It's extremely hard these days to generate true heat. You like who you like and hate who you hate no matter what role they're playing. A problem with that is it elicits mixed reactions from the audience.
Heels have become more anti-hero heels that get as much cheers than boos from people. Modern examples of this are Kevin Owens and Alexa Bliss, with Steve Austin in the old days. This is the true reason for the emergence of Roman Reigns as a hated face, and now Jinder Mahal as champ. It seems that the only way you can get true old school heat on a wrestler these days is through the 'I don't think you deserve to be booked where you're at' heat.
People want Reigns to become a heel, but then he might actually get some cheers. He might become an anti-hero. But that's not what's trying to do. Smarks and other fans don't realize that he's doing what he's doing in order to generate heat from people that he won't get if he becomes a heel. And they got enough of those people, like the wrestlers I previously mentioned.
This is an excerpt from Stone Cold's podcast interview of Shane Helms(The Hurricane) about what I'm trying to explain.
Maybe they should just flip it all on it's head. The cheesy "good guy conquers all" types are the new heels and the big badass dude who breaks people in half can be the faces. Works for me, Braun can be FOTC.
"It seems that the only way you can get true old school heat on a wrestler these days is through the 'I don't think you deserve to be booked where you're at' heat."
100% true
Back when kayfabe was alive, or at least not broken by WWE itself, the crowd booed the heels who: cheated to win, because they didn't deserve to actually win because they were cheating; were really bad persons, meaning they don't deserve anything at all; beat a fan favorite. Today is the same and that is why Reigns is so great. Everything Reigns does is calculated. The fans feel: he isn't that good - he is, everything by the way he walks to his booking is that way to make you think that and boo him; he cheats to win - the fake wellness violation; beat a fan favorite - Daniel Bryan and many others.
People will come here and say but Reigns is supposed to be face. Think. Is he or are you being worked? He has stated he isn't the good guy. A heel is someone who the fans hate, not someone who does bad things (remember, good, bad, right, wrong are all subjective). The commentary team portrays him as a face so you thing he is being overpushed.
Cena back in 05. Although the cheering heels phase started to only really started when the WWE embarked on their Indy journey a few years back. Before that it was mostly heels facing Cena who got mega cheers.
Heat is the easy thing to get. Just pick any talentless scrub off the street and have him beat John Cena, AJ Styles, Undertaker, etc and they will get heat. It's cheers that are difficult to get.
It's easy to play a heel over a face but it's much harder to actually gain pure heel heat. Miz is probably the last true real heat magnet around and a lot of that also hands itself to the fact that he didn't come from the indies so to an extent is automatically less respected by the modern fan. (Still respected just not as much)
I don't agree with go away xpac style heat being real heat. When Jinder gets merchandise (lol at your WWE champ not having merchandise) how much will he sell after the trolls are finished? I don't think the Reigns/Cena argument will work here.
Heat is the easy thing to get. Just pick any talentless scrub off the street and have him beat John Cena, AJ Styles, Undertaker, etc and they will get heat. It's cheers that are difficult to get.
By this logic all the faces should be actual talented peformers and all the heels should be untalented nobodies. Would create a huge talent divide on the roster if you ask me and its hard to buy in that all these untalented average looking nobodies can act as bad guys to the actually talented good looking all conquering superheroes the faces will be.
Yeah heat is definitely not easy to get these days. The only guys who get legit heat now are Reigns, Mahal, Owens (sometimes), Miz (sometimes), and that's about it. Even Cena doesn't get the same heat now that he's in his proper role putting over new stars.
I think cheers for a heel Roman would be very short-lived. "Cool heels" that a large segment of the fanbase gets behind almost always have great verbal skills. That's. . .not Roman's skill set, to say the least.
LOL, heat. You think they want heat on Roman? They've done EVERY trick in the book to try and get him cheered. And yes, Reigns absolutely will generate heat as a heel, because he's completely unlikable. Fans don't just boo somebody as a face and cheer them as a heel, that's a myth.
Jinder is about business in India, Vince doesn't even notice if you hate it, he's not even paying attention because the reason for the push isn't about YOU, it's about Indians. If he cared about heat, he would've never given fans all these pushes that they actually want like AJ Styles and Kevin Owens.
they could pull Reigns' push back completely and replace him with Rollins or Ambrose or Balor and Reigns would still get more of a reaction because people want to hate him more than they actually want to cheer someone else.
It doesn't matter one piece of flying monkey crap if these "top guys" have real heat, fake heat, old school heat or heat stroke, the fact of the matter is that they couldn't draw flies to a bison's turd.
"Old school heat" by pushing people that are neither ready nor accepted is just a fancy phrase for pissing people off. And unlike "old school heat", the anger is not directed at the guy, but at the company. And if you Tell your fans "you go fuck yourselves", they LEAVE. And so they do.
And what's the obsession with "getting heat"? Fuck that! Create a strong babyface for a change. But it's not only that they couldn't do this if their lives depended on it, they don't want to. Because they think it's Reigns. Hence that OP theory is bullshit.
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