The Heel Report – Week Thirty Seven (AJ Styles, Charlotte, Dana Brooke, Maryse, Nia Jax)

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Welcome to the Heel Report, a weekly breakdown of the best heels in professional wrestling right now. Each week the heels will be ranked out of ten and then those numbers will go on to form the rolling chart that continues each week. This is a place to evaluate and praise the ‘baddies’ of wrestling in their efforts to make us boo them mercilessly so let’s show them some love and get on with the report!

 

Weekly Top Ten:

 

10: Nia Jax

nia jax

It wasn’t the prettiest of matches but Jax managed to put away Alicia Fox for a win on the Clash of Champions PPV.

 

9: Brian Kendrick

brian-kendrick

Kendrick put in a great effort in the first Cruiserweight championship match against TJ Perkins. Everyone else in the division so far who has appeared on the main roster has shown only a slight amount of real personality, whereas Kendrick is already THE heel of the division and will get a second shot at the title next week, so things are looking good for him right now.

 

8: Rusev & Lana

rusevlana

Rusev may have lost his title this week, but he also looked better than he has done in a while, giving a solid fight to the chosen one Roman Reigns. He certainly has come off of this in a better position than he did when he lost the title to Cena the last time. The only thing now is that I am not sure where he has to go, maybe they can put him in a whacky tag team or something.

 

7: AJ Styles

styles-champ

The face that runs the place truly is finding his place on Smackdown. Styles coming to the company now seems to be just the right place at the right time for the guy as who knows how often he would have got lost in the shuffle in the past ten years. Any time before now Styles easily could have become what Ziggler is; a great talent but stuck in a hole so big that he might not get out no matter what. Instead he is the WWE champion and possibly the best thing going on the blue brand.

 

6: The Usos

Chad Gable injured by USOS on Smackdown live

I’m already starting to be a big fan of the new heel Usos, they have become so methodical in the ring and have a certain menace that Anderson & Gallows had before they started to lose to everybody, especially the New Day. Unfortunately there are perhaps too many new and old stars being brought up and developed for these two to get any real chance to shine. After all what with Heath Slater’s storyline already sidelining American Alpha, how can you then expect the dark Usos to go on the winning streak that they need.

 

5: The Miz & Maryse

mizmaryse

This couple has gone full traditional heel, complete with some sort of miscellaneous prop to aid in the winning of matches via blinding an opponent. While this isn’t the worst thing to see I am slightly perplexed as to why Ziggler is still being treated the way he is. It is one thing for a guy to be overlooked, it is another for the company to acknowledge it and then play it up until he drops out of the status of loveable underdog and down to a no hoper.

 

4: Sheamus

Sheamus

So the best of seven series ended in a tie? That is typical current WWE booking and kind of undermines the entire point of the whole thing. I mean sure, it gave the two something to do for about a month, and now they are paired in a pointless oddball tag team, but it is all just so much treading water. This is the type of non-storyline that is used to fill time and is one of the reasons why I get it when people complain about Raw being 3 hours. The real problem with trying to do a tag team like this is that the success of Team Hell No still casts a long shadow over such a thing, also I’m not sure either man has the same comedic ability.

 

3: Charlotte & Dana Brooke

Charlotte & Dana

The Raw women’s champion and her shadow managed to keep the title again on PPV, which is a sneaky new reason as to why Charlotte possibly lost the title when she did on Raw. I still can’t get over how Raw only has basically three women to work with in their division, with Brooke and Jax as possibilities down the road. It might have been a better idea to just have all the women on Raw and then have given the cruiserweights to Smackdown, or visa versa. I get that you want to put female wrestling on an equal platform, but it is pretty hard to do that when you only have a couple of characters to work with, and that’s even after they brought Bayley up!

 

2: Chris Jericho

Chris Jericho

I was very conflicted as to whether I should group Jeri-KO together this week or not but in the end each man had enough individual merit to take the top two spots on the chart respectfully. Jericho gets my respect for not sleeping despite his veteran status, he is on another hot streak and while I don’t necessarily agree with him beating Sami Zayn, he certainly gave it his all in the match and was at his heel best. He was then involved in the main event title match at the end of the PPV and helped his best friend not only retain the title there, but also win a main event tag match on Raw. Jericho’s aging rocker persona is another great invention and can easily be exploited for a long while to come, I’m just not sure he should ever be winning non-tag matches personally.

 

1: Kevin Owens

kevin-owens-champ

I know I keep saying this but who would have thought a couple of years ago that Kevin Owens would now be in the role of heel chosen one for Raw and be main eventing a PPV as champion. This is the inverse of the Daniel Bryan story since now the Authority’s chosen face of the company is the least likely man to have ever been chosen by the company at any time before this. Are we at a point where the old WWE mentality is actually out the window and we are seeing a real shift in philosophy? Well there is certainly a possibility since the man who Owens replaced didn’t exactly fit the mould either, so there is a good argument for at least a small change in mindset, now if only they could get a good and consistent writing team. Also the ‘suck it’ to the referee at Clash was awesome, even if it did end in him putting himself through a table.

 

Rolling Chart – Week Thirty-Seven

1st Place:              Kevin Owens                     (268) (-)

2nd Place:             Chris Jericho                       (172) (-)

3rd Place:              The Miz & Maryse           (127) (-)

4th Place:              Charlotte                             (124) (-)

5th Place:              Maria & Mike Bennett   (114) (-)

6th Place:              Matt Hardy                         (101) (-)

7th Place:              AJ Styles                              (87) (-)

8th Place:              Seth Rollins                         (81) (-)

9th Place:              Bobby Lashley                   (74) (-)

10th Place:            The Club                              (74) (-)

 

That’s all for this week, this PPV every two weeks malarkey is getting hard and it has only been two! Still there is a better chance now for different guys to take the spotlight, so there is something to be said for that. Of course this could all turn around and in in six months we could have Cena and Reigns as champions on the separate brands, because you know that is what they want really. Evil!

Agree with the rankings? Disagree? Who was your favourite heel of the week? Whatever the case, leave comment down below and come back next week for another dose of heel-ly goodness and for now this is James Wright signing off.