Heels Have to Be Interesting/Entertaining Too

[romanstylesiii]

All the best old school heels (Rock, Flair, Piper, Lawler, McMahon, Bryan right now of SDL etc) were EXTREMELY interesting/entertaining.

The top 3 current heels on RAW are all carbon copies of each other and WWE has seemed to think people are booing them because we don't like them, but in reality, we are booing them because we don't want to see them. That is a huge difference.

Being serious and beating down a semi over face is not interesting or entertaining. Vince has stated SO MANY times that he is in the "Entertainment Business". These guys are being positioned to be deliberately boring. If you look at any TV show, the villain is often more entertaining and complex than the protagonist. This also used to be the case in the WWE, but for whatever reason the WWE decided to switch to this boring heel model.

[KobashiChop]

True. As a heel you do your best work outside of the match. Monotonous beatdowns followed by loud and angry poses just don't really draw interest.

Samoa Joe is a textbook heel. He never loses credibility when he loses the big matches because he can always talk himself back into his spot. It's what made Piper great.

The whole point is to make the crowd want to see you get your ass kicked.



Look at the UFC, I f***ing despise Conor McGregor, but there's a reason why Ive watched every time he's fought.

[spagett]

Yeah I've never bought into the idea that a heel should be boring.

All the best heels were bombastic, I mean look at the likes of The Macho King or the Million Dollar man. They were dripping in swag and charisma and yet they were still hated heels.

You just have to create babyfaces exciting and fun enough so that they get cheered anyway.

In 1999 The Rock was incredibly fun to watch as a heel and yet every time he came up against Stone Cole he was booed and Austin was cheered. It feels like they worry their babyfaces aren't over enough so they have to dilute the heels.

[Ecks Ecks Ringout Ecks Ecks]

This is one of the reasons I object to the "new heel heat" they seem to be experimenting with.

They seem to think that they can take any kind of negative fan reaction and spin it into proof that a heel is successful, but that's not how it works. It's an entirely different feeling, wanting to pay money to see a babyface triumph over the villain, versus being sick of some bland motherf***er who's constantly put in important angles to the point of overexposure.

[Friday Night SmackOwn]

Smackdown has it good with their heels being entertaining, particularly with Daniel Bryan and Samoa Joe. Hell, even Vince (as part of the Kofi angle) does well.

[nisidhe]

Mar 22, 2019 18:29:05 GMT -5 Ecks Ecks Ringout Ecks Ecks said:

This is one of the reasons I object to the "new heel heat" they seem to be experimenting with.

They seem to think that they can take any kind of negative fan reaction and spin it into proof that a heel is successful, but that's not how it works. It's an entirely different feeling, wanting to pay money to see a babyface triumph over the villain, versus being sick of some bland motherf***er who's constantly put in important angles to the point of overexposure.

The trouble began with the nWo angle, I think. Here was a bunch of guys so utterly dominant and so "meta" that they seemed to exist solely to destroy fan enjoyment of pro wrestling. How many gang beatdowns of your main event faces do you have to watch before you decide that a) the faces are chumps, b) you're not enjoying what's being presented and c) you're looking for the exits or the TV remote so you don't have to watch it anymore? For me, it's three: but that's either because I studied Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature at uni and learned about the power of threes, or because I'm stupid. Lately, I'm leaning more towards the latter.

[Final Countdown Jones]

Yeah I've never bought this idea heels need to be bland and shitty, that they need to work like absolute dogshit so the crowd doesn't pop, that if they were entertaining they'd be cheered. Daniel f***ing Bryan is getting booed right now; all it takes is good heel work and a good face to work in opposition to. Less than a year ago he was triumphantly returning from career-ending injury still a big fan favorite. Now he's got the crowd salivating for the idea of him losing the title, and it's making for way more interesting TV. He can cut heel promos and then still have good matches, and because he's able to work well constructed and exciting matches, it makes the action all the more intense. Rest holds to stuff a face's momentum work. Being all the heel does makes it boring because the peril that comes from something visually disinteresting. If the heel outright trashes a dude with lots of varied offense and keeps up consistent pressure it makes it all the more grueling, at least when done right

[Deleted]

Corbin, Lasley and McIntyre have to be the most boring set of main event heels I've seen in my entire life of wrestling. Remember back when the NWO had bums on their squad and those guys just stood around and did shit? Guys like Scott Norton, Horace Hogan, imagine if those guys became main eventers and that's who these 3 are. They're just so damn boring, stale, it makes me not want to tune in.

Heels need to be interesting to a degree but I don't believe they need to be so interesting that you want them to always win. I'm honestly sick of the "cool heel", I want heels who you want to generally be beaten which is why Bryan's a great example of it. It varies. We do need more interesting heels for sure but they need to do 1 thing: they need to make you root for the faces more than ever. All three of the dudes in the OP, I don't root for the faces more. I think "f***, I'm not here for this shit."

[Deleted]

You can do entertaining work and still be a hated heel even in today's era. Bryan, Ciampa, Owens and even Orton when he was doing that shit with Jeff's ear have shown that over the years. You give us awesome babyfaces like Becky, Kofi, Gargano and Miz and we'll boo.

[Deleted]

There needs to be more weaseley chicken shit heels, almost everyone is some sort of badass

[arrogantmodel]

1) Face is in the ring calling out the heel.

2) Heel's music hits, and walks out.

3) Face challenges heel to a fight "right here, right now."

4) Heel starts down the ramp, but stops halfway down.

5) Heel says, "We'll fight on my terms!"

6) Heel turns and walks back.

Whatever stops that bullshit from happening like three f***ing times a show...I am all for. Every heel being like that is painfully boring.

[MrElijah]

Mar 22, 2019 19:35:29 GMT -5 @akeemresurrection said:

There needs to be more weaseley chicken shit heels, almost everyone is some sort of badass

Give me a bullshit artist heel. Example, Terry Funk in Florida. Despite on video trying to attack Dusty and basically start a riot, he tries to make himself look like a hero.

Also let the heels be heels. Show a guy like Lio flaunting his cash.

[Deleted]

As far as I'm concerned, being entertaining is vastly more important than being booed. I'd a lot rather watch a heel who gets cheered like crazy but is entertaining than one who gets booed but is boring as hell.

[Bo Rida]

I watched a hhh interview years ago where he referred to "heel towns", boring heels seem to exist to combat this.
Sure smarks do default to that at times but create and interesting heel, a more compelling face and book them well then shockingly reactions tend to go as planned in any town. Look at Bayley at her nxt peak, years before you'd never have thought a character like that would be cheered over Sasha but it happened in front of the smarkiest crowds with the later being entertaining throughout.

You have to want to see the heel defeated, not want them off your screen full stop, ratings suggest that isn't happening.

Can't imagine it helps live attendances either. Who do they think goes to raw, watches 5 Corbin segments and thinks they can't wait for the next time raw comes to town?

[Nr1Humanoid]

WWE needs to learn the art of subtlety. Even the smallest things can be huge at drawing heat.

[Ryback on a Pole!]

I hate the WWEs reasoning that a villain can't be entertaining.

Imagine if George Lucas thought Vader was too over and decided to put him in a suit and make srs

Or Magnetos powers were too flashy so he started using a chinlock

[Big DSR Energy]

Heaven forbid a villain character should have a fanbase. Y'know that really ruined the Batman, Star Wars, James Bond, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Hellraiser, Dracula, Power Rangers, GI Joe, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, and Doctor Who franchises.

Me quoting me from a few years ago.

[HMARK Center]

It's kind of the point I keep making in threads about where WWE's character work goes so wrong a lot of the time: wrestling is at its best when it's a clash of personalities, which doesn't automatically mean "we need a pure white hat and a pure villain so the crowd will 100% cheer one and 100% boo the other". It should be a clash of ideologies, styles, beliefs, behaviors, etc. among characters who are identifiable to the audience. Obviously this can include the traditional "pure babyface hero vs. vile hated heel" conflict, so there's definitely a place for that, but it doesn't have to be at the heart of the conflict.

When you decide to strip a character of anything that makes them interesting, you instantly take this factor out of consideration. Instead of the audience wanting Wrestler A to beat Wrestler B because Wrestler B's greed/ego/worldview is awful and Wrestler A needs to avenge what's right and bring justice to the world, the audience now just wants Wrestler B to go away. The theory is that the fans will thus cheer Wrestler A for delivering the mercy of getting rid of boring Wrestler B, but instead the typical effect is that the crowd is just bored, generally, and neither character evolves, gets any development, or really gives the viewing audience a reason to want to see their match because there's no real conflict involved beyond the meta "we just want this guy off our screens" one, which does just about nothing to sell tickets.