Are you a bad Heel if you get cheered?

[KANE-A-KNIGHT]

We all know that the top heels in the WWE at the moment are Ortan, Jericho and Punk but, excluding Punk, Jericho and Ortan get noticeably cheered. Years ago when we think Heels we think Debiase, Savage, nWo and so on but none of these got cheered just pure booed.

So My question is does this make jericho and Ortan bad Heels or have the fans changed?

 

[The Dewbliners]

I think it's mostly the audiences changing. A few years ago, out of nowhere, a movement started. I refer to this movement as the "Let's be cool, and cheer the heels, while booing the faces" movement. It's purpose is to undercut the traditions and accepted behavior of the fans. Now, everybody seems to be on the bandwagon.

Certainly, it doesn't help that Jericho is amazing in the ring and on the Mic. But, you can still boo a heel, while occasionally cheering a move or two, to let them know you appreciate their work.

As far as Orton is concerned, I think he just gets cheered by the Movement. Fans, trying to be anti-establishment, counter culture, smart. There really is no point in cheering for him, as his whole character is classic heel. Cowardly, and all that.

So, yeah, you have two reasons, and they both serve as viable culprits.

 

[Stasischerge]

I think it has partly something to do with the faces not beeing good (or at least universal) faces. Just look at Cena or Rey Mysterio. They get cheered by the younger audience while the older male audience isn't that much into them...

 

[johnbragg]

It's that the audience has changed, and the business has changed.

STarting in the Attitude Era, there were more turns, so you have characters that people love strongly enough to cheer, heel or face, like Rock, Austin, Foley. You had faces do dastardly deeds like flip off the fans.

Angle came in with the heel character who thought he was a face. (I cheered him). The crowds' love of violence turned the Dudleys face, despite having put half of the women's division through tables in recent memory.

There is now a significant group of wrestlers who are more loved by the IWC smark types than by the average fan, whether they are currently heel or face--Angle, Christian, Jericho, Punk. AJ Styles in TNA probably fits this mold, although I don't know if he's ever been a heel. These guys aren't traditional perfect babyfaces, if that exists anymore. Their face reactions are limited--they will never get Hogan-Rock-Sting-Warrior pops. But now their heel reactions are limited too because a slice of the audience has to consciously remember to boo them because they like them.

But even your most traditional, paint-by-the-numbers babyface going today, Cena, has a slice of the audience that will never get behind him as a face. There is now a slice of the audience that came up during the Attitude Era that loves to cheer a heel.

 

[Blade]

It's not the wrestlers fault. Of course it's not the wrestlers fault. The creative team comes up with the material, the wrestler tries to do what he can with it. Considering the stuff Orton has been made done, I think it's still pretty impressive he's getting cheers. Orton was told to attack and punt Vince Mcmahon. Last time a wrestler attacked Mcmahon, he became one of the biggest faces of all time.

The crowd hasn't changed since the attitude era. Back then, people cheered heel Austin and face Rocky Maivia. Simple because Austin was extremely entertaining while Rocky wasn't. Yet Rocky was the one who WWE were trying to get over more, giving him that long IC title reign. The writers didn't realise that Austin stirring shit up was more entertaining than Rocky simply winning matches.

And now we're in this position again. WWE try to get John Cena over by making him win match after match, constantly playing the superman card and making his quite repetitive promos. Because that's what the writers think will get him super over as a face, yet he's still getting boos. Meanwhile, Orton was let do stuff like punt Vince Mcmahon in the head and attack Steph. And it was damn entertaining. So people started cheering for him. To Orton's credit, he tried to get heat by becoming slow and mechanical in the ring, but he's still getting cheers.

There was a formula that was made for heels and faces in the attitude era. Faces were tough bastards who took on everyone and gave entertaining promos where they ripped apart their opponents. Heels were cowardly half the time and they did whatever they could to screw over the faces, giving long bragging promos.

The amount of smarks that are around is even larger than the amount back in the attitude era. And yet WWE don't get it when heels are cheers and faces are booed, even though heels and faces are now being booked like they were back in the early 90's, when the crowd simply cheered for faces and booed heels. But it's not like that anymore...

 

[mrfluffypawss09]

Just because your getting cheered as a heel doesnt mean you suck it at it. It just means your doing your job correct. If Orton is getting cheered and Cena getting booed that means Orton is doing his Job and quite frankly Cena isint.

Orton is good at what he does he gets cheered. Just like the Dudley boys they came as heel they got cheered becuase of the things they did such as driving women threw tables. Orton is violent he Punts people in the head. Fans love that stuff they cheer for him. The more action you give the bigger responce

 

[The Snake]

I hate this idea that if you cheer a heel you're automatically doing it because you think you're "cool".

I treat WWE like I do my favorite sports, I have people and performers that I naturally like, and have usually done since I set eyes on them - Axiomatically these are people that began their careers (or I first saw them) as faces. Now, as I do with other sportsmen/sports teams I follow, if they do something wrong (heelish), I try and justify in some way.

A great example would be Edge, I was peaking as a wrestling fan in the early 00s, ergo every little kid loved Edge, I took a break from wrestling and when I returned I found myself liking the same people I had always done face or heel. It's not to be cool, not some showing of bravado, not a tendency to think I know any more than the next Tom, Dick or Harry, merely I go crazy when I hear X's music hit. Another example would be that my younger sisters really like Randy Orton, is he a bad heel because of this? Probably not.

I've heard the logic that if you like a heel, then booing them helps them - Which initially sounds fair game, but on the flipside if one dislikes a heel, why don't we cheer them so we can apparantly "cheapen" them? It's reverse logic at it's finest, you're asking people to give a false reaction just to "help" them, and that to me would be trying to act "cool".

I'm going to say that the best heels are the wrestlers you dislike the most, and the best faces are the wrestlers you like the most, fuck listening to the crowd, fuck looking at x, y or z - If you like them, cheer, if you dislike them then boo, the overarching feeling should be that you love wrestling and actually have an opinion on who you want to like, rather than going out there and booing because "wrezln sauxk".

 

[UseYourBrain]

If you're being cheered as a heel you're either terrible at your job, secretly enjoying the adulation and marketing perks, or you're (and this is by far the least likely) absolutely way too popular to every truly be a heel.

Everybody worships The Rock and I'll admit - he was very entertaining. However, he humiliated every opponent, be there heel OR face. He made himself look like God in every match, even when he lost, and more often than not, he made his opponent look like crap.

Let's take Billy Gunn as an example. Awesome athlete, sorta had the "it" factor with his charisma and Hollywood looks, but for some reason it was never fully tapped. Remember when they gave him a PPV feud against The Rock? I do - and I won't blame Gunn's lack of main event success on Rocky entirely, but I remember The Rock absolutely destroying Gunn on the mic, downplaying his accomplishments, and humiliating the crap out of him - and The Rock was the GOOD GUY!!! So how much pay off is there at the PPV when Gunn gets beat clean by The Rock? Zero. He'd been beaten every week up until then anyway. The Rock SUCKED as a heel AND a face when it comes to trust among the wrestlers and everybody helping everybody. He's more like Goldberg in that he's best used as a wrecking machine, though he could do it verbally AND physically, where Goldberg was all physical. Rocky seemed to love the cheers way too much to make any stars.

Another thing that happens is like in HBK's situation. The fans know he's basically one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. The wrestlers know it. He steals every Wrestlemania and literally broke his back and came back only to snatch four or five more matches of the year. How the hell do you package a born-again Christian worshipped for his workrate as a true heel? Maybe it's possible, but if it takes that much work it's probably not worth it.

Then there's Hogan. His heel turn was perfect because the fans were growing up and WANTED to hate him. They saw through the facade. The timing was right.

Guy like Orton - he's a great heel but not a great enough one to put wrestling on the map like Piper or Flair could. He's nowhere near entertaining enough to be the face of the company as a babyface either. He's talented as hell but no matter what side of the morality fence he's supposed to be on, it's pretty clear that Randy Orton's pretty much an a**hole. He's too transparent.

 

[Cheney]

I cheer for Orton because he's athletic, great at playing his character, and I'm bored of Cena and other crap faces. It's simple I'm 18, faces like Cena say and do things that appeal to little kids, while Orton does violent acts appealing to a mature audience.

 

[BladeRunner]

Firstly, the people are going to cheer who they like. So, in my point of view, the wrestling companies should cater to the people by making the wrestlers the people like into faces and the ones they dislike into heels. If the wrestling companies try to force it, and make wrestlers into things people don't want, it just goes all wrong. With such instances as people cheering heels. The last hell in a cell match with Orton versus Cena is a prime example of where Cena should be the heel, because people are cheering for Orton more.

Which brings me to the second point in that many of the faces right now aren't thought of as fondly as the heels. And until you can either make people like the faces, or turn the heels that people like into faces, or tweeners, things are going to be all confused where heels get cheered and faces get booed.

 

[Slyfox696]

Wait...how is it NOT the wrestler's fault if they don't get booed? Did you ever hear JBL get cheered? Have you ever heard Edge get cheered, without being booed soon after? Of course not. Why? Because these guys know how to make people hate them. Even Orton doesn't get cheered much.

Being a heel is a thankless art. These days it is harder to find ways to keep people booing you, you receive less money from the merchandise, and your moveset is very basic. But the good heels know how to work as a heel, and keep all the spotlight on the face.

If you're getting cheered, you are a bad heel. Simple as. Sure, everyone will point to Steve Austin and the Rock, but those are two extraordinary examples...and even then, both of them got booed a few years later on their heel turns. Simply put, if you're a heel, you need to get booed. Or, at the very least, not cheered.

 

[shafe_41]

Definately not. I sorta agreee with what somebody said above. The audience has changed. But I don't believe there was any sort of movement where people said "let's be cool and cheer the heels." If that was true, that movement started way more than a few years ago. There was this little stable I don't know if you heard of called the nWo. They got cheers every week and during the beginning of the nWo, they were some of the greatest heels of all time... collectively. But they got cheers... why? Hogan. People were attatched to Hogan because they grew up watching him, loving him, and admiring him. Not because of some movement where a group of people tried to be different and just cheer the guy they weren't supposed to cheer.

With the internet now and spoilers and all that kind of stuff, I think the older wrestling fan doesn't care about face or heel anymore. It's too hard to keep a story going, or a debut secret, or a return on the hush hush without the IWC finding out about it. So my theory is just pretty much the older, wiser, and more mature the wrestling fan gets, like I said above, the less they care about the conventional face/heel nature of wrestling itself. I am included in this. When I watch wrestling, I just want to be entertained. I want to see a good athletic match between superstars that are talented in the ring, have good chemistry, some good spots, maybe a couple false finishes, and be carried on what seems like a roller coaster through the match. That's how you gain the applause from me. That's why at events, I will cheer the Miz, Punk, Jericho, Ziggler, etc... But I also enjoy Taker, HBK, Morrison, Kofi, etc...

So again, I think this applies to many other fans and not just myself. We cheer the talent, not the face/heel concept. But that doesn't mean if you cheer the heel, the heel is doing a bad job. We just don't care about how the conventional wisdom tells us who to cheer.

 

[Derekjt]

Being a heel has certainly changed through the years. Back in the AWA days you would see heels like Larry Zbyszko and Colonel DeBeers, those guys would never be cheered for. In the early 90's there were plenty of guys that did their job and got the crowd to hate them. I do believe that once the NWO came out people started to like the "Bad Guy". As Scott Hall would say, "One more for the Bad Guys." Stone Cold Steve Austin was a heel, but people started cheering for him over the Hitman. This eventually got Hart to change into the heel himself.
For some reason people like the bad guy today. I think it's because he's the rebellious one. Often times in life we have to follow a certain path of righteousness, so if we can make a choice and go with the heel for one night we're going to do it. In an interview Edge said that he loved to piss people off. It made him feel like he was doing his job right. I think that sums it all up. The heel is supposed to get people behind the face. If everyone was a face what would be the point of the showdown? Although guys like Randy Orton (who I hate with a passion), are cheered sometimes more than Cena, you can guarantee that Orton is trying like hell to get us to boo. I still feel that Cena would've been the man had he wrestled in a different era. An era when people searched for a "hero".

 

[RikRaines]

Years ago when we think Heels we think Debiase, Savage, nWo and so on but none of these got cheered just pure booed.

WAIT WUT?!? Don't know how many live wCw events you went to, but the nWo pretty much always had one of the best pops for the night out of a live crowd. They were cheered like crazy. The only people who rivaled the nWo were Sting, DDP, and Goldberg. A lot of the boos you would hear for on televised Nitros and Thunders were audio edits from wCw's Production Team (same thing the did for Goldberg in the beginning as he was building momentum).

Now of days the line between face/heel isn't as defined as it was during the 70's/80's/early 90's and fans cheer more for the people they like rather then the people the producers and road agents WANT you to like.

 

[PedigreeTHE619Chokeslam]

The only time I hear Orton get cheered is at PPV's, and when he's at his him town. I never hear him get cheered at raw. For Cena I only hear him get booed at PPV's also. As for Cena at raw you hear 15,000+ people cheering on there feet. I hate when people say they hate Cena, because I bet if you were there love you would stand up and cheer for him too.

 

[WrestlingCrew]

Most recent example I can think of that get cheered that is a heel is Mick Foley.

If you watch Impact, well Foley is talking smack to Abyss, you can hear the crowd chanting "Foley". But yeah, it isn't necessarily the wrestlers fault. I mean, when you think of Mick Foley and his career you automatically have respect for him and like him.

Now, the writers want him to be heel but everybody loves Mick Foley.

So technically, you're not necessarily a bad heel, it's just the way the crowd responds.

 

[unique.enigma.666]

I'm split down the middle when it comes faces and heels, these are the following I don't cheer for: John Cena, Vladimir Kozlov, Jesse/Slam Master J, Chris Masters, there's most likely more but I can't think at the moment, simply because I either don't care for their characters or they are downright boring to watch and listen to. Was watching the main event for NWO 2009 earlier and whilst Edge did display massive heel tactic, taking out Kingston, a popular face, and putting himself in the chamber, I loved it. I think when it comes down to it, its a rebelious thing the heels have going on, as teenagers we all rebel, and we feed off it when we see Edge and Orton do something we wouldn't expect. Jericho however to me is the perfect heel, same goes for Punk in some way, his 'straightedge and better than you' attitude is great, him trash talking the audience about booze drugs and cigarettes gains him more heat aswell. As for Jericho, if he was using the Y2J cocky but funny gimmick, we'd laugh but also dislike him for talking down on people, now people just downright dislike him. They make great heels, they don't ask for peoples acceptance unlike say Cena who uses his in-ring work and talk on the mic to gain a reaction, his five knuckle shuffle gets a reaction from those who do like him and from those who dislike him, but generally the cheers are louder.

 

[CoolioCM]

It's not creative's fault... First off, it is a workers job to get over no matter what he is given. (I.E. The terrible gimmick they gave Dusty Rhodes in WWE but still got over with it) The worker is responsible for getting themself over with the audience. Good booking and a decent gimmick does help, but at the end of the day, it is the workers responsibility to get over. Granted, they're are a few exceptions, but it is my opinion that a good worker should be able to get over no matter what. We have seen guys get pushed who don't get over, and guys get used terribly and still get super over, so I really can't put the blame on creative, even if it as crappy as it has been lately.

With that said, I'm torn on the issue. I think a good heel should be able to get everyone to hate them, but at the same time, if they are drawing money, I guess it wouldn't matter. I think the problem is that to draw as a heel, you usually have to be hated enough to have people want to pay to see you get your ass kicked, so I think not getting enough heat from the audience means your really not doing your job, but again, I guess if people are still paying, then it doesn't matter.

 

[ABMorales787]

I think this has something to do with the PG rating. The faces are that, faces, there isn't much depth to them other than beating the bad guy. Kids obviously follow this format because the face is a "hero" and they are still young. On the other hand most of the more adult audience (like us) don't seem to like the idea of the good guy being so bland and being the epicenter of the show. They find refuge on the heels like Orton, because he resembles the most what they are used to, that being the Attitude era. Rather than growing up and moving on they become rebellious hoping that someday they get to see that era again.

As for Jericho well other than my previous explanation I also think that he's just getting to that point of his carrier where no matter what he does he'll be appreciated for what he has done.

 

[Southwind]

Orton and Jericho get cheered by the more mature audience if you will (young adult males) but on Raw Orton gets booed pretty good.

Cena gets boos pretty much everywhere he goes lots of fans hate him so much, remember when he feuded with Angle ? Kurt could say anything and he knew he would get cheered it's pretty sad that when a heel wrestles Cena they can actually pull a face turn because of it in my opinion Cena is a poor babyface.

It's damn impressive that Orton has been able to keep heat on himself with the failures creative has given him. He punted VKM the last time that happened a new era was ushered in people like violence and that's what Orton brings.

 

["Cool Guy" Jensen]

Well, if the WWE was as kid-dominated as it could be, then we would never have to worry about seeing heels get cheered and faces getting booed. However, that is not the case. Since the WWE still has some of it's older fans, then you have some fans who just boo and cheer whoever they want.

I started watching WWE 6 years ago, when I was 9 years old. At that time, I loved all the faces and hated all the heels. When the WWE made heel/face turns, it helped me decide whether I should like them or hate them now because of the turn. When you are one of the younger fans, I'd say pre-teen and younger, you love and hate whoever the WWE books you to. It isn't until you get older and start to understand more about the WWE that you start to love and hate who you feel you should, opinion-wise.

Chris Jericho and Randy Orton are two of WWE's top heels, but get cheered. It doesn't make them bad heels. Never will you see a heel get completely booed, no matter what exactly you do... and that's just because of this day and age. I'm sure that a heel's full reason for being heels, is to get as much boos as possible. At the same time, they will admit that it's nice to get a few cheers here and there. So, no, it doesn't make them bad heels if they get cheered. They are still getting a majority of boos, but just a few cheers here and there. It isn't their fault.

 

[TimAH]

A heel getting cheered is IMO either an indication of hate for the face they are up against, or a testament to their high performance as a wrestler. Basically alot of people will cheer those who entertain them, and boo those who annoy them.