By The Hand of Sepryon (6) - Kane, Thou Art A Villain

[Petre Dyche]

Greetings everyone to the sixth edition of By The Hand Of Sepryon. I am Petre, and one time at band camp the tutor was so shocked by the size of my organ, he wanted to blow into it himself.

[[INTRO]]

Life’s been getting pretty weird of late for the Rated P Wannabe. I’ve moved in with my girlfriend and that stuff’s going alright. It’s been pretty cool getting out of my folks place and having a TV to myself. Okay…I have to get up early specifically to watch something other than soaps, romcoms or OutTake TV. Seriously, I have to get up at 8am on weekends so I can watch my Sky+’d WWE shows. I do get to watch live footy when it’s on to justify paying for the Sports channels, but other than that I’m totally whipped in the remote department.

My bus journey to work is now considerably longer, so it gives me a bit more thinking time. However, my journey is now shared by some of the lowest common denominators in the world of humanity. I saw some right fat skank the other day with her mobile phone ON A CHAIN AROUND HER NECK!! I couldn’t believe my eyes. Are her fingers so fat that she cannot put them in her pockets anymore?? Streuth.

Got live house show tickets for Christmas! It’s the Raw brand show at Liverpool Echo on April 22nd. I’m rather gutted that Batista is not going to be on this tour. Not because I like the guy or anything, I’d just love to boo the crap out of him and start a “Let’s Go Steroids!” chant. I’m definitely taking a sign though….but I’m torn between a HIPRN sign or something that says “MICKIE LOVES FEET”. We shall see. I’m positioned right on the corner of ringside and on the entrance. Remind me to kill my missus for pwning me at Christmas shopping.

I’ve been enjoying the ‘product’ a lot over the last few months. Although me to briefly rundown some random thoughts…

-Why do people count whenever HBK is ‘tuning up the band’?? I can understand when someone’s getting the 10 corner punches…but the feet stomping thing is to build up rhythm. Maybe if it had a countdown rather than a count-up it’d work. FFS…dumbasses…

-I wonder if I went to Liverpool with a sign “Hi, I’m Petre Dyche” Dolph Ziggler would shake my hand…

-Wrestlemania’s coming up, if you hadn’t noticed. For most it’s a very exciting time. For me it’s not, as I know I’ll not see half the midcard talent until April.

-Who thinks Eve has ‘grown’ quite a bit since winning the Diva Search? Yes I love big fake boobies.

-So glad Christian’s back. He seems to have slotted nicely back into the upper-midcard role he previously vacated. Way to go Jay!

-I’ve started using the phrase “bababooie” a whole lot more recently. Miz, you bastard!

-How long does it take Legacy to walk to the damn ring!? Yes, you’re being methodical, but we’ve just been to commercial and you’re still not there!

Enough nonsense, onward to the show…

[[MAIN SQUEEZE]]

I firstly would like to convey my annoyance whilst trying to put out this column. The main point of discussion was the role and position of heels and faces in today’s wrestling market, and the need for black and white rather than the shades of grey Jeff Hardy is such a purveyor of. In that time we’ve seen Matt, one of my key face factors turn heel. Kane, my main heel guy, now seems to be back doing his face thing. Sure he’s feuding with Kofi, but he still gets bigger cheers.

I don’t need to bore you with the wrestling dictionary definition of heels and faces. I will anyway as it’s important in padding out the column:

In professional wrestling, a face or babyface is a character who is portrayed as heroic relative to the heel wrestlers, who are analogous to villains. Not everything a face wrestler does must be heroic: faces need only to be cheered by the audience to be effective characters. The vast majority of wrestling storylines place a heel against a face.

In professional wrestling, a heel is a villain character. In non-wrestling jargon, heels are the "bad guys" in pro wrestling storylines. They are typically opposed by a babyface or more simply, face (crowd favorite). Some tweeners (not explicitly regarded as good or bad) exhibit heel mannerisms. Heels are often portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner, breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the rules of the match. Others do not (or rarely) break rules, but exhibit unlikeable personality traits. No matter the type of heel, the most important job is that of the antagonist role. Heels exist to provide a foil to the face wrestlers. If a given heel is cheered over the face, a promoter may opt to turn that heel to face, or to make the wrestler do something even more despicable to encourage heel heat.
-Shamelessly ripped from Wikipedia

For the most part wrestlers have their characters designed around whether they are face or heel. It determines who they feud against, how the ending of their matches comes about, who they associate with and how they generally act in kayfabe. When starting out as a new character a wrestler will likely be told how he is to work, face or heel, and then they’ll take things from there. As mentioned on the ever-reliable Wikipedia, crowd reaction is the most important thing in finding out which side of the line is best.

A good example would be my current situation. When we moved in I was the best boyfriend in the world (babyface). I would cook, clean, make love to my woman and things were going great. If I released a new t-shirt design on www.petrezone.com she would probably have bought it. If however the crowd reaction starts to wane a little bit, as my love-making has only a limited repertoire, or my cooking isn’t as tasty as it should be, it may be in my best interests to turn into a heel boyfriend. This will involve taking my love-making moves to other partners, not cooking or cleaning, leading to the eventual break-up of the tag team to embark on a singles career.

Maybe that wasn’t a good example. I just had to get that off my chest.

Hulk Hogan was the atypical babyface superstar. Most current wrestling fans cannot remember a time before Hogan was the franchise player. His appeal was one of innocence for the casual fan. You KNEW without a shadow of doubt he was the good guy in the fight. WWF lined up heel after heel to put him over and the result was nothing short of a global phenomenon and the creation of the grandest stage of them all, Wrestlemania; An event designed to showcase the best bouts, but particularly to be the time when face stars shine through, and everyone leaves with a feeling of triumph and achievement.

The Hulkster played his part perfectly. He kept himself in shape, wasn’t afraid to go the extra mile and be seen in places that the wrestling industry had never been before. Merchandise, TV shows, films, endorsements…everyone wanted a piece of the action, and all because it felt good.

In more recent times John Cena has attempted to fill the void left by megastars such as The Rock and Stone Cold by playing the superhero face, taking on all comers no matter what the odds. Never backing down, never giving in, these gentlemen embodied all that is good and pure and heroic in the human spirit.

Ric Flair for the most part of his career was the best heel in the business. He would lie, cheat and steal (sorry Eddie) his way to 16 world titles, most of which whilst combating the incredibly restrictive politics of the NWA territory system. Heels weren’t meant to go over nearly as much as he did, yet somehow it seemed right. Everyone knew that when you needed a 5-star match, Ric was the guy to call. In his book “To Be The Man” Ric describes how he was once slighted by being put onto something best described as “Heat/Velocity-esque” for a squash match against a jobber. Ric, being Ric, made the jobber look like Ricky Steamboat, as they pulled out all the stops for the match of the night. Ric also says in his book that the reason WWF ran roughshod over the NWA and territories was because of how weak he was made to look a lot of the time, while Hogan was seemingly invincible, someone you could believe in as a character.

Matt Hardy suffered similarly while being a face US/ECW champion. Every match seemingly resulted in him getting injured, fighting back, getting worked on some more and then hitting the TOF out of nowhere for the win. While this sounds like a good formula for a match, it is, but not every single damn week on Smackdown or ECW! His Cyber Sunday match against Evan Bourne was possibly his finest for a long time, and only because he was the ‘big man’ in control of the match pace, and Bourne the explosive counter-attacking guy. Now he has turned it will be intriguing to see what type of heel he portrays; The Edge/Flair-like ‘coward’, or another kind.

Despite being heel, girls loved Ric, and guys wanted to be him. The Horsemen became icons, seemingly something that threatened to become bigger than the industry. nWo, DX, Evolution…all super-groups with a win-at-all-costs mentality which had the same result: Heels got cheered and sold merchandise.

With the onset of the ‘Attitude Era’, or ‘Monday Night Wars’ depending on the side you chose (Attitude being a WWE slogan after all with nothing to do with WCW) at the time, tweening and turns became all the more commonplace. The nWo would gain a new member one week, who’d turn face the week after, only for it to be a ruse and go back to heel. Then there was a face nWo faction and turf wars. DX lost Shawn Michaels, and became a tweener group.

John Cena is known for being one of the most divisive superstars of the modern era. Reasons people give are that he was once had wigger rapper gimmick, his limited move set, his endless pushes or his kid-friendly promotion. Shucks, put it like that and it sounds like this guy has no upside! Defending him, no-one can escape their past, and he did what was needed to get over on Smackdown. I personally don’t mind him being champion so long as his matches are entertaining, and his 2006-07 run was, including the GAB match with Lashley, and his Mania XXIII match with HBK undeservingly robbed of MOTY.

Smarkery is now having a big impact on whether wrestlers are booed or cheered, rather than their face/heel alignment. Cena and Triple H are booed for non-kayfabe reasons, while Randy Orton and Kane are cheered despite showing no kayfabe face characteristics. Fan favouritism that was once quite fickle is now something that will stand even the biggest test. Stone Cold’s attempted turn was made incredulous by the lack of fan reaction to it. He aligned forces with Mr McMahon, he should have been hated, and yet he was Stone Cold; whatever he had done we could forgive.

Getting any pop at all from the crowd is based more now on popularity opposed to face/heel heat. Too often do I read about Wrester A not being able to properly work heel, or get a decent face pop. The problem ladies and gentlemen is thus…IT’S NOT REAL!! When Michelle McCool put the beatdown on Maria to finally turn heel after months of negativity, nearly everyone was happy. We knew Maria wasn’t actually getting hurt, so it was impossible to hate her for it. Not that we needed another reason to hate on her, once you throw in that she’s a homewrecker, poor worker, backstage bitch and had the audacity to try to advise a Hart family member on how to work.

Kayfabe heat is very difficult to come by, which is why I’ll now outwardly applaud good heel work. Edge quite often gets these accolades, because despite being my personal favourite and arguably one of the best big-match men on the scene, crowds will boo the ass off him even though the majority would rather have him than not. We wanted him to get killed by The Undertaker…so long as he doesn’t take too long to recover from death, because…ya know, then Trips will take over again!

Santino Marella is another new face on the heel scene. He started out as the true underdog story, the ‘Milan Miracle’…but quickly they realised that he wouldn’t be believably in the same way Rey Mysterio is (supposedly) and turned him into a comedy heel. Santino had more soundbytes in 2008 than the rest of the RAW roster combined, and despite working roughly a grand total of about 10 minutes in singles competition he was something that had to be seen to be believed, the true underdog, someone who was getting TV time without either being the best worker, being connected, or having ‘The Look’.

My biggest disappoint so far in 2009 (yes, I’m fully aware there’s plenty more time to be disappointed, and don’t you worry, I will be. Often) was Kane’s de-push, if he was ever being pushed in 2008. Coming to Raw he turned heel by claiming he destroyed Rey Mysterio’s sole *cue face pop from Petre* Since Rey’s sudden return looking alive and well, he has jobbed to him nearly a half dozen times, only winning out in tag matches or pre/post match beatdowns. He’s sided now with Mike Knox, which is the equivalent of kicking a baby in the face for cheap heel heat, to battle Kofi and Rey-Rey. What can go wrong? One act of chivalry…going from stalking and mentally abusing poor slutty Kelly Kelly (so hot they named her twice) to defending her honour in a clean loss to Randy Orton. Not quite the monster after all. He was brought in to be the heel for a face Undertaker, and being humanised by removing the mask and having relationships has all led to this once-great character’s downfall.

Randy Orton is doing a pretty good job of confusing the crap out of me right now. He has been getting amazing face pops ever since he returned from injury, showing he is possibly one of the more popular and over superstars the WWE has today. Yet he is still being mired with a heel’s gimmick; randomly attacking faces and women with his ‘posse’, talking down the audience, cheating to win matches and most of all…he hears voices in his head. How much more heel can you get!? What good, honest, face-like action ever came from hearing voices in your head that counsel you and tell you things you ought to do? The best you can hope for when you tell people you hear voices is that they’ll shake their head and ruffle your hair, and that’s when you’re 8 and just confessing to having an imaginary friend.

I had an imaginary friend once. Don’t get me wrong, it was a real person, they just weren’t my friend. But I digress…Randy has done his utmost to get over as the heel he was this time last year, and the WWE have situated him as the biggest heel possible…yet crowds cheer his entrances and his victories as though Bill Clinton had just been given a 3rd term. This is a case of the E not bowing to its fans responses and turning a wrestler for the sake of it, without any sort of direction or reason.

Still, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it Big Show? Show returned at No Way Out last year to a hero’s welcome, and promptly turned heel by attacking Rey Rey and feuding with Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather. What they didn’t take into account at the time was that no-one really likes Floyd Mayweather, so Show was turned back into a face and the whole Mysterio attack was forgotten. Mayweather cheats at Mania and steals the win in a surprisingly good match. Personally I thought both men came out of it very well and surpassed a lot of other bouts on show that night. Now, after many months working as a heel against the Undertaker, Show is about to turn pseudo-face again by feuding with Edge.

The whole point of this column has been that, over the years, being a heel or face has become increasingly difficult. Only a few are truly masters of the craft, being able to work either side of the line seamlessly, or being so over you couldn’t see them ever working as anything else. For those who don’t fall into that category, please cut them a little slack, it’s not so easy being hated.

[[OUTRO]]

Thank you all again for taking the time to read By the Hand of Sepryon. I apologise if any of this seems incomplete or out of date. Initially this column started about 6 weeks ago, but for health reasons (I had a soccer ball kicked into my eye which fucked it up quite bad!) and other delays it’s taken some time to get this out. I’ve tried to edit and play around as much as possible, but now I just want to get the damn thing out there!

I appreciate all comments- negative, positive, in between and even of a suggestive nature. Feel free to PM me some hate if that’s your bag. Until next time I’m your Lord of War, Petre Dyche.
YOU KNOW IT! WOO WOO WOO!

[Cult Icon]

this was pretty good, but some parts (specifically the description of faces and heels) i thought was very thin. if youre gonna describe it, do it in your own words instead of taking it from wikipedia. im sure your opinion of it isnt word for word with that and that its probably better and more descriptive.

other than that, i enjoyed reading it and it kept my interest. ill definitely read you again.

[Petre Dyche]

Thank you for your honest opinion, I can ask for no more than that.

As I think I mentioned, this started 5-6 weeks ago. With other columns coming out in-between I had to tweak and edit to avoid overlapping until eventually I just got so sick and tired of it I posted lol

Thanks again

[Martin Riggs]

I liked this column. Let me say that right away. I thought it was interesting and the subject was a good one to pick, and you dealt with it quite well.

the only real problem i had with this was that it didn't seem to build at all during the main segment. Everything seemed a little 'thrown-together' and not linked. I would've liked to see you talk about less heel/face subjects, and focus on the ones you kept in more depth!

Good column though, i'll be back for the next one!

[BeyondKnight]

Petre -

All right, here are a couple of my observations:

The centering thing is irritating. I understand that people like to establish a "visual style" but I think it is doing more harm than good. It might work for your little bullet points at the beginning, but for the main body of your arguement it would work better alligned to the left.

Add a little color via pictures, a title banner, section headers, something to visually stimulate the eye. There is no reason to go overboard, but it needs to be spiced up a little bit.

It never seemed like you were able to decide if this was a history lesson in the kayfabe face/heel dynamic, or an examination of its current situation. You kind of jumped from statement to statement and it gave the arguement a feeling of being disjoined and disconnected.

I think that this could have been great had you done one more revision to properly organize your thoughts and clearly make an argument. As its stand right now, its kind of hard to determine just what exactly your driving point was.

That being said, I look forward to reading more from you and seeing how you develop. I think you have a tremendous amount of potential and could develop a real following around these parts.

~BK

[Petre Dyche]

Johnny, BK, thank you very much for your comments and advice. I've thought a lot about what you have said and will do my best to make improvements with my future work, especially taking more time to learn how to format my posts to enhance the visual presentation.

If anyone knows of a good banner-man, please PM me so we can work something out.