The Heel Report: 10.10.13: ‘Dusty’ Finish

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 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: Alberto Del Rio

I don’t know how that sneaky son of a bitch manages it, but week after week despite being a black hole of personality who seems to garner no real heat, Del Rio manages to gain points on the chart, this week managing to luck out as being the most successful heel when all was said and done.

This is certainly in part due to the severe lack of dominant heel presence at Battleground, and the fact that for whatever reason the WWE decided to choose to make sure that Damien Sandow could not cash in his MitB briefcase on Del Rio after his match.

Plus he lucked out in being in the position to take out RVD after his first ninety-day run with the company under his new contract, so he looked pretty strong as champion coming out of the event. Then again on Raw he looked like crap while losing to his former manager Ricardo. Although having said that he does now apparently have a match with Cena at Hell in a Cell, he was on full smarm alert with Vickie Guerrero, and he did get his revenge on Rodriguez after the match, so all in all things continue to look pretty good for Del Rio, despite his apparent non-working in any type of main event capacity, yet he still gets to be champion while guys like Ziggler, Cody and Barrett barely get a look in.

2nd Place: Damien Sandow

On the opposite end of things we have Damien Sandow, who while losing almost every match he was in this week, he actually won a match against Santino, and another with Justin Gabriel, along with his two losses to Dolph Ziggler, he also managed to give a good enough performance during that match with Santino to put him into second place.

Say what you like about Sandow but he does cut a pretty decent promo, and while his character does lend itself more to humour, he could be pretty convincing in any type of blood-feud that he might be put into, as could be seen on Raw with his more aggressive style. Personally I just wish the WWE would give Sandow more to do in terms of long standing rivalries, so far it seems like he has feuded with Sheamus and Cody and that is about it, and both times there were some great moments from Sandow, even in the short time that those feuds ran for.

3rd Place: AJ Lee

The Divas champion somehow once again managed to retain her title, this time against Daniel Bryan’s newly ringed finance; Brie Bella, one-on-one. After she managed to escape from that Fatal-4-Way last time I was suspicious as to whether they were just setting her up for a fall the next month, but apparently not.

I must have had some faith in the denim shorts-wearing destroyer as I picked her to win in the PPV Roundtable, which I actually did pretty well in this time, if I do say so myself, didn’t there used to be stats for that in terms of percentage of picks people got right on average? I want to see that happen again! In other news AJ is out with ‘concussion-like symptoms’ but since this is the Divas division it might not actually hurt her title run in the same way it did for Dolph’s, or for Fandango’s push for that matter.

4th Place: Stephanie McMahon

From week to week the McMahons switch roles in which one is playing the good cop and which is playing the bad. This week Stephanie was definitely more the bad cop, giving Big Show a dressing down and then firing the World’s Largest Athlete like he was nothing but a pawn.

I, like many others, was perhaps expecting to see a Big Show knock out to the Billion (not so much any more) Dollar Princess, but in the era of PG that type of man-on-woman violence is very unlikely to occur, so instead we got to see him KO her husband, which will probably lead to a match between the two at Hell in a Cell.

5th Place: Randy Orton

The former WWE champion may have become more brutal in the past few weeks, but after that severe lack of finish in the main event of Battleground he is looking less and less like ‘the face of the WWE’. Especially since his face can’t seem to tell when it is in danger of taking a massive blow to it, honestly how both Orton and HHH, as characters, could not think to avoid the Big Show hitting them is beyond me. How you can just stand there with your chin blowing in the wind while a guy who you know for a fact likes to knock people out stares at you with a look of intense hatred in his eyes is beyond me.

Still Orton gets another shot to reclaim the belt at Hell in a Cell in what could be a really great outing. I like many others am hoping to see Bryan finally pick up the decisive win in this match and in all honesty I think that the WWE might have actually played things pretty clever here. After all the whole point of this was that HHH would never let Bryan hold onto the belt because he thinks he is not good enough to be ‘the face of the WWE’, so any time before this that Bryan was going to win the belt would have meant nothing as HHH would have found some way to rob him of it. Now however with the Game most likely distracted by Big Show, and the Authority (I still prefer Corporation 2.0 by the way) seemingly having lost faith in Orton as the face of the company, it is actually possible that Bryan could win the belt and it would be allowed to stand, possibly giving him a good run with the belt before dropping it again.

6th Place: The Shield

Of all the things that happened over the past week, two stand out in my mind. One is that fantastic Cross Rhodes that Seth Rollins took to end their match with the Rhodes Brothers at Battleground, and the other is these three men being launched off of the Big Show like they were nothing. Both things made the faces they were against look really good, and yet I still see the Shield as a force to be reckoned with.

Say what you want about the creative direction of the WWE right now, or how their PPVs are all starting to feel just like really, really expensive episodes of Raw, but if all we get out of this time period is the Shield then maybe it will be worth it. This is a band of relative rookies who came from out of nowhere, established themselves as a force in the WWE and within a year, not only do they possess the same presence, but they are also at the point now where they can help put over others. If more groups were like the Shield, there would be less complaints about factions and the tag team division would be raging.

7th Place: The Real Americans

While they are no Shield there is actually another tag team to talk about this week in the chart and that is the Real Americans. Well, I say tag team, what there really is to talk about is Cesaro and his big swing, which while impressive, just shows you the type of idiotic things that the WWE look for when pushing a guy.

Now don’t get me wrong, Cesaro deserves a push alright, but the WWE seem to treat their performers like circus attractions, rather than credible athletes. Cesaro has been consistently excellent since coming to the WWE and yet it was only a few months ago that they were cooling to the guy, leaving him off Wrestlemania, and talking about him like he had very little to offer. Now though he is all the rage, being given PPV matches for no reason, probably a face turn and then maybe a title of some type. While I would like to think that this recent interest is all due to his 2-out-of-3 falls match with Sami Zayn that everyone has been raving about, the sceptical side of me thinks that it is all down to his swing and the spectacle of it.

8th Place: The Wyatt Family

Yet another group appears on the chart, showing that there is some hope for factions and the tag division in the WWE. Although here most of the points stem from the leader and focus of the group; Bray Wyatt.
I feel bad for Bray in that he hasn’t really gotten an opportunity to really show what he can do in the ring, since from what I saw on NXT he could actually go. Still despite this he has at least managed to have memorable moments in his matches, and he seems to have a focus in taking out all the mid-card faces one at a time, starting with Kingston, and now moving on to the Miz, although ‘taking out’ seems to simply mean ‘beat’, and what will that really do in the WWE when an announcer can beat the world champion without even breaking a sweat?

9th Place: HHH

The COO of the company finally took that big blow this week and now things will probably get physical between him and the giant.

I am glad that this time HHH is not seeking to take on the main movers and shakers in the WWE title picture as while his continued presence can be argued to take away from rising stars, I would rather he battled people like the Big Show than went full ego-maniac and just simply proclaimed himself the face of the company and awarded the vacated belt to be put around his own waist…at least this hasn’t happened yet anyway.

10th Place: The Paul Heyman Guys

Final place goes to this collective, the chart this week has shown me how there are four heel teams that could have a really interesting dynamic if they all started to work against each other over who gets to be tag team champions.

I highly doubt the WWE would ever go for that, and it would probably require at least one team to turn face, but seriously, there could be some great matchups between the teams and with stipulation matches, and throwing in the Prime Time Players, the Usos and Ryder & Gabriel, we really could have a fine division going.

(Week 013)

1. Randy Orton (69)

2. HHH (60)

3. Bully Ray (55)

4. AJ Lee (50)

5. Alberto Del Rio (48)

6. Paul Heyman (46)

7. Dean Ambrose (39)

8. Ryback (38)

9. Damien Sandow (34)

10. Bray Wyatt (29)

Heel Centurions: