Last night, Kane stood toe to toe with his brother The Undertaker, just like he did on Smackdown and at SummerSlam. If that seemed odd to you, don't be alarmed. It did to me too. No, it wasn't because Kane has a decade-long history of being a job-boy to his kayfabed older brother, but because it's unbecoming behavior for a heel in today's WWE. The default heel behavior seems to be to duck and run. There are exceptions, Kane obviously and to a point, the Miz recently, but if a heel is facing any kind of adversity, he/she is going to run. We've seen it with Nexus, Dolph Ziggler, Sheamus, CM Punk, Chris Jericho, Edge and even a guy like Dave Batista before he left the company. While the chicken-shit heel is a staple of wrestling booking and of storytelling, it seems to be an overused mechanism in the WWE today, one that hurts the overall product and leads to predictable booking.I'm not knocking the chicken-shit heel altogether. It can be effective if the guy playing the character is doing it well. Jericho, for example, is excellent in his role as the holier-than-thou, pompous jerk who runs whenever it's time to walk the talk. However, why is the tough-talking, tough-looking, towering Irish brouged WWE Champion turning tail and running? It's understandable (although humourous and wrong-looking) to see him bolt like Tyson Gay away from the Nexus, but he's also run away from guys like Triple H and John Cena.
A long time ago in wrestling age, but a fairly short time ago in regular years, the WWF didn't really have a problem booking heels as being dominant forces that a true underdog babyface would find great support in toppling. Yokozuna, Undertaker, Kane, Brock Lesnar, hell, even Triple H (which was a big reason why he's earned so much ire from me and a good portion of the Internet, for what it's worth) all were indestructible heel bulldozers at some point in their careers.
In fact, in real sports, the best "heels/heel teams" are ones that are dominant all the time. The New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics and University of Miami football teams didn't all get hated because they cheated or ran away from confrontation on the field. They're not liked because they at some point in time won all the time in dominant fashion and were brash and cocky doing it. OF course, those qualities also garnered them a lot of bandwagon fans over the years, especially the brash and cocky part, which could be a big reason why they rarely ever mix winning with boldness. It's a big reason why The Rock got over huge as a face in the past and why they're having a hard time keeping The Miz heel today.
You could argue (and I would agree in part) that wrestling is more storytelling and entertainment than sport anyway, which again doesn't help the argument for the massive amounts of cowardly heels. In comics, movies, TV shows, what have you, there is a diverse cross-section of villainous types. You do have your cowardly archetypes, but some of the best villains, those like Darkseid, Bane, The Smoke Monster/Man in Black and Galactus, are dominant, almost unsurmountable-seeming. The fact that the numbers are skewed so off means that the WWE misses the mark in both emulating successful sports models and entertainment models.
So then, what happens, you take the plucky, underdog face role out of the equation. Just because Michael Cole squeals about John Cena needing to overcome the odds doesn't mean that's the case. Visual evidence always points to the opposite, especially when the ring clears whenever Cena charges in for war. Hell, even when someone does impose a dominant aura, like Big Show, Cena ends up making short work of them anyway, but that's fodder for another post altogether. Hell, even Rey Mysterio has caused people to scatter. LITTLE FUCKING REY MYSTERIO, a guy who should be booked as the ultimate underdog.
There is no way that the only advantages most heels are able to get over their face counterparts should be sneak attacks, cheapshots and numbers advantages. Trust me on this one, the WWE would do better to balance things out and have a little more diversity in their heel characters. Cowards sell, but not as well when they're the overwhelming majority of enemies out there.
Photo Credit: WWE.com
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