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: Matt Hardy
So even with the use of his obsolete brother, Matt Hardy was unable to progress in the BFG tournament, he is biting a lot in matches now though, which always bodes well for heel rankings in my book.
9: Kevin Owens
Owens appears to be aligning himself with Jericho in a more official capacity, which could mean big things, at least in the short term. Those two could run the tag division of Raw for the foreseeable future and no matter what I like seeing everyone be given something to do, so far the brand split has been a success for booking.
8: Decay
Even with Rosemary off in fantasy, aka childhood trauma, land, the death dealers (I still kind of hate that name) still managed to retain their tag team titles against the Bromans. Decay remind me of the New Day, alright not in terms of the power of positivity but hear me out. They remind me of the group in terms of a team that holds onto the tag team titles looooooong after they need to.
7: Mike Bennett & Maria
There was a time where this pairing was mostly all about Maria and the Miracle took a backseat. Right now it is Bennett who is in the spotlight and Maria’s quest to control the knockouts division seems to have subsided for the minute. Still though the two are clearly the power couple of TNA and have a lot more gas in the tank before they burn out.
6: Rusev & Lana
Speaking of power couples, these two tied the knot this week and celebrated with a US title defence win over Mark Henry. I’m not sure how to feel about Rusev’s new run. On the one hand he is in exactly the same position he was before he lost the title to John Cena and doesn’t look to be going up the card any time soon. On the other, he does have a death grip over the US title and in the WWE it can be argued that swimming in the same place is hard enough and we should just be impressed that he hasn’t fallen down the card into some going-nowhere tag team (shut up about Owens and Jericho, that will be heel magic!)
5: Charlotte & Dana Brooke
This duo work well together even without the women’s title to back them up. While there are rumours of Charlotte taking some time off soon I would imagine they will still have a big title rematch at Summerslam before that happens. I think Raw’s handling of the women has been better than Smackdown’s, at least this week. I would say that showcasing your main stars, with room for others to enter the picture later, works better than just parading your whole division in the space of sixty seconds and giving them little to nothing to say, that just made them all look completely unimportant, especially without a title to back them up. If Smackdown is going to have a women’s title (oh god what if they bring the divas title back for that?!) then maybe they should have saved that segment for when it was announced as then at least all the women would have had a reason to come out and stake their claim.
4: Eli Drake
The King of the Mountain champion had some harsh words for Bobby Lashley this week and then delivered a beating to the Cowboy, James Storm. I would like to see Eli get a shot at Lashley, but just like with the Miracle, I don’t think he would do too well, even though he is arguably the better heel and able to draw better heat as champion. There is a certain mentality that exists in wrestling that someone being a ‘legit’ fighter is better than someone who can sell more through their promo skills, it’s how Lesnar has risen to where he is at this point. While I have no real problem with Lashley or Lesnar as champion, I disagree that they are overall better than someone who can take care of business on the microphone more than in the ring. Frankly, I don’t care who could win in a real fight, that is a strange thing to prize when you choose professional wrestling as your ‘sport’ of choice.
3: Seth Rollins
We are getting into the big three now. With the brand split in full effect it now becomes a lot harder to make it into the top three as each wrestler now has one or two segments to get across enough and earn enough points to separate them from the pack. Rollins did that this week by berating Balor and taking care of Sami Zayn on Raw. In my head there is a terrible battle between who I want to see win the Universal title (could we possibly get a better name please?). Balor would be a great champion, the win would cement him as a top tier talent right out the gate, and it would send a message about the ‘new era’ being a legit thing. Then again, it might be too soon and the crowd loves an underdog and seemingly turns on anyone who actually achieves anything, also giving Seth another first would be great for his career and raise him to an even higher level in my opinion. Both would be worthy winners and both go against the convention of ‘bigger is better’, so in the end it is win-win, much like it will be in the Ambrose-Ziggler match for the WWE title.
2: Bobby Lashley
I might have been questioning Lashley earlier but it is hard to deny his dominant title defence this week against DJ Z. I still think that giving him the X Division title does nothing for the belt, or really Lashley for that matter, but at this point the title has already been degraded over and over again that it begs the question as to whether or not it even matters. However, you have to hope that this won’t be a long term thing as the title should definitely be defended on a more regular basis and should be the centre of substantial feuds in TNA, not an afterthought that is defended when Lashley has nothing to do in terms of the heavyweight title. Then there is the question of how Lashley is actually going to lose the belt, my guess would be that it will be in a thrown together multi-man match where he probably doesn’t have to be involved in the decision and someone else gets involved to cost him the belt. It is an obvious move that will serve to get no one over and further drive down the standing of this once great belt.
1: Chris Jericho
Why did Jericho come out to defend Charlotte this week on Raw? I don’t know but it certainly earned him enough heel points to top the chart over all the other potential contenders. I got a little too excited when I thought that the mixed tag that they had against Sasha and Enzo would allow the men to face the women and vice versa. At some point you have to believe that the WWE will allow inter-gender wrestling, but who knows when that will actually be. I have always been a big believer in there being no real reason why women can’t face men in professional wrestling, after all the weight classes mean very little and everything can be structured so that it doesn’t matter so why not go for it. Any legitimate arguments as to size, stature or athletic differences go out the window when you take the competitive element out of such an event and this has been the case since the beginning of kayfabe. The only reason not to put the women against the men is some outdated notion that losing to a woman would be embarrassing, to which I would reply: “not if you book them right!”
Rolling Chart – Week Twenty-Nine
1st Place: Kevin Owens (209) (-)
2nd Place: Chris Jericho (133) (-)
3rd Place: Charlotte (98) (-)
4th Place: The Miz & Maryse (94) (-)
5th Place: Matt Hardy (87) (-)
6th Place: Maria & Co. (87) (-)
7th Place: The Club (70) (-)
8th Place: Seth Rollins (63) (-)
9th Place: Bobby Lashley (54) (New Entry)
10th Place: The New Day (49) (-1)
That’s all for this week, Chris Jericho doesn’t seem to want to go away until he tops Kevin Owens on the rolling chart, which will be interesting if they do indeed become some sort of tag team. Now that the Club have been broken up it looks like Seth Rollins is the next biggest threat climbing up the chart, although Lashley is close on his heels. There is only the New Day left to be knocked off before we have a chart of mostly active heels and teams, and then things can really start cooking. Unfortunately, Lucha Underground’s season format, while perhaps better for its performers, doesn’t exactly help its heels when they can’t even earn points for a month or two. Still the chart will keep rolling on and I will keep tallying up the heel points each week until the whole dynamic is completely scrapped.
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.
