Wrestlemania Week Day Three: Bring Out The Bad Guys... No Really, Bring Them Out

First, a quick note on last night's Raw.


Pretty much every rivalry got one last encounter before Wrestlemania this Sunday. However, apparently WWE didn't feel the need for its main event, John Cena and The Miz, to have a one-on-one confrontation. No, let's have The Rock beat up The Miz and Cena beat up The Rock and have next to no interaction between the two men in the WWE Championship match. Sometimes you have to wonder who writes this stuff.



Moving on, one thing I learned from comic books is the more evil the villain, the better the hero is. Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, you get the idea. That's all professional wrestling is: Good guys vs. bad guys. Granted, the lines have blurred a little bit, but it's still the same concept.

I don't know what to say here.

Let's go with the bad guys for a minute. Bad guys in pro wrestling, called "heels", often cheat to win, interfere in matches with the good guys (called "faces"), insult the crowd, or just beat their opponent senseless. Their bad guys, it's how they roll.



A couple of weeks ago when heel Sheamus, in the middle of a lengthy losing streak, defeated face Daniel Bryan for the United States Championship, it was a clean win. Meaning Sheamus beat him fair and square.



Huh?


No eye gouge? No ref knockdown? No hit to the head with the title belt? Sheamus is as dirty as they come and now that I mention it this isn't the first time he's won a clean match. Granted, Miz, CM Punk, and Wade Barrett's Jobber Squad get away with heel wins all the time, but Sheamus illustrates the point I'm about to make.


What's happened to the bad guys?


Flashback 12 years ago: Vince McMahon was the evil billionaire businessman. Kurt Angle was an Olympic Gold Medal-winning cheater. Even Edge and Christian brought a new level of vileness to wrestling. But the end-all be-all of villainy was Triple H. Triple H was a ruthless bastard who crushed everything in his path. In his heyday he brought down Stone Cold, The Rock, Mick Foley, Chris Jericho and just about every other face midcarder on the roster. In fact I think the only guy he didn't take down was The Undertaker, but that's only because he wasn't around for much of late 1999-early 2000 or both were on different shows.

Your WWE Champion.

Today? Miz is an extremely weak bad guy. Now that he's not in charge of Nexus Wade Barrett is going nowhere. Alberto Del Rio is a Mexican JBL (i.e. been there, done that). And Sheamus, who could actually become as brutal as Triple H used to be, is apparently caught in the middle of some backstage baloney. I'm not going to bother discussing Jack Swagger, Drew McIntyre, and Dolph Ziggler as legit heels because all three will be buried before you know it if their not buried already. No dominant villain whatsoever.

Straightedge means I'm better than you... and collect Pokemon.

The only savior here (pardon the pun) is CM Punk. His Straightedge Society gimmick was one of the best gimmicks WWE came out with in a long time and beyond his wrestling talent he's just plain mean. He's proven he can wreak havoc on all of the faces in WWE and can truly be a real main event superstar. Hopefully the creative team can find a way to keep that fresh post-Wrestlemania.


Superman ain't nothing without Lex Luthor and Stone Cold ain't nothing without Mr. McMahon. Getting real heels in the ring makes the faces better, makes the storylines better, and makes the whole product better.


Out.