has 1997 vince finally been proven right? and what does that mean for the business?

[funkdoc]

so i wrote this post in that big roman reigns thread and it got lost in the shuffle, probably because the thread had been going on for a while. i think there's a really important discussion to be had in there, so i'll repost it here:

 

"i have something to add re: the recent argument on babyfaces getting booed...

 

i think this is one of those areas where the modern internet has changed everything for good. it's damn near impossible to be a pure babyface or heel anymore, because it's easier for the minority opinion to make itself known thanks to social media.

 

football writer mike tanier had this to say about the recent allegations of peyton manning using HGH:

 

What will this do to Peyton Manning's legacy?

The answer: Whatever you want it to.

There's no such thing as an objective "legacy" in sports anymore. We each keep a little legacy in our hearts, a private head-canon of the players we choose to admire or despise.

You can hate Tiger Woods, LeBron James, Alex Rodriguez, Manning or [Tom] Brady all you want. You can find reasons to hate Derek Jeter, Phil Mickelson or Drew Brees if you try. You can love Lance Armstrong for his charitable efforts or something. And no matter how extreme your opinions, you will find kindred souls out there on some blog or Twitter feed.

Major League Baseball has a Hall of Fame and a separate Hall of Indignation full of players a big percentage of baseball fans believe belong in the Hall of Fame. The NCAA record book is a Swiss cheese of retcons, like a comic book universe: Did the Fab Five ever really happen, or was that a dream sequence?

What's official according to the record books does not matter when it comes to "legacies," and there is no "mainstream opinion" in my business, where the arguments themselves are the commodity.

Chances are, how you feel about Manning after the report is no different from how you felt about Manning before it. The same went for Tom Brady and deflated footballs. If even the whisper of past use of a banned substance erodes your respect for a player you once liked, that's your prerogative. But sports fandom has probably been a rough road for you, and it will never get any better.

I think of athletes the way I think of movie or rock stars. Some are great humans, some are disgusting, some are haunted by demons, some succumb easily to temptation, and most, like you and I, are some combination of all four. Unless they cure a disease or commit a heinous crime, their "legacy" consists of what they accomplished on the field/court/ice/track/etc.

But that's just my definition of "legacy." Yours is just as valid. And no twist or turn in the Manning story is likely to change it.

on my own facebook feed, i see this every day with browns fans *still* arguing over johnny manziel. no matter how many times he gets drunk and acts a fool in public, plenty of people still bust out the "he's only a kid!" defense. he's a classic heel, but in an era where people will overlook your flaws and band together with others who feel the same way.

this is why i think, unlike in 1998, the entire concept of "faces" and "heels" is genuinely on the wane. seeing how people react to the big stories of the day now, i think the future of the business will lie in creating characters who draw equally strong but different reactions from different segments of the fanbase."

the manziel comments are a bit outdated now after his latest episode and the browns already saying they're getting rid of him, but i think an even more illuminating example is the post-super bowl conversation on the two quarterbacks in that game. i'll try to break this down for non-football fans!

in any previous generation, peyton manning would be one of the all-time great babyfaces and cam newton would be a top heel. manning is a white guy who comes from football's equivalent to the hart family and has an aw-shucks southern likeability about him. he doesn't get into legal trouble, has broken all kinds of performance records, and is seen as one of the classiest men in the sport. newton, on the other hand, is a black guy who had highly-publicized criminal incidents in college and performs elaborate dances whenever he scores a touchdown.

the mainstream media narratives in the wake of the super bowl fit this description, with manning being congratulated for winning the title and newton being bashed for visibly showing his frustration at losing ("not being a leader"). however, if you go online, it's much more complicated than that...

cam newton does lots of charity work in his team's community and hasn't had legal issues since college, so he gets plenty of support for that. there's also a very common feeling that the media's scrutiny of him is rooted in unconscious racism, especially when white stars don't have their negative body language or stuff from their past brought up nearly as often. peyton manning is a case in point here, as he was accused of some serious sexual harassment (groping etc.) in college and tried to intimidate the plaintiff when a lawsuit was filed against him. that story has always been buried by your ESPNs and such, so there's a noticeable backlash against him now. deadspin (one of the biggest sports websites) has been massively pro-newton and anti-manning, and one of the biggest names in the black lives matter movement just brought up the harassment suit recently.

in short, i think vince's prediction from that famous promo has finally come true: we now live in a world of shades of grey, more than ever. outside of sports you can look at bill cosby (where you see a lot of the same arguments from the newton-manning discussion) or even martin shkreli (who is depressingly popular among reddit & 4chan). a universal "heel" is one in a billion anymore, and universal "faces" are still possible (e.g. daniel bryan) but far rarer than they used to be. if i were to play bill simmons and use a pithy phrase to describe this, i would go with "The Debate Era". everything and everyone is up for debate now, no matter the popular perception.

so what does this have to do with wrestling?

i think it means that wrestling can become cool & culturally relevant again, but it will require a paradigm shift both from the promotions and from the relevant critical voices. it requires us realizing it's not a bad thing for a cena or reigns to get booed, as long as they get some kind of strong reaction and still have their loyal fans. it requires promotions to think outside the booking box that wrestling has operated in for its entire history, and realize that dividing the crowd will generate a lot more buzz than trying to unify them would. it requires the promotions to tap into the social & cultural issues that are relevant today, and it requires the fans & critics to be in touch with those issues.

a major obstacle to this, in my view, is the "THOSE DAMN MILLENNIALS!" sentiment that permeates the promotions *and* communities like ours. that's what i was trying to say with my post that derailed parv's review thread, and i'll explain that position a bit further here.

i would argue that the beatles & bob dylan would not be nearly as well-remembered today if they weren't so strongly associated with the hot social movements of their time: anti-war, free love, the more relaxed attitude toward drugs, and so on. they would maintain a similar standing among music nerds, sure, but not the mainstream media or general public. i would also argue that the audience plays a crucial role in the artistic success of wrestling, in a way that it doesn't for music or film, so cultural relevance becomes far more important here. so in order to produce something historically great nowadays, i think you have to connect with the millennials rather than see them as a nuisance. people like dave meltzer going "you know how women are" isn't exactly a great look in that regard, to say nothing of vince & HHH.

i've tried to discuss things along these lines a number of times, such as when i'd bring up comic books' recent mini-revival as a potential model for wrestling to follow. it's never seemed to get that much conversation, so i figured i'd try making a separate thread here and laying out my arguments in more detail. i really think there's a lot to go with this, and i've offered plenty of opinions that i expect people to disagree strongly with, so have at it!

[GOTNW]

I don't think it means much. None of the promoters are aware of things outside of their bubble. Everyone just does what they want anyway. Do you really expect WWE to go outside of their comfort zone? CMLL and AAA have their owns things, which just won't change. For me New Japan is probably at its low point. For feds that do try to experiment (DDT, Evolve, Lucha Underground) it's possible they can grown their own niche and brand but you just can't grow past a certain point these days.

 

In general I think pro wrestling is in a much worse place than it would be if there weren't so many people who are convinced there is only one right version of pro wrestling. There are a lot of unexplored ideas I'd like to see get more focus.

[Loss]

I saw the thread title and was about to express my surprise that you would espouse a supply-side opinion of Montreal. So I can put that back in the box.

 

That said, it's something that I think may have been premature in 1997, but I'm starting to think it's correct. I still think it's possible for there to be genuinely hated heels, but I think these days, it's more important to have a roster of people that are treated and perceived as stars. I'm a wrestling traditionalist, but things like using the ropes for leverage or insulting local sports teams just don't generate hatred anymore. And even good performers who use actual heel tactics (think CM Punk in 2012) aren't really viscerally hated anymore. Paul Heyman is over as a babyface, even. I think the reaction that stuff gets in general now is more annoyance with the company that they feel the need to keep trying that stuff everyone knows isn't real anyway. I don't particularly like that, but I do think that's the reality.

 

Perhaps someone smarter than us could develop a new way for heels to make it in 2016, but the only true heels in WWE are the people running the company for being at war with the fans, and anyone that fans perceive is receiving an unfair push at the expense of their favorites.

[Bierschwale]

The best way for a new heel (who stays a heel) to make it would be to make it clear that they don't really like wrestling and only treat it as work. It was never their dream. It's just something that they're good at doing that can pay pretty well. Embassy-era Jimmy Rave to its most extreme. Hell, don't even have them interact with fans, because that's not really part of the "job description".

 

If Bryan's retirement was the greatest RAW segment ever, then a true heel has to be the antithesis of everything that he said in his address. One of our esteemed PWOers, either Dylan or Loss, said it on Twitter; nobody cares more about "respecting the business" than smarks.

[Parties]

The best heel in WWE right now is Eva Marie. She genuinely get on the nerves of her territory's fans, yet is undeniably a star with all the right components. She manages to be extremely disliked while conversely behaving as if she is liked. She's a social media sensation posting "positive", upbeat videos that are often viewed by most wrestling fans as shallow and condescending. She's the anti-Bailey, the anti-Asuka, and the anti-Banks. I would almost compare her to the prime of Justin Credible before Heyman overexposed him, as his genuine heat was conditional on being booked as a winner who people hated. Eva Marie's heat comes not so much in-ring, but from getting (both genuinely in the media and as part of her character) a Kardashian treatment. Those who dislike her resent that she gets so much attention just for being really, really, ridiculously good looking.

 

I also think gossip columnist Adam Rose could have gotten real heat too, but they would have had to have inserted him into some major storylines as the spoiler who breaks up beloved teams, causes well-liked faces to lose important matches, sets good acts up to fail or be jumped, etc. "Sweet Smell of Success"-style rat coward is a great wrestling character.

 

To Bierschwale's point, to be a heel in 2016, people have to think you're disingenuous. They have to believe that you think you're above wrestling, and thus above the fans. We often here talk about Miz being a great heel, which is a testament to his promos given that he by most accounts loves wrestling and has a good attitude about his life and work. Jericho slowly becoming a heel because Dancing with the Stars and Fozzy went to his head is a watered-down version of awesome Nick Bockwinkel promos, but they're governed by the same principles.

[Death From Above]

It's definitely very different than it once was.

 

In some ways WWE seems to be becoming more like All Japan *just in the sense* that they'd cheer a guy like Kawada or Fuchi even though they were the villains Misawa or Kobashi or Kikuchi would play off of. Classic good vs. evil was basically an afterthought to 95% of their fans.

 

A lot of people just want to "be entertained" by whatever their perception of good wrestling is and I don't think they really care how you get them there.

 

That's not to say classic Good vs. Evil will ever be totally absent from WWE's thinking, merely that I do agree it's less important now than ever before. I mean, Brock vs. Triple H, this is basically heel vs. heel is it not? The fans don't really seem to care. They just want to see Brock squash people because Brock is cool.

 

The only bad reaction from a wrestling crowd is indifference. If you produce anything else, be it cheers or boos, a promoter can use you.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Brock isn't a good guy or a bad guy, he's a force of nature like Galactus.

[jcmmnx]

Pro wrestling is so much better when the babyfaces are universally over. Cena is Cena I don't think you're going to get that 50/50 reaction where both sides are passionate from anyone else. Bryan made WWE so much better because of how loved he was. The reason NXT is so enjoyable is because nearly all the faces are over. If Bayley and Zayn starting getting 50/50 shades of grey reactions it would have quite a negative effect on my enjoyment of the product.

[dawho5]

I think if you want to make a big heel at this point in time, you give them the big push as the #1 babyface without the fans getting behind them beforehand. If there is any lesson to be learned from the Roman Reigns fiasco, that's the one.

 

As far as the "shades of grey" deal, I think it could work in a world where wrestling promoters weren't stuck inside their own little worlds. In the post above mine, jcmmnx argues against the idea of the 50/50 characters from a (very popular around here) point of view that wrestling should be good guy vs. bad guy. And I tend to agree with that very strongly. Problem tends to be that most wrestling promoters also have their own idealized view of wrestling that comes out in their promotion when they have the personnel to and finances to do it. Vince certainly does. We know some of HHH's views on wrestling. I'm sure the same can be said for any wrestling promoter anywhere. These people aren't all interested in the most popular trends and ways of leveraging them into characters that appeal to the masses both as faces and heels. It could easily be done with enough people in the organization devoted to watching twitter, facebook, etc. But most of your wrestling promoters are also going to be more traditionalist in their views on wrestling as well. So I agree that given the right atmosphere it is possible. But it won't happen in the WWE for a very long time if my read on HHH is right.

 

That brings up a question though. Let's say HHH has assumed control alongside Steph and the WWE takes a small hit. They can survive, trim some fat, whatever. But what if a promotion comes along that does look very closely at the memes making their way through social media and use them intelligently to make their shows appealing to a much wider audience? If that promotion got any kind of national exposure, would it suddenly become a real threat to the WWE? How would the WWE react, given it's obvious flaws in creative? Would it challenge more traditional wrestling fans to change their mind on what wrestling is? How long before pro wrestling has changed drastically and everyone in the business has to either stick to the traditionalist way of doing things to hold onto the old fans or adapt to get in on the new market?

[joeg]

As for the Peyton Manning thing- the HGH rumor doesn't matter at all. The sitting on an athletic trainer's face while bare-assed, holding her head down, and farting in her mouth, I heard about that 15 years ago and it surprises me that its never been made a big deal of until now.

[funkdoc]

thanks everyone, i have more to say when i have the time but i'll just do a quick response to this one

 

As for the Peyton Manning thing- the HGH rumor doesn't matter at all. The sitting on an athletic trainer's face while bare-assed, holding her head down, and farting in her mouth, I heard about that 15 years ago and it surprises me that its never been made a big deal of until now.

 

racial issues may be a bigger part of the american cultural zeitgeist than they've been since the 60s-early 70s, and this particular super bowl matchup really highlighted that. smartphones and social media have made the internet more accessible and interesting to people outside the traditional white nerd demographic, and that's had a huge effect on a lot of the major conversations. remember, black lives matter didn't even exist the last time manning was in the super bowl!

 

so now you get people of color bringing up manning's skeletons as a response to the treatment of their own, as with shaun king (the BLM activist i referenced in my first post). there's also white people publicly siding with them, either because they genuinely sympathize with the cause or because they realize it's a great way to build their own brand; i suspect deadspin is a bit of both. and then there's patriots fans, of course, but boston's weird persecution complex isn't really relevant to the wider topic at hand here!

 

for someone like loss whose head is spinning right about now, i'll try something more concise: you can kinda compare peyton manning to bret hart. not just because they came from famous families and won multiple world championships, but because of their public persona vs. the stories some of us hear. if bret were doing his thing today instead of in the 90s, i guarantee you someone would leak his steroid use and marital infidelity to the internet and a vocal minority would be putting him on fucking blast. and that opinion would spread to some of the majority, and he would get a mixture of boos and cheers at major shows. we live in an era where angry nerd teens can find your phone number and sic SWAT teams on you if they don't like your opinions on the gender binary - you just can't hide stuff for decades at a time anymore.

 

 

i wonder if another part of the problem here isn't that wrestling's traditional vision of good & evil seems like such small fry anymore. when you keep hearing about the people shot by police who DON'T make the TV news, it's hard to get outraged over pulling the tights, ya know? and it may well be outdated to cast playing by the rules as a babyface trait, given that millennials are less likely to trust traditional sources of authority and conventional wisdom than any previous generation.

 

man, i always end up all over the place with this! there's still plenty more i could talk about, but definitely not for now. maybe this would be better suited for some sort of podcast? i just keep free-flowing on this topic and i guess that works better there than on forums...

[subatomic_elbow]

Feeding into all of this, I feel like sportsmanship in wrestling, and society at large, is dead. You can't get heel heat for cheating the same way you used to because if a fan likes you, they want you to win no matter how.

[Jimmy Redman]

Yeah, like look at the stuff Becky has been involved with recently. I mean they pulled the Charlotte feud together in the end, but when they were at the point before Charlotte really turned where she was freely using her father to cheat to win, and Becky was objecting to this, it really came off as though Becky was, not necessarily in the wrong, but not the likeable one. She came off as kind of a killjoy for wanting to play by the rules.

 

I think for so many years we've had "you do whatever it takes to win!" drilled into our heads that cheating to win matches just seems way too...reasonable. We are in an age of internet piracy - we download to avoid paying for entertainment, we shop online to get things cheaper or for free...we all do what we can get away with in this world. Pulling the tights is a wrestler's way of beating the system.

[Migs]

The best heel in WWE right now is Eva Marie. She genuinely get on the nerves of her territory's fans, yet is undeniably a star with all the right components. She manages to be extremely disliked while conversely behaving as if she is liked. She's a social media sensation posting "positive", upbeat videos that are often viewed by most wrestling fans as shallow and condescending. She's the anti-Bailey, the anti-Asuka, and the anti-Banks. I would almost compare her to the prime of Justin Credible before Heyman overexposed him, as his genuine heat was conditional on being booked as a winner who people hated. Eva Marie's heat comes not so much in-ring, but from getting (both genuinely in the media and as part of her character) a Kardashian treatment. Those who dislike her resent that she gets so much attention just for being really, really, ridiculously good looking.

 

And I think the reason she's over is because her character on NXT mimics her character on Total Divas. In other words, ironically, the reason why it works is that the negative things about her seem to be real. She's getting a far more visceral reaction than almost anyone else on the roster, who do things that constantly remind us that they are playing characters in a show. Reality TV works reality the way wrestling did before the 90s. It's amazing, and they need to figure out how to harness that. Eva comes off not as a character but as a real, truly unpleasant person.

[Loss]

I can't see Eva Marie's act transferring as well to the main roster. Am I wrong about that? I feel like she'd be met mostly with indifference. I'd love to see her form a "consulting agency" with Miz though, where they work together to mold hardcore darling types into WWE superstars. First project: Nakamura.

[fakeplastictrees]

Hassan was the last real heel in WWE. There were no dueling chants, no 50/50 crowd split, no Hassan t-shirts in the crowd. The dude was hated by EVERYONE. WWE needs stuff like that again, but the company is too corporate and scared to take that type of risk. I am not sure what makes WWE afraid to do that CBS, USA, ABC, etc. have been doing for years.

 

More on this later...

[Loss]

Well, Hassan turned out to be a dead end when they took the heat seeking too far, and they had to drop the character. Wrestling is held to a different standard because traditionally, it has tried to trick the audience into thinking it's all real instead of just a television show. Oddly enough, reality shows are heavily worked and still keep big kayfabe, yet they have far more outrageous and offensive characters than wrestling does these days. The difference is that in the world of reality TV, they found a way to create heels where the heels themselves would get the heat instead of the heat going on the company for coming up with the idea.

[Ricky Jackson]

Don't forget about Vickie Guerrero at her peak. That was real heat

[fakeplastictrees]

To go back at bit on what was touched on earlier by Parties, have we gotten to the point in pro wrestling where the only real heat are for the people who don't want to be there and don't like pro wrestling? If that the case that is so weird as Vince, despite what he does on TV, gets cheered despite him hating pro wrestling and all of its associated stigma. All real heat now is meta-heat? So there is no more kayfabe heat from people under the age of 15 I assume? How longstanding is the 1 year angle with Daniel Bryan? I'd dare say that year long 'chase' is easily one of the top ten angles that shaped/will shape WWE future.

[Jimmy Redman]

Yeah the idea that there haven't been real heels in the last 10 years is laughable.

 

It's not so much people who hate wrestling, but people who don't appear genuine in either their love for wrestling or in their work. Eva Marie is a bombshell recruited from a magazine (or whatever) and pushed on Total Divas and TV while appearing clueless and untalented whenever she's required to wrestle. That gets real heat because it offends people that she gets pushed based solely on looks.

 

It was an open secret that Reigns was being groomed for the next big babyface spot, and because of the golden boy aspect of his push, coupled with the fans clearly preferring someone else to be in that spot, it created real heat because people see an inauthentic push. And the more people rejected him, the more inauthentic his push looked, because he's supposed to be this popular face that The Man can't hold down. and it's obvious that it's complete bullshit, which just creates more and more animosity.

[Hegs]

The loss of heels/faces is a bitter pill for old school wrestling fans. I still watch but definitely not with the same enthusiasm or interest that I did in the 80 and 90s. Occasionally something captures my attention like Brock/Undertaker but that becomes more of how are they going book this and follow the story rather than an emotional investment in the match. Wrestling or sports entertainment has become more like the Harlem Globetrotters- an exhibition of skills and tricks with some comedy thrown in. There is a slight difference in that there's never a doubt the Globetrotters are going to win, but it lacks an emotional attachment to the outcome. For example, if this was 30 years ago, Vince probably would have been freaking out because Wrestlemania would have succeeded or failed on the main event and ability to draw the house and pay per view. However, Wrestlemania will sell out without anyone even knowing 1 match on the card.

[JerryvonKramer]

This whole thread has done a good job of explaining why I am "old-school for life". I hate post-modern wrestling.

 

I still wonder why, however, wrestlers can't just go out there and cut SIMPLE heel promos. Look at Rick Rude. His heat was 90%+ from the same promo, just calling guys in the crowd fat and slobby.

 

Why can't someone get on the mic and call out spotty internet nerds? Why can't they mock the black hoodies they all wear? It's just simple heat: mock the guys in the crowd and ensure there's a grain of truth in there so it actually hurts.

 

"All you losers on the internet wouldn't know five-star match if it slapped you in the face!"

 

Has anyone even tried? I don't see stuff like this if I ever catch modern WWE, I see boring played out angles and storylines fans don't care about. Don't make heels villains in storylines, make them just hatable jerks first.

 

So many of the skits of old weren't heels being criminal masterminds, it was just heels telling the fans they were stupid, lazy, poor, etc. etc. Insult them, they won't cheer being insulted.

[soup23]

This whole thread has done a good job of explaining why I am "old-school for life". I hate post-modern wrestling.

 

I still wonder why, however, wrestlers can't just go out there and cut SIMPLE heel promos. Look at Rick Rude. His heat was 90%+ from the same promo, just calling guys in the crowd fat and slobby.

 

Why can't someone get on the mic and call out spotty internet nerds? Why can't they mock the black hoodies they all wear? It's just simple heat: mock the guys in the crowd and ensure there's a grain of truth in there so it actually hurts.

 

 

Do you think Rude got legit heat with this though. I think of Rude doing his routine and picture women laughing and smiling at him and some overdramatic thumbs down from the crowd. It is not nearly as genuine as some of the legit heat we get from Vickie Guerrero 3-4 years ago.

[JerryvonKramer]

In terms of loud booing, Rude always seemed to get a good response. Superbrawl II being the most extreme example. I'd call it legit heat even if it's possible no one actually HATED him.

[Loss]

Vicki Guerrero demonstrated the vocal tenor of a great heel in a way that I think could mean something again. Occasionally, we still get some of that from Stephanie, but her voice is much deeper than it was when she was younger after all the sinus surgeries she had years back, so she can't really shriek anymore.