This past week on Ring of Honor, #1 Contender Tommaso Ciampa was knocked unconscious during his world championship match against ROH Champion "Unbreakable" Michael Elgin. Following the match, Ciampa regained consciousness to learn that the referee had stopped the bout (and I learned that the term "referee stoppage" is a legitimate term) and awarded the victory to Elgin After refusing a respectful handshake from Elgin, Ciampa proceeded to take his frustrations out on anyone in sight: from the ring and production crew, to commentators and ring announcers. Yet, even as Ciampa continually drove his knee into Bobby Cruise's skull, the crowd cheered wildly. This got me to thinking:
What does it take to be a real heel in professional wrestling, anymore?
Now, I realize that Ring of Honor tends to skew toward the more "hardcore" fanbase (we're not talking tweens with foam fingers), but if a man can beat up innocent bystanders and still have the crowd behind him, then how can a man be truly hated in wrestling, and is being truly hated really even an option anymore? It's not simply about "cheap heat". Knocking the local city's sports teams won't get you the kind of venomous jeers a true bad guy is looking for. It goes deeper than that.
If we assume that Ring of Honor fans enjoy cheering Ciampa because they're Ring of Honor fans, then we also have to consider why a man like WWE's Rusev, with his tried and true anti-American gimmick, is so universally reviled. After all, we know it's a gimmick, but we feed into it, anyway. We can also ask why Dean Ambrose, who displays no clear allegiance to anyone but himself, is so identifiable and why John Cena, who professes to do all things for love of the business and the fans, is adored only by those who are young enough to wear his t-shirts and still sit at the Cool Kids Table.
On the surface, these answers seem simple enough: Rusev is against our country, and to cheer him would be unpatriotic. Dean Ambrose has that "devil may care" swagger we all wish we had, while John Cena's the boy scout we all cringe to be (even if most of us are at heart).
So this leads to a bigger question: How did we get to a point where the bad guys are the fan favorites?
Before I answer that question, I'm going to answer this question:
Who's the biggest heel in professional wrestling?
I'll give you some hints:
It's not Brock Lesnar or Paul Heyman.
It's not Triple H or Stephanie McMahon.
It's not MVP or even Dixie Carter.
Nope. It's this guy:
That's right: the father of modern-day professional wrestling is also the most hated man in the industry.
Now, before we get our collective trunks in a bunch, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say things like, "Are you kidding? Dixie Carter gets a much more hated reaction than Vince McMahon! In fact, if Vince McMahon showed up on Raw this Monday, we'd have 20,000 fans standing on their feet and applauding! WWE would be so much better if Vince came back to TV!"
I could spend an entire column talking about all the great things Vince McMahon has done for the product that is professional wrestling. Wrestlemania, Monday Night Raw, The Attitude Era, etc. That's great, and I, along with the entire wrestling community, are forever indebted to Vince for taking pro wrestling out of bingo halls and throwing it up on the grand stage alongside the world's greatest showcases.
Unfortunately, Vince McMahon is also single-handedly responsible for coining the phrase "sports entertainment" and making "wrestling" a dirty word in the biggest wrestling promotion in the world. As his vision for his empire grows, he slowly begins to distance himself from the industry that helped make him a success. One need look no further than the fact that Dean Ambrose will miss a month's worth of television to film a low budget WWE Studios film to realize that the priorities within WWE are shifting -- or perhaps have already shifted -- drastically.
But, just as many accuse George Lucas of spurning the fans that made him a billionaire, Vince McMahon can be seen as the man who took the "attitude" (a word that was once his company's cornerstone) out of WWE. While it's true you can have fun reminiscing about all the unpredictable mayhem of the late 90's on WWE Network (for just $9.99 a month), don't look for too much of it in today's product.
In his effort to appeal to a younger fanbase (and the parents of that fanbase along with the shareholders keeping his company afloat), Vince traded middle fingers and beer chugging for rainbow-colored t-shirts and a squeaky clean image. Most fans like to blame John Cena for all this, but even he had to undergo a makeover, renaming his finishing moves from the FU and STFU to the AA and STF, respectively. That's right: WWE even took the attitude out of the golden child.
That's not to say WWE hasn't bred some great stars and given us some great moments in the decade-plus following the close of wrestling's last "golden age", but I wonder how much more intriguing those stars would be if they were taken off their leash. Apparently, I'm not the only one who's asked that question, because other promotions have picked up where Vince McMahon left off.
Ring of Honor and Impact Wrestling have long since lauded themselves as "alternatives" for the hardcore wrestling fan. They highlight the fact that there is less talking and more wrestling. They tell you their wrestling is better. They're not even afraid to use the word "wrestling". But, most importantly, they do what Vince doesn't.
Anybody remember this?
For those of you who may be too young to remember (or old enough to forget), this was an ad campaign run by videogame juggernaut Sega back when they made home consoles and were attempting to topple the dreaded empire of Nintendo. They touted that their console, the Genesis, would do all the things Nintendo's wouldn't...including providing users with the choice to play grittier, edgier games that Nintendo shied away from.
Let's go back to Wrestlemania 22 and that epic encounter between Triple H and John Cena. We all remember that moment in the match where Cena and "The Game" are trading blows back and forth. Remember how the crowd cheered Triple H and booed Cena? Because Triple H was everything Cena wasn't, and we liked that, even if we'd spent the previous three years wishing he'd shut the hell up and put someone over for a change. He was the anti-Cena: a vestige of the Attitude Era we loved so well come save us from the monotony of this new chapter of history.
This was the beginning of the modern-day heel: the bad guy who is actually the good guy. Because it's the bad guys who are allowed to show the attitude. These days the faces all come out and pander to the crowd and try very hard to make people like them. It's the heels that come out without a care in the world for what people think about them and get to unleash all manner of hell on their more naive opponents just to get a check in the "Win" column. And we respect that about them.
It shows a passion, and that is something that is sorely lacking in today's product, particularly in WWE. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but everything is so tightly wound at this point that watching wrestling has become more habitual than enjoyable. The faces get to win because they're the good guys rather than because they want it more. Meanwhile, a man who beats up the ring crew is getting cheered by a few hundred people because his actions speak to a desire to succeed. Even if it's just a character-driven point, isn't all of it? Aren't the good guys just good guys because that's how you want us to see them? And aren't the bad guys just bad guys because you told them to win in a sneaky fashion? For all we know, some of our favorite stars could be complete jerks backstage. We don't know that. All we know is what we see.
So when we see a man get suplexed sixteen times, sure, we'll feel sorry for him. We'll even feel sorry when he loses the match and his championship. But secretly, we're cheering the guy who wanted that championship bad enough that he was willing to do anything to get it.
