Platinum Championship Wrestling's promoter weighs in on "The Return of the True Heel"

Platinum Championship Wrestling's promoter weighs in on "The Return of the True Heel"

- from PCW promoter Stephen Platinum

The Return of the True Heel

I attend wrestling shows around Georgia.  (I do so to enjoy the shows, not sit there condescendingly with my arms crossed like so many other wrestling people I see…but that’s an article for another time.)  I try to get to two different shows a month, and usually actually get to one.  This might not seem like a lot, but when you couple that with reading recaps, watching shows on the local and national level and individual matches on-line (for example, I always watch Rampage’s show, and prospective wrestlers send me stuff to watch every single day) and having shows of my own to run that use wrestlers from various promotion who tell me what’s going on elsewhere, I keep up pretty well with what’s going on.

I think there is a clear distinction between the promotions that run things well, and the ones that don’t.  This isn’t me trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, this is me trying to make Platinum Championship Wrestling better by observing what I think works well and what does not.

In short, there aren’t enough quality heels.

The promotions that I would consider a cut above (Anarchy, Rampage and a couple of others) have heels.

Other promotions have “badasses.”  (Note the quotations, they are important.)

There’s a huge difference.

In Platinum Championship Wrestling, we had the ultimate heel gimmick, Dwight Power.  When creating Dwight Power, I asked myself a simple question.  “Who is the kind of person that virtually nobody can get behind?”  Simple.  A guy who dislikes most everything.  Wrestling traditionally has heels who are “the other”…that is, personas that are in opposition to the audience.  Foreign menaces.  Rich, arrogant people.  Nowadays, it’s authority figures who abuse their power.

I didn’t want to go any of those routes.  I don’t like general manager/commissioner type of gimmicks, especially heel ones.  I prefer the wrestlers to be the forces of menace, to be the ones that provide foils for the babyfaces.  I think it makes for a more cohesive product, and the obvious benefit of things playing out in direct fashion in the ring – the crowd loves wrestler A.  They hate wrestler B.  Wrestler A and B have a match and everyone can get excited about it.  That’s much better, in my eyes, than General Manager B doesn’t like wrestler A, who the crowd adores.  So General Manager A gets wrestler C to wrestler B in a nefarious scheme to take something from B.  Don’t get me started on babyface authority figures that don’t wrestle.  Awful.

I understand that the heel authority figure/face wrestler has worked before.  When it was Vince McMahon and Stone Cold.  But indy promotions don’t have the infrastructure, earned history or the legitimacy to truly pull this off.  Not to mention, it’s been done all over.  To death.

So back to Dwight Power.  I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t simple – that is, “I hate black people” is never something he would say.  He would have to have a viewpoint.  A realistic viewpoint.  I listened to right wing political figures.  I looked at the Turner Diaries.  I watched documentaries on the Klan.  It was important that Dwight Power felt real. 

Little Willie is a wrestler that’s been around the Georgia indy scene for years.  He’s perfectly serviceable in the ring, but his gimmicks always felt very “indy” to me – the rapping white guy.  The little fast wrestler without real depth.  One day he came to practice wearing a white wife beater and camouflage pants and boots.  I jokingly called him “Dwight Power” and the name stuck.  I realized that with his shaven head and sharp facial features he looked like so many angry, disenfranchised young white men that I had seen throughout the country.  I realized that if he could merely cut the proper promos, I had a true heel for PCW.

At first, Will had trouble with his promos.  He would make anti-Obama jokes and the like.  I helped him out.  I cut a “Dwight Power” promo, where I talked about how the audience weren’t true Americans, I was.  I talked about why I was in PCW…to show everybody my superiority and validate my world view.

Will understood.  Dwight Power was the ultimate non-inclusive uber patriot, not a simple minded bigot.

What followed was months of amazing moments – Dwight Power taking “special” Timmy McClendon, putting his mouth around a board pulled out of the ring and kicking the back of his head, covering his face in blood ala American History X curb stomping.

His disturbing catchphrase, “I am a voice that speaks, a thought that yells and an action that screams Dwight Power, Dwight Power, Dwight Power!”

Dwight Power abusing and attacking the openly gay (and very babyface in PCW) Simon Sermon, culminating with an incredible lumberjack match where the entire PCW roster and gay and African American heavy Jungle audience watched the battle with real emotional investment in Power and Sermon.

Dwight’s promos were the key.  Thundering, intelligent, but warped rants about why his targets in PCW deserved their fates at his hands. 

In Atlanta, Georgia, Dwight would have no allies in the crowd.  He wasn’t a surly “badass.”  Dwight hated all of the audience, and they knew it because he told them.  He didn’t mock their sports teams, or hometown…he hated THEM in a way that perhaps they had heard before, in a way that was familiar and personal.

Through Dwight, Timmy McClendon got a true foil to help elevate him from simply a comedy gimmick to someone the audience could care about.  Simon Sermon and the Exotic Ones could be true faces…valiant men fighting against one who would oppress them, instead of the typical wrestling gay heel that gets booed for…merely being gay.

But I wanted more.  And I wanted more heels.  Certainly there were others.  Mason the Demi-God has emerged as a top heel.  His gimmick is over the top, bombastic…inspired by Xerxes the Persian God-king from the movie “300,” Mason and his disturbingly corporate zombie feeling Witnesses have come up in PCW and garner their share of boos.  But PCW needed a true force of heel menace that even the most sarcastic and jaded wrestling fans would fear and hate because of that fear.

Enter the Konkrete Gorillaz. 

For all of Dwight’s strengths, he was and is very small.  And while he looks the part, and speaks the part, in the end Dwight couldn’t inspire a visceral, physical fear beyond the brutal stunts we would do with him.  In short, once the bell rang he couldn’t threaten you, not really.

The Konkrete Gorillaz do.

A brainchild of Nemesis, the Konkrete Gorillaz consists of Nemesis, Jay Fury and newest member Brian Blaze.  They are scary.  Not simply “badass” but they feel at their best…legitimate, for lack of a better word.  They are big.  They are scary.  They are unapologetically intimidating.  There is a feel of genuine danger when they are near or in the wrestling ring.  They can wrestle, certainly, but their real menace…their “heel-ness” comes from the feeling that they legitimately hate anyone that aren’t themselves.  And it come across.  They have no love or respect for the fans that choose to cheer them.  They challenge the audiences’ very manhood.  That’s the core of their heel gimmick to me.  They take and they take, and they always step way over the lines of what is appropriate.  They hang wrestlers.  They beat them to bloody pulps.  They are street warriors with a bully’s instinct but a soldier’s resolve.  And they are frightening to behold.

The current war between the Konkrete Gorillaz and the Exotic Ones (Simon Sermon, Rick Michaels and Jay Clinton) has been (I understand this word is overused, but it applies here) epic.  Months of attacking one another, physically and verbally.  A streetfight match that ended when Nemesis cracked a bottle over a fan’s head, leading to the true conclusion (we think) this Thursday…a cage match between the six men.  Not only is that cage there to provide a final place of combat, it’s there to protect the audience from their fight.  Imagine that…true danger created by the heels to the point where the audience itself must be protected.  Truly Badass, not “badass.” The Konkrete Gorillaz want to be the top gang, and hate the Exotic Ones.  The Exotic Ones have the wrath of the righteous and want to prove that they can stand up against the storm of hatred known as the Konkrete Gorillaz.  Heel versus Face.  Simple.  Engrossing.

I know that many young wrestlers (and not so young) dream of being that Lone Badass.  The guy with a tough sounding moniker that walks to the ring and beats them all up.  It is not compelling, especially if the foundation isn’t there for the part.  Wrestlers often say they want to be heel, but seem unwilling to do the one fundamental thing required to achieve being a true heel by my estimation – wanting nothing from anybody except what they can take.  Wrestlers almost always, deep down, want the fan’s (and the boys’) respect.  That coveting leads to wanting to look tough.  Having the exciting music.  Doing the flashiest moves.  Bleeding.  Winning.  Laying everyone out.  Talking tough and clever on the mike.  But the true heel doesn’t or shouldn’t want respect as a primary modivator, except for self-respect gained through aquisition…and for a heel, self-respect is about achieving success and dominance without any pretense of fair play.  Self-preservation over ideals should also be the trait of the true heel.  Even monster heels should portray the sense that they are hurting others before they themselves are hurt as an act on some level of self-preservation.  Chickenshit heels won’t risk getting hurt unless it’s a calculated risk in their favor.  And the crowd should understand this.

The “badass,” strangely, is the most selfish of gimmicks in the construction of a wrestling show more often than not.  A desire to have other wrestlers, matches, even whole cards thrown under their “badass” bus to get their gimmick over.  The true heel is, in many ways, the least selfish of gimmicks in that same context – their established presence not only encourages a wrestling’s audience’s participation and involvement, but enables other gimmicks to get over with the fans, notably babyface gimmicks.  “Stone Cold,” the prototypical badass, has no real resemblance to the indy “badass”…he was a clear heel, until he was a clear face.  And he had true heels to play off of to get his babyface gimmick over.  Using terms like “anti-hero” clouds the issue and actually has deceived wrestlers and bookers into thinking that wrestling audiences don’t want true heels and faces in spite of all evidence to the contrary.  It is clear that it was a babyface Stone Cold that waged battle against a clearly heel Vince McMahon.  The “badass” I see on the indy scene is usually a guy who isn’t in shape.  He’s a guy that doesn’t possess a great deal of skill in the ring.  He’s a guy that doesn’t have depth to his persona.  He’s a guy that usually gets booked in matches that only he and other likeminded wrestlers and their immediate familes care about. 

I think the problem is that wrestling people have mistaken “complexity” for “tweener.”  I would agree that the modern wrestling fan in many cases doesn’t want the simple heel and face.  But they want a face and heel, don’t get that wrong.  They just want a more fleshed out face and heel, not a middling tweener. 

If you are a young wrestler, or a booker looking to revive or start your career, your promotion…look no further than creating (or bringing in) a true heel in yourself and in your promotion.  Look at the heels of the past that have worked.  Look at the heels on the scene today that really work.   It not only makes for a great wrestling product, you’ll find that audiences crave the true heel.  Don’t book for or against the small majority of fans who root for heels to be contrary…create a world of heels and faces and create an interesting world filled with emotional investment for a paying customer to truly enjoy in every sense of that word.

Or be a “badass” and impress you and your Myspace friends.

Come see the Konkrete Gorillaz and Exotic Ones wage war in the cage on Thursday, December 23^rd at the Masquerade.  www.masq.com  Also on the same card, PCW World Champion “The Revelation” Shane Marx takes on the hated Mason in the cage as well.  And we’ll see if anyone is going to answer my challenge from the last thing I wrote about the PCW World Title….