk and proclaiming that the match was over. This led to various bear puns about how the tension and hold was ‘unbearable’ and so, and generally good times were had by all. It really does seem like the WWE has their shit together in terms of their minor shows as Saturday Morning Slam is nice and light and the perfect PG presentation for kids to get them interested in the product, Main Event is a nice way to present their mid-card talent to casual fans with video packages and simple rivalries, and NXT is a promotion almost unto itself, with main roster talent occasionally coming down and making the developing talent look good, especially when it comes to the divas division, yes that’s right, somehow their woman’s division is actually pretty decent right now and a major focus, if only they could get their main shows to be the same way. Maybe if Smackdown went back to being a more solidly wrestling show and Raw became a more adult-orientated program, with the aforementioned Saturday Morning Slam being mainly for the kids, you could argue that this is the way things are now, but if this is the case then things get confused far too often and need to be more clearly defined.

The Possible is Impossible

Going along with my ‘Cena should turn Heel now’ article I am going to see Cena’s promo on Raw not as the same old rubbish that had the Washington DC fans chanting ‘boring’ by the end in a negative way. Instead I am going to make the bold proclamation that this was all orchestrated by the WWE, knowing that the Washington crowd would be down on Cena from the start, choosing to have him come out and talk up his achievements like no one else could do them; beating C.M. Punk for example, which he labelled ‘impossible’, way to create your own ‘insurmountable’ odds John. Once again Cena was painting himself out to be the underdog when he is clearly not, now to me this seemed a little too obvious and like it was written as such, rather than Cena being his same old face-self, if so then it was a great way to show the heel side of Cena come out, as his self-promotion will lead to feelings of self-entitlement and then thinking that he deserves to win the title against the Rock no matter what. If that isn’t the case then the Cena character is just retarded to think he is still the underdog and anyone else that sees him as such is the same. Further Cena more and more seems to relish the negative reaction that the fans give him, now either he is leaning heel or he is just messed up as a performer as there is only so much hate you can just shrug off before you have to take a good hard look at yourself. Maybe I am giving Cena and the WWE writers too much credit, but you would hope for an angle this big they would actually put some serious thought and effort into it, so I don’t think it’s terribly unlikely, and I just want to believe damn it!

Antonio Cesaro

I am sort of still puzzled by this one, I just presumed that Cesaro would be added to the Miz-Barrett contest, or get some last minute match thrown together for his title, but somehow he not only has been left off of the Wrestlemania card, but has also started to lose matches left and right after being so well protected for all those months. Really what was the point in all that protection if the WWE are just going to turn around and feed him to anyone who they feel needs a win right now? Hell it’s not even like it is just main eventers, he is losing to guys like the Miz, R-Truth and if he was a heel, he’d probably even lose to Kofi Kingston right now! US champion my arse!

Cheap Pops:

Ken Hill lists his top MitB matches in The 8-Ball

Scott Rutherford counts downThe Top 10 Wrestlemania Main Events

Micheal Ornelas scores this Wrestlemania card in The Storytelling Report Card

I’ve got another list for you (I bet you love that!) as I present 10 Reasons for a Cena Heel Turn at Wrestlemania 29

The 411 Staff host the penultimate rankings in The Wrestler of the Week