Heel Highfliers

[Reddog1146]

I got this idea from the thread John Morrison vs Sin Cara- Dream Ladder Match. It said how cool it would be if they fought and it pointed out that this could not happen because they were both faces. That got me thinking, we need some highfliers that are heels so they could give great performanes against face highfliers.

Before anyone corrects me and talks about justin gabriel or tyson kidd, they do not do much highflying. The most acrobatic thing justin gabriel does is his 450 splash and you rarely see tyson kidd anymore.

Would you like some heel highfliers if so why? If not, why not?

 

[The Brain]

High flying wrestlers tend to be face because the crowd loves seeing their moves. A guy could be the biggest jerk on the mic but once the bell rings the fans with cheer their high flying moves. Even if you hated the guy performing them, it would be instinct to cheer for something that is flashy and impresses you. If the heel gets cheered during the match he will eventually become a face.

 

[IrishCanadian25]

Shawn Michaels and Randy Savage were both heels for a good amount of time and did some high flying, but as some purists / experts will point out, working that style is contrary to heel psychology in many cases.

Personally, if a high flyer is able to get over as a heel, it's 1) an impressive feat, and 2) the result of balance. Savage had brawling to balance out high flying. So did Big Van Vader, who was a superheavyweight brawler, but also a high flyer.

Brain is right. It's tough to be a heel high flyer because the crowd will give you a face reaction if you do something cool. It really comes down to the moveset, the character, and what balances out the high spots.

 

[CMVenom3]

Highflying is a form of wrestling which gets a lot of fans excited...when someone does a moonsault or a 450, the crowd will cheer and thats because the move looks cool....This will make the crowd actually like the wrestler performing the move meaning it would be more logical for highflyers to be faces since the crowd likes them for their high-risk manouvers to begin with.
There definately r exceptions like Shawn Michaels back in the 90s but for the most part, most high flyers are and probably should be faces

 

[Nate DaMac]

Shawn Michaels wasn't that successful as a heel. He had his moments, but ultimately, he always got face pops for his move set, which is not success. For example, Triple H getting booed out of the building no matter what move he does; that's being a successful heel. The moves Shawn displayed were those of a face and so the fans popped and eventually he turned face because of it.

Someone can have their signature move be from the top rope and still get over as a heel, but having several different aerial maneuvers pretty much always guarantees that you're going to get face pops and the crowd is going to turn you. Look at JoMo. There's all these ridiculous ideas that he should turn heel, but with the move set he has, it's just not doable. His move set turned him face before with his heel persona, what makes you think anything would be different now?

The most successful heel crusierweights have always been those like Jamie Noble and Matt Hardy. Guys who will take a high risk every now and then but rely on power and technique(and cheating) for the most part. High Flying heels are a rarity, in fact I can't name one who has had any real success.

 

[CuddleBuns84]

Heel high-Fliers are really hard to do. Yes, some guys like Macho Man and HBK did work out. But, they also had the mic skills, and personality to get over for whatever they were trying to pull off.

If you looked at TNA, they tried to get Jeff Hardy over as a high flying heel, and it just couldn't work. And if I recall, back in WCW when Russo was running things, he un-masked Rey Mysterio, and turned him heel, and that didn't work one bit.

As pointed out earlier, most High-Fliers get cheered because of their move set. People go nuts when someone does something insane in the air.

One of the ways you could pull off a heel High-Flier is creating a character that has the move set, yet the persona of an insane person who gets thrills from hurting people.

 

[ProudJericholic]

Wasn't Billy Kidman a successful heel? London and Kidman used to be great high flying tag partners and were also great highflying faces. They won the WWE Tag Team Titles, but, it was becuase of Jamie Noble who made Kidman snap.

The promo into their match had Kidman leaving London in the tag match against FBI becuase of Kidman not wanting to do the SSP. He continued to do that in a few matches and then betrayed London after his match with Booker T.

Kidman was a great highflier and he was a great heel in that period of time as well.

Highfliers are hard to become heels becuase they amaze the fans so much with their moves. But, if you have a good enough build up and great heel mic skills, a highflier does have potential to become a heel.

 

[MONEY IN THE BANK]

I got this idea from the thread John Morrison vs Sin Cara- Dream Ladder Match. It said how cool it would be if they fought and it pointed out that this could not happen because they were both faces. That got me thinking, we need some highfliers that are heels so they could give great performanes against face highfliers.

Before anyone corrects me and talks about justin gabriel or tyson kidd, they do not do much highflying. The most acrobatic thing justin gabriel does is his 450 splash and you rarely see tyson kidd anymore.

Would you like some heel highfliers if so why? If not, why not?

justin gabriel is a high flier. besides his 450 he does have a 'highflier' moveset, you probably dont notice because he's in a group and doesn't get one on one matches that often but look at his matches with Cena while he was apart of nexus (Justin Gabriel vs Cena was pretty good btw )

 

[Klown_Karnage]

One of the main problems with heel highfliers in the WWE is the way that the WWE likes to handle both heels and highfliers. The WWE, on principle, will have heels dominate far more often than faces. With that in mind, they also seem to believe in having (for the most part) larger wrestlers dominate far more than smaller wrestlers. With that in mind, there's really no room for heel highfliers, at least in the present WWE. Billy Kidman and Jamie Noble were notable exceptions (for how long they lasted) but I think it should be noted that they only dominated within their own division. Now that the cruserweight division is gone, the WWE no longer has that outlet to experiment with heel highfliers.

The only reason that Justin Gabriel is able to be a heel highflier is that he is currently in The Corre. If he were to ever leave The Corre, he would either go face or be on the short list for the future endevored.

Maybe someplace like TNA you could have heel highfliers. There have been plenty of those over there (or at least highfliers that have had some time as heels.) That being said, it's not likely to happen that often, if at all, in the WWE.