The Heel Report: 07.18.13: Follow the Vultures

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 being the first week of a new chart I wanted to cram in as much heel goodness as possible, and there was a lot to choose from, as such I have grouped people together where possible to maximise space on the chart, and make the Rolling Chart a little more interesting than just repeating the main.

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: AJ Lee

Who was more scheming? Who was more maniacal? Who caused more trouble this week than AJ Lee? No one, that’s who. Not only was she part of the first ever Divas title contract signing on Smackdown, but she also went on to successfully defend her title at Money in the Bank and then cost her former man Dolph Ziggler his title at the same event, although by accident, and then once again cost him his match on Raw. This time though it was on purpose, and it proved once and for all that you simply do not mess with Miss AJ Lee, hell it’s probably better for your career if you simply don’t get involved with her in the first place!

2nd Place: The Wyatt Family

While they might not have appeared on the PPV itself, the Wyatt Family continued to make their presence felt in the WWE on Raw and confirmed that while their debut might not have been the most impactful; their overall gimmick is going to work out just fine. I am actually glad that they waited a week to let Wyatt talk since because they had already taken out Kane and cost him his shot at MitB it gave him a focus in his words and gave them more implications than would have been present had he just reeled off a bunch of cryptic statements directed to some unknown opponent. I expect this trend to continue and for the Wyatt Family to play a major role as the new chart progresses “You are not the truth we seek”.

3rd Place: Damien Sandow

The time has come for the intellectual saviour to rise from the dirt and take his rightful place in the main event scene, although first he has to go through the traditional Mr MitB losing streak of course. Sandow’s win was further enhanced by his turning on Cody Rhodes, his supposed best friend, helping to turn Rhodes face in the process. This betrayal seemed in the cards for some time as Sandow has subtly positioned himself above Rhodes during their recent interactions. Sandow himself in the match chose the smart option in hiding for a good portion of the proceedings until it was time to strike, and then he took full advantage of the situation.

4th Place: The Shield

The Hounds of Justice are running as a pack this week and show that they still have a whole lot to give to the WWE as a group. Anyone who didn’t see their tag title match at the Money in the Bank Kick-off really needs to watch it as the match was great and showed just how good tag team wrestling could be again if given the chance.

5th Place: Heyman & Lesnar

As smarmy as Heyman is on the mic and as brutal as Brock is when he attacks it has always been hard for me to find them a placing on the chart, what with their (especially in the case of Brock) severe lack of airtime spread over the week in the WWE. So to solve the problem I have combined the two, much like they have combined their efforts to go against Heyman’s former friend C.M. Punk. The segment between the men was great and much more entertaining than the majority of the HHH-Lesnar feud, and things appear to be only just getting warmed up.

6th Place: Curtis Axel

Up next is the other client for Paul Heyman and still the Intercontinental champion; Curtis Axel. I have to admit that Axel looked alright at the PPV, what’s more he managed to win his match with the Miz relatively by himself, which all in all made him look better than he has done since his ‘re-debut’. I honestly believe that Axel has a shot at being at least a mid-card guy for the next couple of years, perhaps replacing someone like Ziggler as he gets called up to the main event, and from their who knows?

7th Place: Alberto Del Rio

Damn that dastardly Del Rio, still being the World Champion, due mostly to the actions of one AJ Lee. You have to hope that the recent theories on Ziggler’s win coming in bigger at Summerslam as being true, however I have a sinister suspicion that his opponent at Summerslam might be none other than Big E. Langston, and there is no guarantee that this match will be for the title. As for Del Rio I really don’t know who his next opponent could be; Orton appears to be injured, we have seen more than enough of Del Rio versus Sheamus, and Daniel Bryan is all booked up, so if not Ziggler then who?

8th Place: Fandango

Despite the general rumours that Curtis’ gimmick is the brainchild of Vince himself I was still surprised that on Monday night there was a decent amount of emphasis on him challenging John Cena for the WWE title since to me he hasn’t reached anywhere near the level to be seriously considered a contender for the title as of yet. Still that doesn’t mean that he could not be in the future, his match with Orton on Monday and his performance at Money in the Bank were certainly decent affairs, he just needs a few more solid feuds under his own belt before he goes for the big gold one.

9th Place: The Real Americans

I am in favour of this faction, it gives Cesaro and Swagger something to do while neither is in the position to break into the main event, despite whether or not Cesaro actually deserves to be in that position. The real scary thing that has come out of this is that now the audience are legitimately chanting ‘We the People’ and saying it along with Coulter, creepy. Still I feel like the gimmick has stabilised somewhat, before it was massively controversial, then mostly irrelevant, now it seems sort of inflammatory but only just antagonising enough to instigate a few tag team rivalries before eventually dying out and leading to the rise of one man from the ashes, that man hopefully being Cesaro.

10th Place: Gail Kim

The final place on the first chart of the new cycle goes to Gail Kim, someone who was not at Money in the Bank but competed in her own ladder match for a contract this week. TNA are doing a decent job of making women’s wrestling credible quickly by putting their knockouts in for the most part unseen positions as of late. I am hoping this tradition continues but with their dwindling roster it is going to be hard for TNA to keep such matches up, that is unless they devote some real time to developing some long-standing rivalries between the remaining knockouts they have.

(Week 001)

1. AJ Lee (10)

2. Damien Sandow (8)

3. Bray Wyatt (5)

4. Curtis Axel (5)

5. Alberto Del Rio (4)

6. Dean Ambrose (3)

7. Paul Heyman (3)

8. Brock Lesnar (3)

9. Fandango (3)

10. Seth Rollins (2)

Heel Centurions:

(Randy Orton Wins MitB)

While I am glad it is Daniel Bryan competing at Summerslam I still think it is a shame that the night of Money in the Bank ended with Orton standing triumphant, because in the end who really cared? It really did seem like this win was solely based on adding another accolade to Orton’s resume, rather than actually creating a memorable moment and an event that will move the WWE forward in the coming year.

Instead if they were not going to go with Daniel Bryan, which is understandable since the only reason for him winning was to go on to challenge Cena at Summerslam and that is happening already, why not go with someone more interesting? RVD could have worked, what with being the returning face, but being as he is part time it would be unadvisable to make him champion at any point, and having him lose would make this the second time in a row that the WWE title case would have lost, making it ‘cursed’. Christian would have been a better choice, but I could see many claiming that Christian still isn’t on the level of the other main eventers in the match and so his win wouldn’t have meant as much, but on the other hand it might have been the push he needed to rocket him towards the main event scene proper.

Which brings me to my next point on Orton winning, much like Cena last year; he doesn’t need it. Money in the Bank, even in an ‘all-stars’ match, should be all about facilitating a title shot to someone who might arguably have a tough time with getting one otherwise. At the moment if you were to name three guys who could get a title shot whenever they wanted the top three names would have to be; Punk, Cena and Orton, followed possibly by Sheamus and Del Rio. To me the MitB briefcase is three things; a storytelling device, a means to elevate someone’s career, or an insurance policy against injury or title vacation. In all three cases Orton is the wrong choice. Not only has he not had an interesting feud with anyone in the past two years, but he also has seemingly reached the apex of his career already, and as for an insurance policy, the guy is pretty injury prone himself, as this week’s Smackdown has shown, and what’s more he already has two strikes against him, that means that he should be considered risky property at the best of times, so why give him the sodding case?!

Now I know that Orton can be a worthwhile wrestler, I myself was a massive Orton fan around the time of his first title run, but at the moment there is very little to him, and even if this does result in an Orton heel turn eventually, that does not guarantee that he will be the same Viper that he was a few years ago. All in all this was a poor decision by the WWE and it completely sucked all the energy out of the crowd to end the PPV on a poor note. Bad times man, bad times.

(Daniel Bryan: People’s Choice)

As bad as the decision for Orton to win the ‘all-star’ Money in the Bank match was, the decision to let Cena choose his own contender, and for it to be Daniel Bryan, was brilliant. First of all let me just say that I am fully behind the decision to make Brad Maddox the GM of Raw, he looks like a little Eric Bischoff Jr. in that he is clearly a smarmy git in the making, except that he is also WWE-made so Vince can actually like him. The guy has a better grasp on popular culture than 90% of people I have seen on WWE television, he looks pretty dapper in a suit, and his sycophantic need to please makes him unlikable but also believable when he kisses up to faces as well as heels, making him more balanced than most GMs. Add to this his ‘young and dynamic’ persona that allows him to make ‘innovative’ decisions and we can actually have a character who goes with and against the grain, such as he did last Monday night in allowing Cena to choose his own challenger.
Then there was the rest of Raw, which due to Maddox’s announcement had a through theme: almost every superstar on the show trying to prove through words or actions that they should be the one that Cena picks to be his Summerslam opponent. This not only gave the show a unified feel, but also sold the importance of the title, the Summerslam main event, and Cena himself as champion. Everything about the way this thing was staged went towards building the match before the thing had even been actually set, which frankly is awesome and needs to happen a lot more.

Then there was the execution of the segment itself where Cena actually picked his opponent, now you could argue that like many other time it was a little Cena heavy, as he literally walked by the entire roster to get to the ring, however this time it really made sense. He is the champion, the segment is all about his decision, and the whole night has been focused on how important it would be for any man on the stage to be picked by Cena. What’s more the whole idea depends very much on Cena’s character, he is the type of black-and-white goodie two-shoes who legitimately would want to pick the ‘best opponent’, rather than just choosing the easy challenge, so it worked.

Furthermore the segment was a great way of gauging the fan’s reaction to future challengers. While this would have not worked so well on last week’s Raw with that dead crowd, the Brooklyn crowd had been vocal all night and they gave their opinions loud and clear. The WWE now knows that Sheamus is probably not the best choice for a future challenger for the title, and that Fandangoing is not a viable answer in this process. Apart from the general market research opportunity the whole segment also built towards showing that Daniel Bryan was the crowd favourite by a mile, it solidified how over he is at the moment and there can be no doubt that he was the right man to pick to challenge Cena for the title. Even to those tuning in who had no idea who this hairy little troll skipping down the ramp was, would have recognised that the crowd fucking loved him and that ‘Yes!’ is a massive thing that should be imitated, loud and often.

The best part of this whole thing is that the two men are complete opposites in look and in their relation with the fans and how they got to where they are today. The match between the two could be awesome, I just hope they don’t pull a Hardy-Aries thing where Bryan has to inexplicably turn heel to sell the match, as I think that would be a mistake. If that were to happen Bryan would still be cheered more than Cena and it would just cheapen the whole thing, instead it should be Hogan-Warrior and whether or not Bryan actually wins the match in the end I think it will raise him to that next level and put him on equal footing with Punk going forward.

(Wade Barrett’s Ladder Rung)

Just a short one here, I want to give credit to Barrett for doing something so obvious and yet something that I have not seen so far in a ladder match, which is for someone to take an individual ladder rung and beat someone down with it. Sure the rung could be replaced by any other harmful object, but seeing as it came from a ladder there are points for creativity and utilisation of one’s environment.

I am still surprised that Barrett has yet to win a world title and honestly if Barrett had won the WWE title from Randy Orton all those years ago then I reckon he would have been in the ‘all-stars’ match instead of the ‘non-all-stars’ one at this point in his career. The WWE have dropped the ball on Barrett and they continue to do so.

(Sandow’s Streak)

Ah and so the tradition continues, a man who has not been champion before, wins the case and proceeds to lose almost every match he is in until he cashes in. At least this time the man, Damien Sandow, was already losing pretty much every match he was in before he won the case as well, so there is something to be said for consistency.

I predict that Sandow will go into a feud with Cody Rhodes, and lose the majority of it to help Cody establish himself. Will he then get to cash in? Possibly against Dolph Ziggler? Let’s hope so because a feud between those two could be astounding if done right. I really do think that despite the constant mistakes of making their MitB winners look like jokes all the way up to the time they cash in, the WWE have made the right decision in turning Ziggler and Rhodes face right now as they have marketable images and there are enough new heels for the two to feud with and have some fresh and interesting rivalries, as well as new turns on old partnerships and rivalries. Will Sandow ever get a face turn? Maybe in a few years.

Nick Marsico brings us the news in The Tuesday Communique

Jonas Wakefield goes over the best forgotten Wrestlemania matches in The Magnificent 7

Joseph Lee delivers the ten most unlikely horror actors in A Bloody Good Time

David McGregor lists possible faces of the WWE after John Cena departs in The 8-Ball

Join the 411 staff in debating and deliberating over The Wrestler of the Week