Being a Heel

Let's start off with the obvious question. What is a heel? Quite simply... it's a villain. There's always a villain or a heel in every story. Whether it's a movie, play, any fight or a wrestling match. It's usually the good versus the evil. The superhero versus the villain. Or in wrestling terms, the babyface versus the heel.

Being a heel is more fun than you could ever imagine. Think about it for a minute. It's a job where you actually get paid to make people hate you. How great does that sound? You don't have to go out of your way to kiss babies and shake hands. You don't have to sign autographs or high five the fans. You don't sell pictures of yourself or even have to worry about what they even think of you. You just go out there and do every nasty trick in the book to make those people hate you.

I've done some pretty terrible things in and out of the ring, as a heel in the wrestling business. Heck, just this past weekend, I beat up one of the company's top babyfaces with a chair to the point where his younger fans were actually crying. CRYING. So, what did I do? I got out of the ring and yelled at them in a horrible manner. Now, you might think that this is in very bad taste? Well, I tend to agree... to an extent.

There's several different ways you can look at this. Number one: yeah, I made a few young girls cry because I was beating up their hero. Ok. I admit that. Maybe I shouldn't have rubbed it in and egged it on by getting out of the ring and yelling at them, to make matters worse. But if you look at it from a business stand-point, you'd be seeing a totally different story. Me doing something as terrible as that, it builds even more hatred into my character. Do you think those little girls will be back? Of course. Why do you think they'll be back? Well, it's quite simple... they'll pay to see me get my butt kicked, the very next week!

I've called people fat. I've spit towards fans (not on them). I've swung at them. Some of the things that I've said would definitely not be acceptable if I weren't inside the wrestling ring. I've made challenges to some of the male fans in the crowd... and they've accepted by the notion of trying to climb in there with me. Thank goodness for security guards.

In Puerto Rico, fans have been known to throw pennies, bottles of water, rocks and even batteries at the wrestlers that they didn't like. I've had fans key my car or pour things on top of my car. I've even had a group of guys waiting on me outside in the parking lot. They wanted to have a street fight with Five Starr, so to speak. I've been slapped by women, spit on by kids and even hit in the head with a cane by an old-timer. But the reactions let me know that I'm doing one helluva job out there. It's so much easier to be disliked than it is to actually be liked.

This is just another interesting thing you can add to the list that makes the wrestling business unique. You tell me another sport where you actually WANT the fans to hate you. Tell me another form of entertainment where the more the fans hate you, the better the crowds are. You tell me any other business out there where people will actually pay their hard-earned-money to see someone that they absolutely hate. You can't. Only in wrestling.

Visit next week to get the top five ways to be a better heel. Thanks for reading.