Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ll have heard that WrestleMania weekend was host to a number of high quality matches – even if the event itself led to mixed feelings amongst fans. Sami Zayn vs. Shinsuke Nakamura. Will Ospreay vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Bayley vs. Asuka. – and that’s just three matches. But whilst they all were good matches that captivated the crowds, they were all missing one thing: clearly defined heels.
Since professional wrestling became more about selling tickets than athleticism, wrestling has been a story of good versus evil – whether that’s the stories we saw in the 80s of the all conquering Hulk Hogan (and his modern day facsimile, John Cena), or the tales of the endless stream of bad guys trying to conquer. It seems that wrestling nowadays though, has eschewed all such face and heel boundaries for the most part, and the further away from mainstream you go, the less likely you are to find any true heels that gather universal heat. Don’t believe me?
In WWE, the face/heel boundaries are all askew. Sometimes it’s the “fault” of the fans, but at the end of the day, if bookers cast somebody effective in a role, then ultimately, they will get booed or cheered accordingly. Yes, there may be occasions where creative + booking means that characters will be fighting an uphill struggle to get accepted in their role (Roman Reigns), and yes, there’ll be occasions where fans will reject someone’s casting in such a way that eventually, a change is forced (Daniel Bryan).
For the uninitiated, a heel is a character who are meant to be the antagonist in any storyline – the polar opposite of the (baby)face or good guys. Heels tend to get their reactions by rule-breaking, taking advantage of their opponent, or generally showing traits that are immoral, offensive or contemptuous. Without a good heel, it’s hard to be an effective babyface for any period of time.
Granted, they’ve had injuries, but who do WWE have that are effective heels?
You’ve got Kevin Owens, who in spite of a handful of fans who cheer him because of his indy past, but he repeatedly comes across as someone who you’d not be able to get along with… because he wouldn’t want to! Problem is, he’s already had his legs somewhat cut-off of him, thanks in part to an encounter with Stephanie McMahon in the build-up to WrestleMania, where she scolded KO for daring to call the show “KO Mania”.
After Owens, you’ve got Chris Jericho, whose heel status seems to have been picked by a flip of the coin. Then who? Sheamus? Del Rio? Miz? Ryback? The Dudleyz? The Social Outcasts?
I’m only counting wrestlers (so no Stephanie, or Vince), given that the whole point of a heel is that they eventually get their comeuppance. Triple H drops off the list, since whilst he’s a heel on Raw, he’s literally a God-like creator figure amongst the NXT fans.
Compare that to the list of babyfaces, and you can see the disparity. Roman Reigns (allegedly). Sami Zayn. John Cena. Dean Ambrose. Brock Lesnar (as of the current coin flip). AJ Styles. And that’s not even counting the New Day, the newly turned Wyatt Family, or the expected babyface reaction that Seth Rollins and Randy Orton are likely to get (a la Cesaro). Can you see the problem here? Without any credible heels, the babyfaces are just… there. How can you really get invested in seeing the good guy when, when the bad guy didn’t really offer up much of a challenge? It’s the storyline equivalent of a steady diet of squash matches – yes, it’s nice to see the big names, but without anything meaningful to do, the fans will lose interest. We’ve already seen it; I would dare say that this has been one of the main drivers of Raw’s steady ratings decline (alongside, of course, three-hours-every-week).
Drop down to NXT, and there’s a similar pattern. From their last Takeover show, you could count the heel acts on two fingers: The Revival, and Baron Corbin. Samoa Joe falls into the “tweener” category, since he was a defacto heel against Finn Balor, but ended up showing babyface fire by repeatedly continuing the match in spite of the blood loss. Elsewhere on NXT, who do you have? Elias Samson – a man booed for having a bland, yet-still-unbelievable character? Blake & Murphy – the very definition of defacto heels?
Unfortunately, on the independent circuit, the nature of indy wrestling means that some performers choose to sacrifice being a heel over a payday. At almost every indy show, you’ll see wrestlers selling their wares – t-shirts, photos, DVDs, and more. To the masses, heels are less popular than babyfaces, save for a few choice examples. If this were real, why would fans give money to you if you’re beating up their favoured stars? What’s that, I hear you say… “because you’re following the cool heels”.
Ah yes, the cool heels. Popularised by DX (in their first incarnation), the nWo and more recently, the Bullet Club, these are usually guys who display heel characteristics, but at the expense of a babyface who is made to look clueless by falling for it. I’m not talking about pratfalls, but babyfaces who continually fall for distraction attacks and lose because of it. Babyfaces who fall for the handshake/sucker punches. Time. After time. After time. And invariably, it leads these groups to be pushed like babyfaces, and booked like heels… for most of the time. They sell merchandise, they get cheered – in spite of their dastardly behaviour – yet history has shown that if left unchecked, these acts usually lead to the downfall of a promotion, especially if they become the main act.
Look at the nWo – from 1996 to 2000, they ran roughshod over WCW, to the point where the main storyline was nWo versus WCW. The heel “invaders” quickly became the cool guys to cheer, and were flattening almost anything associated to WCW. As a result, the WCW “home team” became (as Bryan Alvarez would say) geeks, and fans were more often than not ashamed to cheer for them. Not even five years on from the nWo’s creation, WCW became little more than another set of trademarks owned by WWE.
Fortunately, that’s the extreme example: the Bullet Club, for example, are “cool heels” who haven’t run roughshod over New Japan to the point where their roster has become ineffective, since the booking there saw the “home team” actually get wins over the invaders. Ditto D-Generation X – before they became fully fledged babyfaces with an edge – they too had their comeuppances from time to time.
Speaking of Japan, professional wrestling is portrayed as more of a sport than in the US, and whilst the likes of New Japan do have characters that are clearly defined as heels (such as Tetsuya Naito and the rest of Los Ingobernables de Japon), but on the whole, the babyface/heel alignment depends on whatever their current feud is. Katsuyori Shibata, for instance, comes across as the bad guy for targetting “the Third Generation” in New Japan (Messrs. Kojima, Tenzan, Nakanishi and Nagata) – which you’d expect from a culture that has such reverence for older performers. However, you’d probably be able to pluck Shibata into another match, and he’d get cheered for his performances without having to do anything different.
Whilst that style works in Japan – and to some extent, in the western world – the bedrock of professional wrestling has been good guy against bad guy. That doesn’t mean the antiquated, passe “super hero versus evil villain” structure, or the return of stereotypical comic-book-like characters. What it does mean is that every match that the fans are expected to care about, should contain characters we care about – people who we have a reason to cheer, people who we have a reason to boo… and no, just saying “boo this man” isn’t enough. Sure, it’s not easy to get boo’ed in the current era, where saying “this town sucks”, putting down the local sports team or even getting into it with fans just won’t cut it. It’s not going to be an easy road back, but having guys who cheat to win, with subtlety, is a way back. As is having braggadocious heels whose trajectory doesn’t always bring them face to face with a “higher power” who’ll cut them off without any hope of an in-ring payoff (Stephanie McMahon… we’re looking at you!)
The problem – and it’s solution – is clear. Wrestling needs heels as much as it needs babyfaces. Without both parties in equal measure, the product quickly degenerates into nothing more than a move-fest, where the only things that fans can cheer for are the moves – and after a while, those cheers will wear thin. Without heels and babyfaces, wrestling becomes lopsided and as predictable. Or, as Bonny Tyler may have said:
I need a heel, I’m holding out for a heel… ‘Til the end of the night…