Posted in: The Northern Star (U.S. vs. U.K.)Sorry, But You're MythTaken: The Yellow Streak
By XanMan
Jun 28, 2009 - 10:15:25 AM
The face/heel dynamic in professional wrestling is something that has always interested me, and will probably be something that always does. There's a gentleman named James Berardinelli that writes movie reviews and commentary at reelviews.net, and he's someone whose opinions on movies and television I have grown to rely on a great deal, as he often seems to have the same likes and dislikes I do, so when he mentioned George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire," and how he was looking forward to seeing if HBO was going to option it, I was intrigued and began to read the series almost immediately. The thing that has struck me so much about the books in the series is the different vantage points from which Martin writes.
Those that are seen as villains at the start of the tale become sympathetic as the series continues, as Martin starts painting his picture with shades of gray. It's a fantastic series that I would recommend to anyone if I had any guarantee that he is going to finish it before he dies. Alas, he's been working on the fifth novel(out of a planned seven) since October of 2005, and he's not getting any younger. If he ends up dying before finishing the series, is he the heel for choosing life over writing and not tidying up his story, or are his fans the ones in the wrong for grieving more about the loss of the completion of the tale than about the loss of the author's life? There are no absolutes, my friends, it all depends on your point of view. That's something Martin gets across in his work very well, and it's one of the reasons why, when someone says to you that the best heel is the cowardly heel there is really only one response:
Sorry, But You're MythTaken
The Yellow Streak
What exactly is meant by the "cowardly heel," anyway? I honestly don't think you can fit them into any one definition; after all, one cowardly act does not necessarily a coward make, correct? Well, according to Wikipedia a cowardly heel is "A wrestler who, in addtion to breaking the rules and displaying characteristics of heel types, often runs when threatened or otherwise placed at a disadvantage. A cowardly heel who is champion may often get himself intentionally disqualified(through outside interference or deliberately breaking a rule in front of the referee) or counted out when he is clearly losing the match against a face, allowing him to retain his championship despite losing the match since championships usually do not change hands should the reigning champion lose by countout or disqualification." The site goes on to cite(see what I did there?) examples of these cowardly heels. To my mind, there's no doubt that the creation of the cowardly heel was made to make a champion look strong.
After all, what could look stronger than a man from which another man is running, right? Right...unless this cowardly heel keeps running from everyone. Look, I'm not saying cowardly heels don't have their place or that a heel should never act cowardly, but after awhile the characteristics of a cowardly heel tend to have the opposite effect on their opposition. It's as natural as opposites attracting magnetically, do you not ken it? Sooner or later, all a cowardly heel is really good for is laughs. Case in point: Santino Marella. Like everybody else, when Santino first came on the scene, I wrote him off as just another young guy the WWE was pushing for about 90 seconds, and that he'd extend that to his fifteen minutes of fame by becoming the first guy to ever win the Intercontinental Title in his first match, and then he'd fade away into nothingness. After all, he had absolutely nothing going for him, he was bland, he was a foreigner, which traditionally means instant death in the WWE, he had no finisher, and he couldn't work.
Well, let's fast-forward about 24 months, shall we? He's now playing two different characters, and they each have the following attributes: being a foreigner, having no finisher, and being unable to work. However, now he appears to have something going for him because he was able to tap into a then-unknown promo ability, combined with a great sense of humor, and the ability to act like a clown; and now a woman. But, folks, let's think about this for a second: Why did he become a woman? Because he was running out of steam as a quality heel; and that started around the same time he dropped the Intercontinental Title to fellow heel, William Regal. Do I think his comedy act would have grown stale less quickly if he still had the championship? I do, because holding a championship almost always makes one more interesting. However, the light would have faded from his comedy routine sooner or later, anyway. Some still feel he's the best part of RAW, while I feel he's a key ingredient of a sinking ship.
One can't be a comedian forever; there has to be some substance there eventually, and that's why Santino is ultimately going to fail. He'll go the way of Eugene unless he can improve his ring skills and/or find some reason for people to care about him beyond the humor. Judging from his past, I don't think that's going to happen, but he surprised most of us the first time, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see. One doesn't have to be a comedian to be a cowardly heel, though. Probably my earliest memory of a cowardly heel is The Honky Tonk Man, who holds the Intercontinental Title record that Santino was so sure he was going to break. Honky Tonk, though, only won matches cleanly against jobbers; otherwise he cheated his way to victory either with outside interference from Jimmy Hart or one of Hart's men, usually his fellow champions, The Hart Foundation. The Honky Tonk Man had an incredible amount of heat, because he could lay claim to being the longest reigning I-C Champion ever without earning it.
Yes, Honky Tonk was a great heel, because he had incredible heat, he could draw, and his character was just so damned unlikeable. When it looked like he was about to lose, he'd either catch the thrown megaphone of Jimmy Hart and knock his opponent over the head behind the referee's back, or he'd do something to get himself disqualified if the outside interference option was closed to him. People hated Honky because he didn't deserve the title, knew he didn't deserve the title, and yet was smug as hell in keeping it. It takes real talent(and competent booking) to be that hated, but here's the thing: only one person ever got big off of facing The Honky Tonk Man, and that's the guy who ultimately defeated him for the championship. It was supposed to be Brutus Beefcake, but it ended up being The Ultimate Warrior, who was out of wrestling altogether about three years later, and the only rub he got was because of the reign, not because of the man. Why is that? It's pretty simple, really: Beating a coward doesn't make you strong or a real man; it can't make you a hero.
And what is a face, my friends, if it isn't a hero? There are several philosophical facts(if that isn't a contradiction in terms) that apply to the concept of a hero. The first is that without evil, there can be no good. On the flip side, without good, there can be no evil. But that doesn't mean the same holds true for the embodiments of these philosophies. A villain can exist at any time because all he has to be is someone who is willing to do evil; a hero is someone who rises up to stand, face, and try to defeat this villain; this...heel. You see, this question isn't really like the chicken and the egg at all; if you stop to think about it for no more than a few seconds, you can see that without those doing evil in the world, there would be no need for someone to feel that the noble, just, right, and honorable thing to do would be to stand against this fiend and decide that they are up to the task. The same holds true for the sport of kings; unlike a "real" sport, where the rooting interest tends to be decided by vicinity, the powers that be have created opposing sides to generate an artificial one.
Drawing a comparison from another venue, if one were a baseball fan residing in Boston, Massachusetts, one would have looked on in envy, disbelief, and disgust for many years while the reviled "evil empire" of the New York Yankees amassed championship after championship, while your beloved Boston Red Sox failed to win a World Series from 1918 through 2004, while their most hated rivals picked up 26 in that same time frame. Now that the Yankees haven't won a World Series since 2000 and the Red Sox have won two in the last 5 years. Their roles have reversed, but I think that most would agree that a team that once saw the Yankees as their rivals, but were a laughingstock compared to them has now become at least their equal, if not lately their superior. Now the Yankees can see the Red Sox as the villains, rather than simply seeing them as a joke that it was easy to dominate. In this analogy, the Red Sox were the cowardly heels that could never pose a serious challenge to the heroes, but through a complete change in attitude and direction are now a serious threat.
I don't think anyone would say that the Yankees have rested on their laurels; certainly not in the last thirteen years, and no one is ever going to feel sorry for the richest team in terms of history, tradition, and money in baseball, but there's no doubt that they finally have a real rival now in the Boston Red Sox. The game is better for it, and though the Yankees have not won a championship yet since the Red Sox last did, when they eventually do they'll be better for it. The same should be true when a face professional wrestler finally overcomes his hated heel rival, but it can't ever approach a high intensity unless the heel can be seen to be on the same level as the face, and a cowardly heel never can, no matter who his manager is, and how much backup he has. In order for a face to look strong in victory and get over more, we have to believe that a heel can beat the face one on one in the biggest match; when it's a cowardly heel against a dominant face, that belief is never close to being realized.
Speaking of belief, the cowardly heel made me lose almost all of mine as a young fan. As most of you know, one of my first experiences as a wrestling viewer was seeing Wrestlemania III, which featured the face turn of Brutus Beefcake. However, I'd never really seen Beefcake as a heel, had no emotional investment in him at all, didn't understand what his turn really meant, and don't know that I would have cared if I did. Beefcake became my brother Trav's favorite wrestler, but he was never one of mine. The best match on that card, though, is one that's rightfully hailed as one of the greatest of all time, and I'm privileged to have had it be one of the main events of my first ever pay per view. The match I'm speaking of, naturally, is the "Macho Man" Randy Savage defending his Intercontinental Title against Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat. Savage was a natural as a heel, and he excelled at it. Some of the tactics he used I couldn't believe as a boy of 12 and I really wanted Steamboat to destroy his punk ass.
When I look back now at video of Miss Elizabeth, I realize how much the announcers were exaggerating by always prefixing her name with "The Lovely," but back then I believed it and thought she was a beautiful woman who was loyal to Savage and yet was constantly used by her as a shield, yet was the object of jealous rage whenever someone else tried to be near her, touch her, or simply talk to her. I wanted so badly for The Dragon or The Animal to kick his ass. He was out of control, but he was also the textbook example of a cowardly heel; he walked a real fine line, because he was a master that could do so. And yet, when I later saw him as a babyface, I couldn't wrap my mind around it, because how could a guy that had to cheat to win and hide behind a woman a little over a year earlier suddenly become so proficient that he can defeat guys like The Big Bossman and Akeem singlehandedly? Simply put: he didn't change that much physically. His move-set was exactly the same, Miss Elizabeth was still by his side, he simply stopped cheating because he turned "face."
And that's where my final point about the cowardly heel really comes into play, and it highlights another large reason why I think this is rarely the way to go. With the possible exception of music, every entertainment art form utilizes suspension of disbelief; it has to in order to make you feel like what is happening in the story could actually happen. If you're playing a video game and suddenly your character is showing through walls, or your perspective changes to the point you can't see what it you're supposed to be doing, not only is it frustrating, but instead of playing as the character, you feel like you're watching the character do something. If you're watching a movie, and you can obviously tell something is a special effect, or there's a small change in a detail in the scene, or a microphone is visible, again you're taken out of the moment. To me, a cowardly heel all of a sudden showing courage and ability he previously didn't have, or a babyface reverting to the other way does the same. We might be able to change our tactics, but none of us can change our nature.
Which brings me right back to where I started. In his books, Mick Foley mentions Michael Hayes' belief that the best heels are the ones that believe they are right. What they do may be wrong, but they must legitimately believe they are right in doing that wrong. Using this theory--and it's a good one--Matt Hardy should be an awesome heel right now, and after his feud against his brother, his brother should be on one of the biggest babyfaces in the history of the business, but neither of these things is true. Why? It has little, if anything, to do with Jeff. Let's remember who Matt Hardy was. He was the man who had his girlfriend stolen from him by his married best friend and came back to have a tremendous feud with him when we all cheered him for his actions because they were justified. He was the guy that claimed that no matter what happened he would not die, who overcame MVP's attempts to befriend him, seeing right through the obvious ploy of keeping Matt away from Porter's United States Title, and who eventually defeated him for that strap after returning from injury.
Then the same guy dropped the title to Shelton Benjamin and was traded to ECW. Once there, he set his sights on becoming the ECW World Title and wrestling the strap from "The World's Strongest Man" Mark Henry, a believable monster heel if there ever was one. He finally defeated "The Silverback" for that championship at Unforgiven in a beautifully booked Championship Scramble and successfully defended the title cleanly a month later one-on-one using a tremendous strategy. He was the very definition of a babyface triumphing over a strong heel to be built up, and yet we're expected to believe that at the same time he was plotting the downfall of his brother Jeff because he was jealous of all the attention. He was assaulting Jeff, making attempts on Jeff's life, stealing Jeff's title chances, because he--the ECW World Champion--was jealous of his brother's chance at the WWE Title. In order to try to make this turn make sense--a turn I admit was most likely the second choice, behind Christian being the man behind the attacks--Matt cut a promo.
The Smackdown after costing Jeff the WWE Title, Matt came out and said he was tired of the fans cheering Jeff, tired of supporting Jeff, tired of carrying Jeff, and tired of Jeff getting all the glory while Matt did all the work. He even said that they were no longer brothers and that he didn't care about anyone but himself. The next week or the week later, Matt came out and cheap-shot Hurricane Helms before beating him to a bloody pulp. The WWE was on the right road with Matt, but then they took a wrong turn. He won two straight matches against his brother by dodging the Swanton Bomb and then finishing him off, so the WWE had Jeff win at Backlash by tying his brother to a table so that he couldn't escape, and finally hitting his big move. That was basically it; that ended the feud for all intents and purposes. Jeff--the hero--used a cowardly act to beat his brother--the heel--and break his hand. In short, nothing was resolved and by the end of their feud, both were either at the same level or worse off than they were before the feud started.
Before the feud started, Matt Hardy had just lost the ECW Title and was the top contender for it, while Jeff actually was the WWE Champion and the hottest guy in the company. Once it was over, Jeff had to compete in a four-way elimination match to earn a title shot, and Matt was lost in the midcard on Smackdown trying to prove he was worthy to get a shot at the U.S. Title--oh, and the guy who beat the dominant Mark Henry cleanly had to use his newly minted cast to beat Golddust. It was patently ridiculous, and look at where both guys are now. Matt Hardy is now injured, but was mired in the midcard before that, and Jeff is on his way out of the company directly after being humiliated by having the shortest major championship reign in history. This all could have been avoided if the people running the WWE weren't so mythtaken. Maybe they could give Nigel McGuinness a call and ask how they should book a strong heel or just turn around and have a conversation with Triple H. Unless they do, though, this won't be the final casualty or last symptom of this coward's disease.
Points of Light
You may have noticed that my last three columns have now had (U.S. vs. U.K.) in front of them. That is to designate they are part of a tournament; two teams of six from those two countries are competing against each other. After Round 1, the United States is currently up 2 points to 1. You can read the rules for the tournament and all of the columns that have been written for it thus far by clicking on this link.
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