Heel (professional wrestling)
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In professional wrestling, a heel is a character who is portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner; sometimes they are humourously referred to as 'evil'. In non-wrestling jargon, heels are often "bad guys" in professional wrestling storylines. They are often opposed by a face (crowd favourite) or babyfaces. Some tweeners exhibit heel mannerisms.
Common heel behavior includes cheating to win (e.g. using the ropes for leverage while pinning, or attacking with foreign objects such as folding chairs when the referee can't see), attacking other wrestlers backstage, interfering with other matches, and acting in a haughty or superior manner.
Whilst being heel is often part of a wrestler's gimmick, many successful heels fall into one or more categories:
- Crazy heel: a raging madman, dangerous and unpredictable (example: The Sheik; George "The Animal" Steele; Sid Vicious; Mankind; Heidenreich).
- Monster heel: an unstoppable juggernaut who squashes his opponents (example: Gorilla Monsoon; Big Van Vader; King Kong Bundy; Kane; Brock Lesnar). Sometimes, monster heels violently "injure" other wrestlers (through rulebreaking tactics), terrorize valets (and sometimes injuring them) and commit other extremely heinous acts to set up a feud with a promotion's lead face, such as in 1999, when The Undertaker was behind a reign of terror that led to his feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin.
- Egotistical heel: an obnoxious and self-important character; some wrestlers play on their own fame and achievements to achieve this (example: The Rock; Triple H; J.B.L.).
- Foreign heel: in United States wrestling, foreign heels are often portrayed as being anti-American, such as Russian (Nikolai Volkoff), Iranian (Iron Sheik), Canadian (Bret Hart), Japanese (most notably, Mr. Fuji), or more recently, French (Rene Dupree). In Mexican wrestling, Americans are often portrayed as heels; the most hated tag team in lucha libre history, Los Gringos Locos, consisted of the Anglo Art Barr and Eddie Guerrero, a Mexican American from El Paso, along with another Anglo in Louie Spicolli.
- Traitor heel: in the United States, a variation on the foreign heel who is actually an American, but has turned his back on his country in favor of an (ostensibly superior) one. For example, Rob Conway, who portrays a man who has defected from America to France, or Sgt. Slaughter, who was billed as an Iraqi sympathizer during the first Persian Gulf War. In Japanese wrestling, a "traitor heel" is someone who goes against the established (usually mainstream, babyface) group he was part of within a promotion, such as Riki Choshu, Masa Chono, and Great Muta in New Japan Pro Wrestling, Yoji Anjoh in UWF International, and Genichiro Tenryu in All Japan Pro Wrestling.
The term heel is most likely is derived from a slang usage of the word that first appeared around 1914, meaning "contemptible person". [1] (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=heel&searchmode=none) The Spanish term is "rudo."
Sometimes, a heel can use cheating to his/her advantage to gain appreciation from the audience, thereby being a face with heel tendencies—i.e. Eddie Guerrero before a mid-2005 heel turn.
Many heels today suscribe to the beliefs of Mick Foley—that a heel must always believe that whatever they do is justified, and that they are in the right.
See also
External links
- Evil in Professional Wrestling (http://www.deathvalleydriver.com/Benaka/thesis(chap10).html)