The Art of Darkness: How to Heel
Or, Where Have All The Bad Men Gone?
Wrestling follows a basic conceit of two archetypes locked in eternal struggle: the face, or good guy, and the heel, or villain. The crowd is supposed to cheer the babyface and boo the heel. Since half of every roster is evil, it means that the annals of pro wrestling are filled with memorable rogues galleries.
I’ve previously discussed wrestling as a morality play: a clash between good and evil. There are exceptions: face versus face matches, matches trying to emulate a real sports feel that downplay face and heel dynamics, antiheroes who queer the face/heel binary, etc. But the bread and butter of pro wrestling is, was, and will continue to be a heroic face trying to overcome a villainous heel.
That's the simple foundation upon which performers have built rich characters, complex mythos, and shocking thematic depth when they're really good at their job. I could write a hell of a lot about the history of heeling, but what I'd prefer to talk about is how heeldom has transformed significantly in the 21st century.
Wrestling is ever-evolving, but faces remain largely the same: never-say-die underdogs and larger-than-life superheroes. Meanwhile, anyone exercising a heel gimmick that would be perfectly serviceable in 1993 would be perceived as either a purposeful throwback, an outdated joke, or get-your-TV-show-shitcanned offensive.
It's a myth that audiences ever thought wrestling wasn't fake, but the modern realities of pro wrestling have greatly altered the heel. I guess the difference comes down to knowing wrestling isn't real but suspending one's disbelief, and being constantly reminded wrestling is fake. From arguing over who the next WWE champion would be with your classmates to going on reddit and seeing someone critique your favorite wrestler for his unrealistic selling. The heels of yore greatly relied on the audience suspending their disbelief to turn their fictional misdeeds into actual vitriol from the crowd.
That may not have made any sense. Maybe a better way to put it is that because every fan is constantly thinking "wrestling is fake wrestling is fake", it's gotten tougher to receive a negative reaction from the crowd. Think about movies: a good movie might make the audience cheer or clap or laugh. A crappy movie will be met with bored silence, or heckling, or laughing at how bad it is. The former are people getting sucked into the subreality of the movie's fiction, and the latter are people pulling back from the subreality.
In wrestling, a good heel used to be met with a chorus of boos. Now they're usually met with cheers because the crowd, overly aware that wrestling is a show, appreciates how good they are at being a heel. A bad heel is met with silence, or the fans hijacking the show to do The Wave or whatever. This is an intractable problem.
I'm going to go into what I consider the four main archetypes of modern heeldom, four different approaches to getting the fans to boo you. They are:
1. Boo me because I'm so good at being bad
So let's talk about the guy who usually gets cited as the "best heel" in wrestling right now: Maxwell Jacob Friedman, MJF. His character is immediately accessible: a smug, slimy rich kid from Long Island who assumes that his privilege guarantees him success in life. He's great on the microphone, running down his opponent and the crowd with wit and verve. He has a gift for pushing the audience's buttons, and when they're at a fever pitch that's where the face comes in to take him down.
In 2019, when MJF was just bursting onto the national scene, he felt like a total breath of fresh air. His heel character is hardly new, but what made him stand out was his commitment to the bit: remaining in character at autograph signings, hourlong interviews, social media, even on Cameo. The fans desperately wanted a villain to boo, MJF obliged.
This gets at the thousand-pound gorilla every wrestling heel has to face: the audience knows that wrestling is fake. If a wrestler does the things that used to get them booed in the past (that is, believably play the part of a scumbag on TV) that's more likely to get them cheered for their skillful heel work. When you watch Die Hard, you may or may not hate Hans Gruber, but you applaud Alan Rickman for what a great actor he is. That's fine for a movie, but a wrestler has to be on TV every week selling tickets, and a story with no villains is a limited story.
MJF solved this problem by being so good in his role that he encouraged the fans to be part of the act. Fans don't boo him because they think he's a bad person in real life, but out of a combination of 1) Reciprocating his great work at playing a villain by reacting to him the way he wants them to, and 2) Being part of the show: MJF is the villain, a villain who the fans hate is better than a villain who the fans love, so the fans boo the heel like a good wrestling crowd should.
MJF is just the most visible and successful case of what I call the "postmodern heel" - the heel wrestler for modern audiences who are constantly inundated with reminders that wrestling is fake. Most people who are good at being heels get cheered, but MJF is so good at being a heel that the fans boo him like he wants out of appreciation.
When I say MJF is a "good" heel, what I mean is that he's a great actor and promo, and his commitment to the bit is truly impressive. He's done a few clever things to blur the lines between kayfabe and reality, but overall I think MJF (and virtually every other modern heel) fails in one key way: I do not hate him.
When MJF wrestles, I think about the storyline implications, about what it means for his young career if he wins or loses. When he cuts a promo, I listen, engaged, excited to see what funny or interesting thing he's going to say. In over 3 years of watching him, I have never once been blinded from this to hate his guts, even for a single moment.
The only times I've ever forgotten wrestling was fake when MJF was onscreen was when he wasn't being a heel. He once cut a promo about being bullied in middle school for being Jewish, about getting his dreams crushed by a veteran wrestler who insulted him, and in those moments I was glued to the screen... wanting to support and cheer MJF, not hate and boo him.
When MJF acts the scumbag, I know he's doing exactly that: acting. He's a wonderfully gifted actor playing a scumbag in a theatrical production. That's because that's what he is. I think the guy who plays MJF on TV is overall a pretty good guy and not such an amazing actor that he can convincingly disappear into the skin of a terrible person. That's a level of ability very few performers, be they wrestlers or stage actors or screen actors, possess.
2. Boo me because I am terrible at wrestling
Some modern heels (most prominently Baron Corbin) have gone through a line of thinking like this: "the fans will cheer most heels because they're entertaining as heels. Therefore, to make sure the fans boo me, I will be as purposefully un-entertaining as possible." This means he cuts bad promos, he wrestles bad matches, he makes the show grinding and unpleasant whenever he's onscreen.
This is a natural evolution of the heel's original role to be the guy who grinds the babyface down and prevents them from launching their exciting offense. As a kid, my most-hated wrestler was Randy Orton, a 70's-style heel whose ringwork mostly consisted of slowly grinding his opponents out with headlocks. They'd rally, only for him to shut them down and put them right into another headlock. There were layers to the act: Orton was excellent at playing the role of the menacing sociopath, and his famous finisher (the RKO, which he could hit from anywhere and at any time) gave his matches an exciting element of tension even when nothing of note was happening. But at the end of the day, Orton buttered his bread by being boring.
But that was 15 years ago. Today, when people see a wrestler being boring on purpose, their reaction isn't to boo. It's to change the channel. The old-school "boring on purpose" heel has been outmoded by the audience's shorter attention spans and desire to be entertained. Orton himself is still around, but even as a heel he works a far more dynamic in-ring style than he did as a young man.
3. Boo me because I am a legitimately terrible person
Here we come to an unpleasant reality of wrestling: most of wrestling's greatest heels were, in fact, distinctly un-great people. A few examples:
Ric Flair is a philanderer and alleged sex criminal
Hulk Hogan is a racist
Steve Austin beat his wife
The aforementioned Randy Orton was a locker room terror who did things like shit in a woman's bag to haze her
Triple H is a consummate politicker who ruined the careers of others to advance his own
CM Punk is a narcissist who's had multiple epic and highly public meltdowns when things didn't go his way
Vince McMahon... I don't even know where to begin.
What do these guys have in common? These are all guys who I thought were truly excellent heels. Real humans are complicated: none of us are entirely good or entirely evil. All of the men I listed above have their defenders, have done good deeds, and are arguably not bad people at all depending on how despicable you find their actions and how redemptive you find their acts of goodness. But I don't think anyone can argue that they have all done or said things that a moral person would not.
Okay, great. Problem solved. Hire a scumbag and ask them to be a scumbag on TV, people pay to see them get beat up. Except...
Scumbags tend to be a negative locker room influence, for obvious reasons.
Most wrestling locker rooms I can name were infamously toxic, rife with hazing, drug abuse, and worse. It was less a band of brothers and more the worst of a fraternity mixed with the mafia (sometimes literally!) One of the most positive wrestling trends of the last 15ish years is a serious attempt to change locker room dynamics, and they generally seem like much less awful environments than they were a generation ago. A net human positive, but it makes it harder for real-life heels to thrive.
They're also a PR hazard. To hire and pay a scumbag who gets in media hot water is to court media hot water yourself.
Like with everything, this is Twitter's fault. Fans (and the broad wrestling community) have constant, instant access to every minute news story. If a wrestler does something bad - hell, if they say or do anything remotely notable - everybody with a remote interest knows within hours. There's a new drama nearly every day of the year, and 350 of them are comically small beans that are forgotten within a week. The other 15 are huge things that ruin someone's reputation or career.
Wrestling companies don't want that drama! They're far more PR-sensitive than they used to be, and no talent is worth making the company look bad.
So the old-fashioned way of "put a scumbag on TV" is far less viable. That leaves only one other option...
4. Boo me because I can compartmentalize the shittiest parts of myself and invoke them for my on-screen character.
This is basically the same thing as 3, except to put it reductively the wrestler isn't a scumbag. Of course, everyone is kiiiiiind of a scumbag. Even the nicest and most forthright person is in some way unlikeable. Most adults can keep a lid on that unlikability, the good ones can process it healthily.
But pro wrestlers are an egotistical bunch. It's a business that rewards good looks and exceptional skill, and people who work hard at their appearance or ability probably feel at least a little entitled to recognition. So my favorite heels working in Current Year are the ones who can harness that ego, narcissism, feelings of inadequacy, etc., and channel it into their onscreen character.
This is of course something that takes exceptional acting ability and a great deal of maturity. So I can only think of four or five guys who can do it at all, and they tend to be so popular that their heel runs are short-lived.
For this one, an example will help, so here's a segment I love dearly: Finn Balor's first promo after turning heel.
For context: Finn Balor, real name Fergal Devitt, is an Irish wrestler who debuted on the British independent scene in the early 2000s, at a time when the wrestling scene in Britain was in terrible shape. He went to Japan and became a breakout star there, most notably forming The Bullet Club, a faction of heel wrestlers that's gone on to massive popularity and success. After a brief but successful run as the cocky hotshot leader of the Bullet Club, he was signed by WWE and was quickly touted as a hot new wrestler destined for greatness. He was sent to NXT, WWE's developmental brand, and quickly won their championship - NXT's top babyface.
On his first night on the main roster, he won a tournament to challenge for the world championship at Summerslam 2016, a major show (if you don't speak wrestling: he debuted and immediately was presented as a main character and one of the most powerful wrestlers, which is very rarely done.) Balor won the belt... and got badly injured in the match, vacating the championship the very next night.
He spent six months recovering, returned, and spent years struggling on the middle of the card. It was a step down: he was a top babyface in NXT and debuted on the main roster as a top babyface, but now he was nowhere near that level. After almost three years of languishing, including a 3-minute loss to Bray Wyatt at Summerslam 2019 (a show that he main-evented three years prior), he returned to NXT.
Balor was treated as a returning hero by the NXT audience, only to quickly turn heel by attacking Johnny Gargano, the top babyface who replaced Balor when he was promoted.
Or to put it simply: Balor is a guy who first got noticed for being a heel, sniffed the top of the card as a babyface, only to find himself right back where he started six years earlier - so he snapped.
Oh, one more thing. His Irish accent is thick. I'm talking Instagram butt model thick.
This promo is only two minutes but I have so much to say about it. Let's break it down:
"Two months ago, I'm laying down for what's supposed to be the hottest new thing in the business just because he put on a new mask. Well, I just took my mask off and now I'm the hottest thing in the business."
This is an eyebrow-raising comment because Balor is gesturing at the fact that wrestling is, in fact, fake. In wrestling parlance, he's kind of "shooting" - which is to say, he's not in kayfabe, he's not acting, he's not speaking as his wrestling character Finn Balor but as Fergal Devitt, the guy who plays Finn Balor on TV.
At the same time, his comment isn't directly calling wrestling fake, only gesturing at it - he's suggesting that his three-minute loss to Bray was predetermined, he doesn't come out and say it. This is good stuff: by threading the needle of the hyperreality of the tv show and the actual factual reality of, well, reality, he's creating ambiguity as to what he's saying. Are these his real opinions? Where does Finn Balor end and Fergal Devitt begin?
Then he goes on to say he's "taking his mask off". That could be a reference to his character turning heel, but maybe he's taking off his mask in the sense of finally speaking his mind? Who knows!
"And as usual, everybody's got their opinions. The fans got their opinions. The office got their opinions. The boys in the back got their opinions. Buncha Twitter tough guys on social media, huh? Y'see, the problem around here is that there's too many fans in the locker room when they should be sitting out here with these people."
In the past, wrestlers usually were not people who grew up watching wrestling. They came from other athletic backgrounds (most commonly football and amateur wrestling) instead. In recent decades, an increasingly-common trend has been wrestlers with no athletic background outside of wrestling - men and women who grew up loving it and are now living their childhood dream.
Fergal Devitt is one such person, but he also went through immense tribulations to make it to WWE. Like I said, he labored for years on the British indies, likely living extremely frugally and performing in front of crowds in the dozens as was common for indy wrestlers of the 2000s. He got his break in Japan, meaning he moved halfway around the world, leaving his family and friends behind for eight long years. Finally, finally, he got his big break in WWE.
The point is that Devitt worked hard. Nobody can argue that. Meanwhile, there's a perception (not one I agree with) that the younger generation of wrestlers have it easy, getting cushy positions in NXT early in their careers. Fanboys who don't belong in a wrestling ring.
Balor leans into this real-life tension between the old-timers and the new generation in this comment. Does he mean it? Does Fergal Devitt actually believe there's a problem with fanboy wrestlers? Who can say! His delivery is impeccable, there's no way to be certain if he's acting.
"Let's make one thing clear: I don't watch this business, this business watches me!"
This is the key line of the promo. Take a moment to think about what would get a wrestler booed - it would be if he possesses some quality the audience dislikes, right? Well, what do all wrestling fans have in common? They all like to watch wrestling. Ergo, someone who doesn't like wrestling is a fantastic villain.
That's heel Finn Balor in a nutshell. He isn't a fanboy - he doesn't even really like wrestling. What he likes is money and glory. He's bitter that his promising career has stalled, he sees his relevance slipping away, and he's decided to do something about it. He's tired of trying to get people to like him - he's going to let his worst impulses rule him, let ambition and resentment guide his actions, and get the eyes of the wrestling world back on him by any means necessary.
"Which brings me to Johnny Gargano. The heart of NXT."
Remember how I said Johnny was more-or-less Balor's replacement? Well, Balor noticed. He noticed that the fans quickly moved on from him, one of the most popular NXT stars ever, to throw all their support behind this dynamic new guy. That sarcastic "heart of NXT" comment? That's what they used to call Balor.
There's more. Johnny Gargano is one of the first names people mention when discussing "fanboy wrestlers". He's made no secret that becoming a pro wrestler was his childhood dream, or that he's a massive wrestling fan/nerd. It's part of his real-life personality as well as his onscreen persona. That's where he gets the nickname "Johnny Wrestling".
The most common heel chestnut of all is to insult the crowd, and personally, I don't like it 99 times out of 100. Even if someone is an actual asshole, they aren't going to go in front of a crowd of people and call them names unless they want to be booed. It reminds me that they're just playing a character. But Balor does it brilliantly here by not addressing the audience directly. He makes passive-aggressive jabs at them instead, mocking their fickleness in moving on from him so quickly, mocking their support of "fanboy" wrestlers like Johnny Gargano, without doing so directly. He treats the fans the way someone who actually disliked the fans would treat them: with dismissiveness and disdain.
"Johnny, congratulations, I heard you got out of hospital - but let me make one thing very clear. If you want your go again, I will send you straight back. And you won't be Johnny Wrestling - you'll be Johnny WATCHES Wrestling, exactly the way it's supposed to be."
First of all, how well did he deliver that threat to hospitalize Gargano? Chilling. Balor rules.
But more than a threat, I think this points to the dimensionality of the character. Why does Finn Balor have so much animosity for a guy he has little relationship with? The last comment is our hint. Johnny is one of the fanboy wrestlers that Balor despises... or, could it be the opposite? Balor is angry with Johnny in particular for "stealing his spot", and now he's generalizing. He hates "fanboy wrestlers" as a class as an extension of his hatred of Johnny in particular.
And in two minutes, without ever once saying it directly, we have Balor's motivation. He's a talented guy who's sick of being undervalued and even sicker of not expressing that feeling, and now that he's letting that rage out he's become unpredictable and dangerous. He's willing to injure or retire people who he thinks are encroaching on his turf. He's sick of the fans, he's sick of the locker room, and he's going to brutalize everyone in front of him until he gets the respect he feels he deserves.
This is a dynamite promo, and I think the fact that Balor starts it by creating ambiguity as to how much of this is real is what makes it so genius. Devitt is super talented. Many people do feel he's been undervalued, and if the fans think it then you know it has to have at least crossed the man's mind. If he does feel that way, then he can't express it publicly because it would be unprofessional to criticize his employer - and since his wrestling character is a babyface good boy, he can't channel that resentment into his onscreen character. Guys like Johnny Gargano are a threat to his spot, as Johnny's star is rising while Devitt's continues to stall and fall. I'm not saying Devitt thinks or feels this, but he might.
My theory is that he does feel that way to some extent, but is also a grown man and a professional who understands that the wrestling world does not revolve around him. So he takes those feelings and channels them into this promo, and in doing so he lends his heel character a depth and believability like few others.