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Heel’s DO NOT need to cheat to draw heat. That’s such a simplistic way of doing business that just comes across as corny and carni at this point. There are other ways to draw heat and IMO part of the problem is that guys just don’t think outside the box enough.
Randy Orton is a great example of how to work as a heel and draw heat in more subtle ways. He’s got a ‘heel’ move set, for starters. Stomping your hands, feet, legs? Heel moves. That step/scrape on the forehead? Heel moves. Crowd boos? He cups his ear and begs for more. Crowd boos? He goes into his entrance pose. Guess what? The crowd boos more when he does that shit. His slithering and creeping while he waits for his opponent to get up for an RKO? Heel shit. Some of his moves work equally well as a heel or face. His middle rope DDT, for example. He smiles ear to ear before he smashes your heroes face into the mat, the crowd heats up. They cheer their ass off when he’s a face. His snap body slam sucks all the heat out of a comeback for a baby face, or serves as a desperation move he pulls out of his ass when he’s a face.
That’s good psychology. When you have to resort to the most overt methods like eye gouging and things of that nature in this day and age, you’re character doesn’t put off enough of a heel vibe on it’s own to get people to care to begin with and THAT’S the issue.
Cesaro is a bad example for Austin to use, because the people do NOT want to boo him, and that’s because he’s an absolute badass in the ring. The issue is Vince and Co not wanting to make him a babyface when the people were fucking demanding it, though not as fervently as Bryan. He wrestles like a god damned superhero and people dig it, suckas.
One thing Austin and Ross and everyone else who harps on this is forgetting is that this is a different audience. Today’s audience is generally smarter than those of years past, and so guys who can go get rewarded with acknowledgment that yeah, you’re dope. Ross, for example, stays bitching about Bray not being a heel, except… Bray is a fucking heel, and not because we’re told he is. He’s basically a creepy cult leader, shows up and attacks people without provocation, and even his finisher is smarmy as fuck. He just had a really good gimmick, a dope ass entrance with a great song, and can flat out go in that ring. Today’s audience will reward all of that by playing along and telling you how awesome it is. That said, psychology is all about knowing your audience, and it doesn’t seem like Ross or Austin understand this audience. Frankly, Austin is the biggest reason for this next to the NWO. It wasn’t just that they were “cool”, it was that the audience shifted.
We live in an era where Tony Soprano, Don Draper, Heisenberg, and other less than savory characters are the central figures in our television shows. Antiheroes like Sawyer (Lost) are now commonplace. The audience has shifted, and the characters have shifted along with them.
Kayfabe is dead, as it should be, because pushing to make people believe that this is all real only results in a roll of the eyes to most people. Within that, however, there must be continuity and a commitment to present the show as realistic as possible so that we’re able to suspend disbelief.
That’s where a team like The Ascension got the psychology right by shitting on legends (the Hawk crack notwithstanding), but WWE fucked it up by having them beat up jabronis in the process. Had they cut that promo after kicking the living shit out of the Usos, attacking Bradshaw at the announce table, and taking out Los Matadores back stage or some shit, they’d have nuclear heat already. The in-ring cheating tricks are good and well in limited doses but it would be nothing more than a band-aid on a knife wound because the big issue here is WWE overly scripts everything and does so in ways that just plain don’t work.
Wade Barret’s new habit of beating the piss out of his opponent after the match is great. Having him lose to Sin fucking Cara in a non-title match? Fucking dumb. Let him lose a non-title match to a believable threat, and let him lose in a way that makes sense. So, his own arrogance leads to a loss or whatever and he flips out. Now he’s not only a maniac, he’s only got himself to blame for his loss to begin with. More reason to hate him. There are plenty of ways to generate good, solid heat without resorting to cheating to do it. IMO that’s the cheapest possible way to generate heat and that heat, those boos, that hatred really stems from personal traits embodied by a character in contrast to the crowd’s love for the babyface. Cesaro should have Kane’s slot in The Authority and he’d be over like crazy as a heel right now even with the giant swing. If you want people to boo the giant swing, ut Daniel Bryan or Dean Ambrose or Dolph Ziggler in the swing after beating his ass, grab the mic, and tell the crowd to cheer while he destroys their hero. Once Cesaro acknowledges how cool it is and plays to it being cool when he does it to someone the crowd positively loves, the crowd will turn on him and the move. After he hits that dope ass uppercut? Get down in his opponents face while he kisses his own biceps and slaps the poor guy in the face.
Shit like that is a thousand times more effective than back rakes and eye gouges. Those types of things should be tools in the repertoire, but those things won’t fit the problem with heels not getting heat in WWE.
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