#HWETW Top 10 – Heat

9. “Cheap” Heat – Every Heel Ever

If babyfaces can score brownie points by celebrating victories of teams they don’t follow in towns they’ve never been,there’s nothing wrong with a little cheap heat. Especially if the ability to get cheap heat becomes part of your gimmick like either through perceived obliviousness, like Kurt Angle, or intentional needling, like Edge and Christian.

As Dave and I have discussed “off-air”, this requires a strong ability to sell the idea that you believe the crowd is saying “Boo-Urns” to you. And Kurt Angle was perhaps the finest performer in the history of the industry in no small part because of how much he made you believe that when people chanted “You Suck” at him, they were doing it out of respect.

But when used for things like a “match” between “Donald Drumpf” and “Rosie O’Donnell”, it’s worth less than the paper used to print the tickets. Cheap heat isn’t called that simply because it “costs” less to acquire, but because it’s not particularly sturdy or well-suited to build a career off of.

Other Examples: Seriously, every heel ever outside of, maybe, Brock Lesnar. 

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