The Heel Report: 06.06.13: Do You Know Who I Am?!

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: Bully Ray

The TNA champion remains that way after pulling out all the stops against Sting at Slammiversary, the piledriver on the exposed wood was a pretty brutal spot and then to top it all off with a hammer shot showed Bully Ray to be a completely ruthless bastard, putting him over despite the huge amount of interference that went along with his victory. While I and many others complained at first over the placement of Sting in yet another high profile title match, a spot that could have been taken up by some younger talent, I will say that it does show just how far Bully Ray has come in the past two years, seeing as how at that time I doubt many of us would have bought into Bully vs. Sting as being a high profile match to begin with, let alone a match where the Bully was for all intents and purposes considered the favourite to win. The man with the largest calves in the world has come a long way baby!

2nd Place: The Ryback

The WWE are going to have to be careful with that whole ‘Ryback comes out to sirens’ thing as soon ‘Goldberg’ won’t be the only WCW veteran’s name the WWE Universe chant at him when he makes his way to the ring. Still no matter what name the fans chant the Ryback actually looked pretty dominant this week, putting Kofi Kingston through three tables and having a good match with Ryback that showed that he could actually go for a relatively extended period of time. I’m a bit disappointed that he didn’t role John Cena into the ring and let Curtis Axel pin him after putting him through a table, as that would have really added salt to the wound and would have technically given the former McGillicutty a pinfall victory over John Cena, still he made a statement and while I still don’t buy him taking the title away from Cena at Payback, I’m starting to believe, slightly.

3rd Place: Mr Anderson

As the weeks go by Anderson gets closer and closer to being the second-top guy in Aces & 8s, and if either Bully or Devon gets injured I can see him taking over to cover for them while they heal up. This week he didn’t get a big win or anything like that, but he gave a nasty beating to D’Lo Brown, got all up in Hogan’s face at the PPV, and was instrumental in his president’s victory to keep his world title. Honestly if Aces & 8s guns for the TV title again anytime soon I would much rather see Anderson go for it than Devon…

4th Place: Devon

…Saying that however I have to say that Devon earned his place on the chart at the PPV after beating down Joseph Park and then acting like a complete dick in the ring until Abyss came down, beat his ass and took the title away from him. Technically he did retain his title in the first match and to be fair he didn’t just take a chokeslam and be done with it, he actually put up a decent fight against the monster. Still the right man went over and honestly I am sick of seeing Devon hold that belt, it has been his, or associated with him, for far too long, and this was pretty much the first time he had actually showed any presence as a champion. Anyway it’s too late now.

5th Place: The Shield

While they all had singles matches on Smackdown I am bringing the band back together to make sure that they actually got a place on the chart as divided they aren’t as good at generating points as they are working as a team. Maybe this is personal bias on my part but being such a big part of the programming at the moment it is hard to ignore their presence and hell if they had actually done something to the McMahons on Raw they might have even topped the list, or at least come close. Maybe this is the start of some big conspiracy where the McMahons were behind the Shield after all, although I bloody well hope not!

6th Place: Damien Sandow

Damien Sandow: finally in a rivalry, and it is awesome. Sandow is great on the mic and in the ring and my mind is boggled as to why it is only now that they are really letting him shine in the WWE by putting him against an opponent in an actual feud. I’m looking forward to Sandow’s next exhibition of mental trickery on Smackdown and hopefully him and Sheamus will face off at Payback and Sandow will get a decent showing out of the thing, although I would be damned surprised if he actually gets the win over the Celtic Warrior.

7th Place: Greatest IT Factors

As it goes for the Shield this week, so to it goes for Aries and Roode, they make it onto the chart in a collected effort despite their surprising loss to James Storm and Gunner for the tag team titles at Slammiversary. I honestly had no idea who would win going into this match but I honestly didn’t think it would be this team that had never worked together before, especially when the Joker’s Wild PPV, while perhaps not officially being canon, made it look like Gunner and Crimson would soon become a tag team together, also James Storm is working injured but whatever. Still this team of former world champions represented themselves well and hopefully they will keep competing for the title while they bide their time as heels during this whole Aces & 8s thing.

8th Place: Bad Influence

This is the team most people, including myself, picked to win the titles in the Slammiversary Roundtable, and I am pretty surprised they didn’t go over as they have been due, still TNA is pretty crazy sometimes. I firmly believe that Christopher Daniels is the most underrated performer in TNA history and really should have more title wins to his name than he does. Still the guy hasn’t missed a step and despite advancing in age I reckon he could still have another shot at the main event, at least in TNA, hell just look at Bully Ray.

9th Place: Gail Kim

Last Knockout Standing was a pretty darn good match, not the best Knockouts match ever by any means, but pretty much the best, at least in terms of crowd intensity, that has happened in some time. It just goes to show that when you let these women go out there and compete without restrictions there is no reason to hold the attitude that women’s matches are the ‘piss break’ contest, that is just some self-fulfilling prophecy bollocks that could be stopped if people just stopped believing it and both companies actually booked these women as just wrestlers.

10th Place: Curtis Axel

Another Count-Out win over John Cena, seems pretty pointless if you ask me, and can you really even have a Count-Out in a No DQ match? Still if Axel did actually pin the champ I suppose that would entitle him to a title match at some point in the near future, and then he would be in the same boat as the Ryback, only without the former impressive win streak to back it up. Still why book him in another match with John Cena anyway? I don’t know, the jury is definitely still out is all I can say, maybe the WWE should hand the booking of Curtis Axel over to whoever is in charge of the Shield’s booking, and if it is the same people/person then that is insane and the lack of consistency will mean that there is no assurance of anyone getting over ever!

(Week 96):

1. Dolph Ziggler (308)

2. Robert Roode (307)

3. C.M. Punk (288)

4. Alberto Del Rio (281)

5. Daniel Bryan (274)

6. Cody Rhodes (272)

7. The Big Show (271)

8. Mark Henry (261)

9. Bully Ray (253)

10. Austin Aries (206)

The Wright View:

The McMahons and HHH

The whole opening to Raw was just kind of weird, at first both McMahons seemed to be unintentionally garnering heel reactions, then they seemed halfway through their speeches like they were trying to incite the crowd. In the end I think what they were going for was ‘realism’, the only problem is that to ask us to understand their problem is small-minded as the number of performers who they send out there when they probably shouldn’t is countless, so asking the fans to understand it when it is ‘one of their own’ just isn’t going to fly. What would have been cool, and Vince did touch on it for a second, was if they had gone full force with it and chastised the fans for being bloodthirsty animals who didn’t give a damn whether or not someone died in the ring as long as they were entertained. Mr McMahon started to go on about Kofi Kingston and the ‘one more time’ chant, but didn’t drive home that because of that Kingston’s career could have been ended. The whole thing stank of pulled punches, of towing the line between a heel and a face reaction so as to not actually give us anything to go on, attention grabbing but doing nothing with it. It is the same with the Shield coming down, it looked like something big was about to go down before they went to break and then when they came back they had nothing to show for it. Take a fucking chance once in a while!

Daniel Bryan

Do you know why these former indy guys like Punk and Daniel Bryan are so crazily fixated on ‘respect’? (aside from them being written that way) It is because they have had to fight so hard for everything after the company not completely wanting to take a chance on them despite their talent that they have developed a complex. Still it seems to be working for Bryan as he took a big step in the right direction to becoming a main eventer once again after he ends his dysfunctional partnership with the Big Red Machine. I know it is a long shot but it is possible that if Ryback beats Cena for the title at some point soon that Daniel Bryan could be his next challenger and actually win the WWE title, which would be great for him, the fans and the WWE in general since Daniel Bryan seems to turn everything that the WWE gives him and turns it into gold. He has gone from being a clean-cut Vegan to a caveman-hermit hybrid with anger issues and all the while he has maintained his awesomeness, I firmly believe that if the WWE gave Bryan Natalya’s old fart gimmick and Cesaro’s yodelling gimmick, and that was the only way he communicated, he could still somehow make that work and get over while doing it. Even the WWE themselves seem to have realised what they have with Bryan and they appear to be pushing him accordingly, and while I highly doubt that he will be ‘the guy’ any time soon while Cena is still healthy, his future seems pretty bright within the company.

Hogan Gets Raw

It may seem crazy but I actually have to give Hogan credit here, and since that barely ever happens I thought I would double the ‘Facts’ to include it. First we have Hogan’s promo at Slammiversary, which wasn’t great because he used words like ‘pussies’ and ‘bitches’ to describe the Aces & 8s, but because of how he used them. At the time he was staring down the youngest members of the group and his language towards them really sold how he felt about the group, like he couldn’t stand them, like they had gotten under his skin. It really sold the impact they have been having on his life and the lives of those around him. Compare this to how the McMahons described Curtis Axel as being ‘beneath HHH’, just as insulting, but didn’t really put over anyone or anything and instead just conveyed the message that this whole thing with Axel has been doomed from the start, if they don’t care about him then why should we? But Hogan really sold just how much these guys have been pushing him over the past few months, to breaking point, and while insulting, that can only really make them look good, also besides anything else it made the whole situation more real and I actually believed Hogan’s feelings on the subject, hell it was definitely better than him calling everyone ‘jack’ and ‘brother’ every other sentence. Also it is great that we got an official announcement over Destination X and that if Sabin is the champion at the time he can cash in the belt for a shot at the world title, that is definitely a tradition that should develop and live on.

Kurt Angle Acceptance Speech

Just a quick final one, and making the ‘Face the Facts’ a triple for the first time ever; Kurt Angle and just how much of a class act this guy was after being called out unexpectedly as the newest member of the TNA Hall of Fame. While Angle might make some pretty poor decisions in his personal life, and his Twitter feed has definitely caused him more trouble than it is worth, in the flesh and in the ring the guy seems like a pretty decent human being and there seemed to be a couple of guys with a tear in their eye when he was inducted and it is moments like that which will make TNA’s Hall of Fame actually mean something, even if the company is only just over a decade old. The best part of the speech was when he spoke about the TNA originals, because I think we all believe that TNA’s Hall of Fame probably should consist of guys who actually built the company, especially seeing as how they might never get a shot at the WWE Hall of Fame, at least not in their lifetime.