Do heels exist anymore?

Bray Wyatt. Wade Barrett. Cesaro. Brock Lesnar. What do these guys have in common? All are booked as heels, but rarely get a heel reaction from the crowd. The number of phone lights around Wyatt is ever increasing, the crowd love hearing Barretts bad news, and they just plain love Cesaro and Lesnar. Out of all the heels currently working in the WWE, only 3-4 get a real reaction from the crowd, and only one of them is a full time wrestler. So whats went wrong? First, lets take a look at the 4 reaction getting heels.

Paul Heyman. This guy is just amazing at what he does, which is getting the crowd going. He knows exactly how to work a crowd, as proved on RAW when he teased Lesnar only to unveil Cesaro. His mannerisms, attitude and appearance scream heel.

Stephanie McMahon and Triple H. These two have worked excellently as heels while trying to screw Daniel Bryan, and Triple H did his part in carrying Evolution through the feud with the Shield (on the stick anyway). Triple H is putting in his best work in years, and Steph, argueably has never been better.

Seth Rollins. He's only so far up the heel list at the moment because its so soon after turning on The Shield. It was a shock no one saw coming and he'll be remembered for it for years, the crowd wont be so easy to forgive. Aligning with Triple H at this point is guaranteed heat though - so its not all Rollins works.

So what separates these 4 from the other heels mentioned? They give you a reason to boo them.

The Wyatt family were getting good heat at the beginning of the year, but once he started to feud with a guy who splits the crowd as much as Cena, he may as well be a face. BNB comes out and slags the crowd off, but the love the gimmick so much they forgive him and chant his name during matches. Cesaro is over with the 'smarks' in the crowd, and as much as I think he is trying to get under peoples skin with the 'Cesaro Swagger' people will still like him. Lesnar needs no briefing. The guy is unbelievable to watch and thats why they love him. The most heat he has had since he came back is after he beat the Undertaker, which is heat ANYONE would have got. All these guys are heels in promos and stuff until the get into the ring, then the lines get blurry.

When was the last time a heel cheated to win? Holding the tights during a schoolboy or putting their feet on the ropes? When did a heel Champion intentionally get themselves DQ'd to retain the title? When did a heel last do something truly heel like? Rusev is busy running through the black portion of the locker room - to much indifference - and the only time Lana gets heat is when she mentions Putin, and thats more heat on Putin than her. Fandango and Sandow are just jokes now. RyBaxel never get much of a reation from the crowd. Neither does ADR. You could make the arguement that one of the best heels today is Frak Bo Dallas because he gives the crowd a reason to hate him, but it could be so much more.

You go back 10 years ago, to when Evolution ruled RAW and JBL's Cabinet ruled SmackDown. Both guys were heels. Both were World Champions, and both were damn good at it. Triple H was the guy who didnt care what happened, as long as he left with the Championship. Getting DQ'd, taking advantage of a ref bump/distraction, having Evolution interfere - didnt matter, as long as he was Champ. JBL was the self proclaimed 'Wrestling God' who never beat anyone, always somehow managed to fluke away with the title. Both of these things infuriated me, but you would tune in week after week to hope to see them get their comeuppance, which they both did at WrestleMania 21 to Batista and Cena respectively. The best heels are the ones who you love to hate. Imagine how much more you could hate Dallas if he used the inspirational gimmick but was a cheating bastard? He'd get much better reactions.

Why arent heels allowed to act like heels anymore? Is Vince deliberately blurring the lines and allowing the crowd to decide who the like and who they dont ALA UFC? Or is it down to the crowds themselves? The so called 'smarks' who just seem intent to go against the grain, almost out of spite? Is it because the storylines seem to be taking a back seat at the moment and thus we arent invested in the old school good guy-bad guy routine? But why should you hate a guy if he does nothing to give you a reason to? The best heels are sly, arrogant, lucky and cheaters. Not the kind of guys we have today, who always seem to win cleanly.

This is also having a detrimental affect on the faces of the company, because if you have no reason to hate a heel, you have no reason to cheer the face other than the fact you like them.

WWE needs to take a step back and look at its story telling over the past few years, and maybe take a lesson from yesteryear. Heels need to be bad guys. Heels need to be disliked. And most importantly, heels need to be heels.

Lesnar generally does well, through to his body language and of course Heyman, to remain a heel. The crowd want him to lose his matches. Except Cena.

I think the problem is twofold. The faces they choose are often made to be unlikeable. The heels they have dont want to be heels. Orton has been fantastic since turning at just being a heel constantly.

Wyatt and Cesaro are two that are notably guilty of not playing to their heel role. It took a long time for Wyatt to be a heel in that Cena feud, finally trying to kill King (a face move to some smarks). Cesaro keeps doing that swing.

Brilliant post Samo, you've captured all my frustrations about how heels are presented in the WWE at the moment. Another reason the heels don't translate well is due to the commentary. When heels used to cheat when JR was commentating you could feel his disgust pour through the TV sets. Nowadays when a heel cheats Michael Cole allows himself to be talked over by JBL, and cannot get the point across that what the heel has done is wrong.

Great post Samo

I know he is hated on here, but Batista is my favorite genuine "heel" he gets the reaction, doesn't give a dam etc.

Most of the blame has to go to the smarks. Even if WWE followed all your points and presented heels properly, smarks are still gonna cheer people like Cesaro, Bad News Barrett and Bray Wyatt because they like to think they are cool going against the grain.

Indeed, although WWE could very easily bring things about to their standard heel/face divide if they picked the right faces and heels, and pushed the popular ones more than their chosen ones.

It's where WWE can struggle because of it being in front of a live crowd, while it is generally considered normal for the villain of a TV show or film to be very popular amongst fans as they tend to be the more interesting characters, this doesn't harm the character as an antagonist because the film is unaware of this fact and does not have to reference it.

WWE struggles in this regards and I wish the fans were more astute to realise that their favourite heels would be more successful with boos. Otherwise what can happen is genuinely disliked characters become more successful because they get the desired reaction.

Yup a great article indeed, loved every bit of it and you echoed all our sentiments well.

Outside blaming WWE story writers do we have strong heel characters these days? like you mentioned we haven't got a HHH, Kurt Angle, HBK, Mr. Perfect, Ric Flair etc,...

While Lesnar is good he is not a equivalent of the names above.

To rectify this scenario WWE first needs to invest on long term wrestlers and slowly make them succesful yet hated, the heels have to have long run as champions and then when a face beats him after a lot of struggle it adds a new dimension.

I really did like How Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit erupted the scene as champions after toiling hard like 16-17 years, both did a great heel character for quite a while, people even started to fall in love with Eddie when he turned as a heelish face.

WWE is getting boring, no heels, no mythological characters, no surprises, no long standings, no great come backs [yea we finally had some in lesnar], no more fatties like King Kong Bundy, yokozuna etc,.. no more new Giants like Andre the Giant, Under taker, Kane, Big Show .

All we see today is same characters with no difference , not sure how these gonna keep people entertained.