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What makes a good heel?

So I've debated this with several people and would like to get your thoughts.  What makes a good heel?  Is it as simple as pissing people off?  Time and time again I hear people say how great Vicki Guerrero is.  However, there is nobody that makes me hit fast forward on the DVR quicker.  I suppose you could call it X-Pac heat.  Is that bad, or is the only thing important that you get a negative reaction?

 

In my opinion a good heel is someone that makes you want to pay money to see them get their ass kicked.  With Vicki, you don't have this except on occasions where she feuds with a diva.  If she is harassing a male wrestler, it is pointless, especially with no male on female violence allowed.  So you are left with things like having her dance like Elaine.

 

Then we have the "Cool" heel.  I would say Hall and Nash were the epitome of this.  You can't say people didn't pay money to see them.  However, in the long run they ended up making WCW look like losers.  That leads me to my second point, a good heel makes themselves look bad to make their opponent come out more popular.  I've heard it referred to as Showing Ass.  Hall and Nash would lose to Lugar and Sting or the Steiners, but they never made themselves look bad.  The next night they would come out like it was no big deal.  Compare this to the Brain getting put in a weasel suit and selling it to the point of chasing his tail.

 

Thoughts?


Vickie has cooled off a LOT.  People boo her reflexively now, but she hasn't added anything to the Dolph Ziggler package for many months and he'd be 1000% better off without her.  Her peak as a heel was obviously the Smackdown GM run with Edge, where she was in an unwarranted position of power and did a really effective job as someone who deserved to be taken down a few pegs.  Now she's just this annoying person who does nothing, which is like the Mr. Fuji managing method.  

And yes, showing some ass is definitely a good thing, although WWE has gone so far over the top with it that no heels can get heat anymore.  Ted Dibiase was probably the best template for what a good upper level heel should be -- he talked a big game and looked like a threat to the main guys, but generally lost the big match when it came down to it because he was too arrogant for his own good.  And the loss would upset him so much that he'd plot and scheme against his next babyface opponent.  All good stuff.  

The other alternative is of course the Monster Heel, the guy who never shows ass and keeps winning until one babyface finally is able to stop him, at which point he rockets down the card again so the next guy can have a turn.  If they don't actually ever lose, then it's a Road Warriors situation where fans just turn them babyface, kind of defeating the purpose.  The Monster Heel was of course the status quo during the Hogan era, but it's harder to pull off now because the product features the same few guys in a rotation and they don't want to break from the 50/50 booking patterns to let someone be that kind of dominant guy.  

I think that it's tough to say that there's one "good" kind of heel, just like there's more than one good babyface type.  It's fine to have cool heels, but eventually someone's gotta teach them a lesson.  Obviously that's where Punk is headed.  

Comments

  1. I've always been partial to monster heels like Vader and Mark Henry. You build them up like Godzilla, and then the reward is in watching one of the good guys finally figure out how to defeat them. WWE kinda dropped the ball on Henry (though his injuries didn't help) in that Big Show shouldn't have been the one to dethrone him. It should have been a smaller guy who had to keep going back to the drawing board time and time again, like Sting did with Vader.

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  2. Walton Goggins shows ass.

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  3. Edge had a perfect balance I think.

    -He was cool, but at the same time smarmy and sleazy; like I loved him and cheered him, but really wanted to see Undertaker or CM Punk or Jeff Hardy kick his ass.

    -Would win high profile matches sometimes by cheating profusely, sometimes on his own merits as a wrestler.

    -Showed ass without ever looking pathetic.

    -In his promos he mixed it up. He could be a funny sexed up scuzzbucket, or a dangerously violent man who loves caving peoples heads in with a chair.

    -Most importantly: NOBODY QUESTIONED HIS CREDIBILITY

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  4. IMO the only true criteria for being a good heel or face is credibility.  Smart, dumb, cowardly, tough, monster, scheming, arrogant, whatever.  None of it matters if no one takes you seriously.  Heel Rock was one of the funniest wrestlers ever, but he was taken seriously as a competitor.  The biggest problem right now is the FACE never shows their ass.  For a while now, top faces have been dominating top heels in matches, on the mic, and in skits on TV and PPV.  They never look bad or get the worse end of any encounter.  When they lose, they were screwed by shenanigans.  When they win, they do so easily.  Sheamus jumps Bryan from behind to win the title and then dominates the rest of the feud.  Sheamus steals Del Rio's car for a joyride and kicks his head off week after week.  Cena gets his ass kicked by Brock but shows zero lingering effect.  Cena loses to Rock and it's no big deal (though Rock wasn't a heel).  Orton continually got the better of Rhodes and Dibiase.  Today's faces don't, well, face any adversity and it seems they never lose any feuds.  It's virtually impossible for any good heels to manifest in that environment. 

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  5. Very true. Going back to my post below; Edge would often get the better of faces in verbal battles--it's why I wanted to see him get his ass beat by Undertaker in HITC

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  6. Couldn't AGREE more with you. And they were building it up to be Daniel Bryan, after the brutal matches they had, including that steel cage bout on a live Smackdown. DB was taking Mark further with each match and it was making a great story. 

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  7. It drives me crazy that X-Pac was so stupid (or most likely too wasted) not to capitalize on the heat he was getting. Yes, it was heat where the fans wanted him to go away but that's the perfect opportunity to change his character and acknowledge the chant that was hounding him even when he was a face fighting the Alliance.

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  8. Good points. And I also like the fact that he was obsessive over the world title as it meant the world to him and he would stop at nothing to get it.

    Honestly, I think Edge was one of the best heels I've ever seen.

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  9. Thank you for being honest about it. I don't know what I would have done if I felt you were lying about your assessment of Edge as a heel. 

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  10. The question of a good heel isn't tough or cowardly, because every top level wrestler should seem like they have some kind of athletic advantage. The question is right or wrong. Foley's first book espoused the theory that a heel always has to feel justified in his actions, no matter how convoluted his rationale is. A good heel needs to be on the wrong, less moral side of every issue, and they always have to defend their own actions with treachery of some sort. You'd think this would be a no brainer, but a lot of heels are just heels because they wrestle against babyfaces, like they're just on the team no matter what, and that is a recipe for failure. If they want stronger heels, the heels just have to do more heelish stuff. 

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  11. Disagree.  They were building it to be Sheamus.  They planted the seeds in the build to SummerSlam.  Sheamus was always going to be the guy to win the Rumble and get the belt at WM... but originally he was supposed to break the chain of the Hall of Pain.

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  12. Based on your criteria, I'd add Rick Rude to the list of great heels, at least of his era. He was an arrogant prick, but still quite fun to watch and was willing to show ass (often literally) like few before or since.  Plus, he was a talented worker, so he did come across as someone who had to be taken seriously when the bell rang.

    I started watching just as the Roberts-Rude feud got underway, and man did I want to see Jake take Rude down a peg! If he had DDT'd him onto exposed concrete I would have marked out huge......

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  13. I agree and the thing is (in 2001 at least) the guy could still go. This match vs Kidman is a couple of weeks after Invasion and I think pretty good as far as 5 minute TV matches go http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07nVV-Pf3pg They seemed set keeping him on team WWF so I think a sympathetic face run where he's trying to block out the chants and fight for the WWF regardless against the bastards that fired him might not have been the worst way to go. At least it would have offered a bit of character development.

    Also he could have got new theme music. Or no theme music. Anything would have been better than that song 

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  14. I think good heels are more of a matter of execution rather than content.  Good heels could have any gimmick, fit any heel archetype (monster, coward, smart-ass), as long as they have a couple things.  

    A developed character so fans can actually get something fully formed to hate, stereotypes will be ignored, but people can be despised.  Also, they need some degree of credibility or threat, I mean, if a cheating coward heel is good enough, fans should fear him cheating to win because he's just that good at breaking the rules.  Also, a motivation as to why they're a heel.  Why are they going after somebody with a chair?  Why are they insulting the crowd?  Why are they bragging?  Because they're evil?  Eh?  Give actual reasons for their actions.

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  15. The only sign of storyline progression in this fashion was for Orton.  The story of the 1st match was that Orton couldn't even fight back against Henry and it was a clean win, almost a total squash.  The story of the 2nd match was that if he could just hit the RKO maybe he could win, but Henry was too strong and immune to the move until he finally hit it on the go home episode of Smackdown giving him hope but Henry escaped with the belt at the PPV by cheating.  The natural progression of the story was that he finally hits it in the big blowoff match, wins the title back and vanquishes the beast. 

    They just didn't go with that because Henry's character was too hot for a 2 month title reign and I'm pretty glad they made the audible.

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  16. Nobody questioned his credibility because he had been pushed as a top guy for most of the audience's lifespan.  WWE had been trying to get Edge over as a top guy for literally a decade. 

    People don't use the "shoved down our throats" argument with Edge because he's a good guy and generally a good worker but what's the difference between Edge's push and Orton's push other than the fact that they took literally twice as long with Edge before the audience finally bought in?

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  17.  I don't agree with that at all. Edge's first singles push came in summer 01 when he won the IC title, and he and Christian broke up, and he was a mid-card IC title guy for pretty much the next year. Was over for his position.

    After the brand split in 02 he was used as an upper mid-card guy on SD, by no means being portrayed as a main eventer, and thanks to Heyman booking him in a team with Rey, and him facing Angle, Eddie, Benoit on a weekly basis he started getting pretty darn over, but broke his neck before anything could come of it.

    He missed all of 03, returned on Raw 04, and then yes, they were portraying him as semi-main event before he was ready, but he gets a pretty decent out on this considering he had just recovered from spinal fusion. But by spring 05 he was heel, and getting very over (thanks to banging Lita), but he capitalized on it and stepped up his game promo-wise & by 06 he was legitimately made as a main eventer.

    Randy Orton got thrust into the main event picture in 2004, 2 years after he debuted. Flopped thanks mostly to an ill advised heel turn & HHH. Recovered in 2006 THANKS TO EDGE, split from him in 2007 & started kicking people in the head.

    Edge had an organic path to the top, reminiscent of a Shawn Michaels or Bret Hart. Orton was an over pushed bag of suck who finally made it b/c of the illuminati or something.

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  18. We need more good sadist-type heels. Jake, Austin in late 1996,  Foley when he got really nasty...

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  19. My favorite was Brian Danielson in late 2006 - 2007 ROH. He was the best wrestler in the world, and would kill himself proving it, but would cheat like Hell if he needed to in order to win. He was cocky, arrogant, and yet utterly afraid of Samoa Joe, the monster face. It was epic. 

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  20. To put it succinctly and brilliantly (I didn't come up with this): the very best heels are the ones who really, truly believe that they're the babyfaces.

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  21. I think he was just too lazy. The only thing Waltman cared about at this point was putting in just enough effort to not get fired and collect a regular check, I don't think he gave a shit about his heat or position on the card.

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  22. isn't this something Foley has been told by Matt Bourne (paraphrasing here): "the best heels doesn't cheat because they need to but because they WANT to."

    or as Bobby Heenan would put it: "win if you can. lose if you must. but always cheat!"

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  23. Agreed- Edge was VERY clearly protected right from the beginning. When they saw that he was green and uncharismatic, they tossed him into a big stable as soon as they could to protect him from overexposure. Then he was CLEARLY booked as the superior member of his tag team, then was given a big midcard push.

    The only thing that really stalled him out was the glut of guys on top. It sounds bizarre with the CURRENT roster, but back then it was Rock, Austin, HHH, Angle, Taker, etc., and THEN the WCW guys showed up. If there was no InVasion, Edge would have been champ much sooner.

    But Edge was more organically-pushed than Orton- it wasn't like he was suddenly a Main Eventer- he just avoided taking a bunch of losses all the time. It was a really slow climb for him. Orton literally moved up in a year.

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