Toaster Oven

Sparked by my comments in the 9 Favorite Wrestlers thread. Who in your mind is the best heel of all time? Or perhaps the best era heels. You might think Harley Race is a better heel because he was actually hated, or someone like Michaels in Canada. My personal favorite is of course the Ravishing Rick Rude. To me he was a natural heel. He got booed for being who he is. Even though he played a more comedic heel with having his tights pulled down as opposed to actually being genuinely hated I feel he was definitely the best Heel of All-Time.

Discuss.

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Tyler Durden

My personal faves are

Rick Rude, as agreed with on the other thread (and here now). Played his role superbly both in WWE and WCW.

Mr Perfect, like Rude, a natural heel with an awesome gimmick.

Kurt Angle. I don't personally agree that it's a main event gimmick, but his cowardly comedy heel in both WWE and TNA is a great gimmick.

Shawn Michaels, along with Flair, the only one of my choices that also made (for me) as incredible a face as heel. I can see that he doesn't want to go heel again, but his short term heel run with Hogan (including the interview promo as Hogan and the heel speech in Canada) reminded me of what a great heat machine Shawn always could be.

Ric Flair. Do I have to explain?

Brian Pillman. I loved this guy. Awesome heel heat generator wherever he worked.

Eddie Guerrero, from his work with Art Barr almost up to his death, an incredible heel performer. I was never too struck on his face work, but he did do great in ring comedy as a face.

Ted DiBiase. An all time favourite. Again, he was a great heel wrestler already, but the gimmick in WWE pushed that envelope superbly.

Of the current crop of wrestlers around, I'd say Edge is probably the only guy that has a chance of joining my list.

I do love heels, but really only those that can always work incredibly well, and all the above could.

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A throne is just a bench wrapped in velvet

Toaster Oven

The only thing I remember with Flair is that he often got cheered when he was supposed to be heel. Also just to throw this out there to differentiate this thread, how far should a heel go? I mean I've heard about shows where Harley Race would come out, and with the way the crowd reacted, hell I'd be scared for my life. Whereas a guy like Edge can come out(whom I agree is the best current heel) and get jeered but not worry about anything.

Also would Michaels be right to taunt Canadian fans?

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Tyler Durden

As said, they were purely personal choices.

I've not seen that much Harley Race.

I think part of it is the size of the stadiums. For example, everything seems superhot in front of a much smaller audience (withness Impact of old school ECW in the ballrooms and bingo halls). A lot of that old footage was in old small arenas where things do get super heated because you have the rabid hardcore audience only, whereas, in more recent times, the performers are performing in front of larger crowds with more or a family bent to them and in an era where kayfabe is pretty much dead.

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A throne is just a bench wrapped in velvet

horrorfan_1986

The death of kayfabe really killed the art of a great heel. With people knowing that wrestling is no longer "Real", you won't find people as emotional invested as you would in past generations. Heels like Freddie Blassie, Ox Baker and even as late as The Freebirds at times had to actually watch out for their lives. But now with kayfabe dead, companies are no longer able to dictate who are faces or heels. So often times you will have a wrestler (Whether heel or face) get the opposite reaction than they're supposed to. The best example of this would be Triple H at Wrestlemania 22. If you had never watched a wrestling match before in your life, but then was shown the WWE Title match, you would of assumed he was a face.

Getting back more on topic, because of that even wrestlers like Curt Hennig, Ted Dibiase and Rick Rude (Three wrestlers I loved) I can't really say were the best heels ever. It's hard to really label them as the best heels ever when no one really wants to see them hurt badly. Sure, seeing them take a low blow or get their tights pulled down was fun, but ultimately, that's all they were good for. So because of that, the best heel I would say would be someone like Freddie Blassie or any of the older heels.

Tyler Durden

Very good post. I agree with most points, but I can't in good faith credit as the "greatest heels" people who I have only really read about, hell there isn't even any footage that truly reveals the level of hatred guys like Blassie or Gorgeous George received. Even someone as old as me didn't see Blassie in his pomp! This would be like voting for Frank Gotch as the greatest wrestler when, truly, we don't have the footage to back that up and, given how exaggerations are rife in the kayfabe times, it's hard to hold too much store by these.

As such, I can only vote on what I've actually witnessed.

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A throne is just a bench wrapped in velvet

horrorfan_1986

Granted it's not too easy finding footage of older wrestling, But I found if you look hard enough you can find examples of such heels. Just this morning I found footage of a riot in 1973 caused by Ox Baker. However, like all history, to an extent you can believe what you read. To my knowledge there's no video records of Abraham Lincoln, but we're able to know how much of an impact he had on this country through history books. I wouldn't advise using Wiki as a source to learn about the history of wrestling, but there's many older books that I believe paints an accurate picture of what the time was like.

Anyways, I went down to my basement and found one of my old wrestling books. This book is just full of random wrestling lists (It's not the recent Wrestlecrap book though). Here's several of the wrestlers they listed under riot causes (And IMO great heels):

Roddy Piper - Stabbed in parking lot
Art Neilson - Stabbed by a fan in Chattanooga, TN
Lou Albano - While being chased by Bruno Sammartino, he was slashed on the arm by a fan (they were in the crowd)
Danny Hodge - Stabbed in back during a match in Oklahoma City, OK. Funny thing was that it was by his own father
Blackjack Mulligan - Knife wound by a fan caused Mulligan to need 100 stitches
Freddie Blassie - Knife attacks during a match and even acid thrown on him
Dick The Bruiser - In MSG, he and Dr Jerry Graham caused a riot with so many fans jumping in the ring that pro wrestling was almost banned from MSG
Wild Bill Curry - Fans would jump in the ring many times. In 1955, a riot broke out during his match with 140 being taken to the hospital. 1956, a fan jumped Curry in a match, but Curry broke the fans jaw with one punch. 1958, a fan hit Curry in the head with a lead pipe. 1968, a fan attacked Curry, but Curry hurt the fan so badly he was unconscious for 2 days.

There's no doubt it's a lot safer for fan and wrestlers these days. But at the end of the day, I'm sure wrestlers like Curry, Baker and Blassie had to know they were doing something right if people were going so crazy.

Tyler Durden

The deeds of a President cannot be remotely compared to the acts of somebody in a wrestling ring!

A President will cause actions and re-actions to which people may judge them to be good or bad over the course of hundreds of years.

A wrestler dresses in shorts and people at the time, in the case of those listed, judged whether they are good entertainers or not.

Wrestlers now, can be judged on their abilities years and years later, but a few grainy images of wrestlers in their pomp in the 50's and before don't enable us to judge those from the days of yore as great heels when we were not present to witness it.

It's easy to have the deeds of the past (especially in wrestling) overblown when given the lack of material and the kayfabe nature of the time. If it were still that way in the 1980's you'd probably have had marks from that era going around telling people Hulk Hogan was an incredible performer and legit hardman and, given the dearth of footage to refute the point, we would be unable to argue.

Anyhoooooo......if you want to continue this point, make a thread about it. As it stands we're ruining SS's thread with a fairly inconsequential issue.

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A throne is just a bench wrapped in velvet

Shu

Going back to the original question...

All of those mentioned have been great picks, Rude, Perfect, HBK (though I think he was a better heel in the 90's before Montreal), but my favs are:

Ted DiBiase - Had the rich prick thing down to a science. He even had a slave for god's sake!

King Kong Bundy - just a big, mean, nasty man.

Andre The Giant - Be honest. When you were five, you were afraid of him, and what he'd do to your favorite wrestlers.

I think the truest test of a heel from the past is how much you disliked them before you knew it was all a dirty dirty lie.

And for modern day heels, which is a whole different category of heeldom:

Randy Orton - Yeah, he's young, not too proven, pretty cheesy in fact. But don't you just hate him? Don't you look at him and say, man, that guy is an asshole. Doesn't something about him just make you hope he gets his ass kicked in character - and maybe in reality, too? I don't wish him any real, personal ill will, but damn. I hate that guy. Which means I like that guy - as a heel. I think.

JIMMY BONE

IT'S TIE BETWEEN RIC FLAIR AND HULK HOGAN(NWO). THE GREATEST HEEL FACTION HAD TO BE THE NWO BECAUSE THEY HAD THE TOP STARS IN WCW AND THEY DOMINATED EVERYBODY. IN TERMS OF NOW THE BEST HEEL EDGE