by Tony Kowalski 
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

Eddie Guerrero is supposed to be a heel.
 
Yes, we on the internet are all very excited that one of our chosen is making the crossover to what is the equivalent of mainstream acceptance in the world of professional wrestling. This changes nothing. We are supposed to be booing this man and throwing bottle caps at him, not cheering him. 
 
In the past year, he's been a tag champ, based on the premise that lying, cheating and stealing are the way to the top. We have witnessed him powerbombing one of his tag team partners through the windshield of his ridiculously decorated and stereotypical lowrider. He clubs people in the head with his title belt whenever they are so foolish as to turn their backs to him. Yet we cheer him. When I say "We," I refer not to this niche-in-a-niche that is the internet wrestling fan, but instead to wrestling fans as a whole, from a single-malt-swilling freelance internet wrestling columnist to malt-liquor-swilling toothless mullet-wearing rednecks with gun racks on their trucks. We all cheer Eddie Guerrero.
 
Why is this? It's ugly, folks. We internet types are usually quick to admit that what may entertain us may not entertain average Joe Q. Wrestling Fan. Hence, Chris Benoit is not the Grand Overlord of the Universe, and A-Train is not tied to a spinning carnival wheel with monkeys throwing their feces at him. One of the things that really seem to entertain the internet type is solid, traditional heel work.
 
We will love the dastardly heel while the masses will call for his head. We appreciate the fact that a great heel is required to create a great babyface. Fantastic heel work is a stand-out trait of true greatness, and for years, it seemed as if only we could appreciate that. It was our little inside joke.
 
But somewhere along the way, everyone else started to pick up on this. Suddenly the guys who were doing the best heel work were getting cheered. Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mick Foley, The Rock, Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho and even Triple H, to a certain extent, started to evoke face responses to their heelish actions. It's no surprise that all of these guys could deliver in the ring. This led to the rise of a disturbing formula:
 
Solid Traditional Heel Work + Workrate = Face
 
This brings us to Eddie Guerrero. Eddie has both halves of the above equation. Thus, it is no surprise that he is beginning to receive the end result of the equation: the huge ovation of cheers. His current adversary, John Cena, has easily shown the first half of the equation, and fans seem to be on the edge of their seats waiting for solid evidence of the second half. It won't be long before Cena is as an unlikely face as Eddie, and we all know it. This leads to a disturbing realization.
 
The traditional heel is, for all intents and purposes, dead.
 
It's true. If a guy can be a great heel and put on great matches, he'll eventually get cheered. Look at the Dudleys. They went on a rampage of putting women through tables, yet they were so awesome in their matches and their mannerisms that they became de facto babyfaces. Look at Triple H three years ago. He was the nastiest heel in the business, yet the world was demanding a face turn. Look at him now. I question his ability to deliver a pizza, much less anything resembling a three-star match. So, because of the fact that he is still an incredibly nasty heel, he gets an overwhelmingly negative response in any crowd.
 
This presents a huge problem. What are the WWE and the world of professional wrestling going to do to create the kind of heels necessary to sell pay-per-view main events? It seems they have two options. The first is to use heels that can't satisfy the workrate end of the equation. This is where we get our A-Trains, our Big Shows, and our modern day Triple Hs entrenched in the main event. They can do the solid heel work, but aren't wowing people in the ring. I'll be generous and say that for the most part, the end result has been satisfactory. Sure it's not as great as it has been in the past or could be in our minds, but it hasn't been so reprehensible as to send us screaming to Monday Night Football.
 
That leads us to wrestling's second option: tinkering with the other half of the equation.
 
Lately, the WWE has been trying to change the image of what the main-event heel should be. This experiment has been going on in both brands, namely with Kane and Brock Lesnar. In both cases they have been trying to push the wrestler out of the status of heel, and into that of a monster. The WWE seems to think that the solution to making the better heel is to make him more evil.
 
Brock has taken the more traditional of the roads towards full-fledged monster-dom. He started off innocently enough, by betraying his friend Kurt Angle and siding with Vince McMahon, the paradigm of evil in the wrestling world. Traditional enough beginning, right? But he started moving away from the traditional road of the heel, and started delving into a somewhat sicker place. He has spent the past few weeks brutalizing poor Zach Gowan. 

Heels in the past have gotten over by beating up women, cruiserweights, announcers, injured people, and to a lesser extent, fans and midgets. But now we have a new addition to the formula: beating up a one-legged man. As ridiculous as it sounds, it has been amazingly effective, due in no small part to Zach Gowan. Zach's steely-eyed "I will not back down from you or from anyone, MOTHERFUCKER!!!" expressions draw you viscerally into an emotional involvement with his character, which instantly makes Brock insanely evil when he uses his obvious size and skill advantage to maul Gowan. Then, when Brock continues to stalk and assault Gowan, Brock ascends to a level of heeldom that no fan can cheer. Nobody can cheer a 280-pound guy who stalks one-legged men.
 
The obvious problem here is what to do with Brock when he either grows tired of or kills Zach Gowan. The WWE locker room isn't exactly brimming with men missing limbs for Lesnar to annihilate. And if it did, I wonder if those men could say as much with their eyes as Gowan does, which goes a long way toward making Brock a demonic bully. It's likely that Brock will go back to smashing cruiserweights and women, which will allow the fans to focus more on his impressive ability to deliver three powerbombs in succession, rather than on his evil character. If the WWE isn't careful, he'll be a face again before they know it.
 
The other experiment, Kane, has been harped on by writers better than I. But when one looks at it as the WWE trying to take Kane outside of the heel formula, it loses a certain level of inanity that has been assigned to it by many. Sure, Kane lighting people on fire, Tombstoning Linda, roasting Shane's nuts on an open battery and rising in messianic stature from what had to be a fiery doom is ridiculous. But how is watching Kane light a person on fire any more or less believable than Brock throwing a guy in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs? How is the visual more or less fake? How is the end result — taking Kane and Brock to a new, uncheerable level of heeldom — less effective?
 
It's obvious that the WWE is experimenting here. The new heel needs to exceed the traditional heel in some way or risk getting cheered. Old heels attacked with sledgehammers to cripple. New heels attack with fire to kill. It makes sense on paper, even if it is going to very bad places in execution. We have to remember that what we're going through here is an experimental stage, one that will be very soon forgotten if the monster heel Kane becomes the World Champ. Imagine that, a World Champ so insane that wrestlers are afraid to challenge him. Imagine a wrestler eliminating himself from the Royal Rumble rather than risk winning and having to deal with what Kane might do to him.

Or be content with the old way, the one where great heels become faces before they even get to the main event. Imagine the main events clogged with guys that the WWE knows aren't the total package, but will continue to push because they will continue to evoke a heel response. Personally, I'm willing to put up with a little experimentation that might lead to something more interesting than the status quo, so Eddie Guerrero will have a compelling opponent when he makes the main event.

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