2008: Year of Mega Heels

Well, 2008 has been a year of changes in more ways than one. The world has witnessed changes in international relations with symptoms of a second Cold War starting to show up.

The global economy witnessed a catastrophic change in the form of a recession, with big names in business falling apart to be remembered only in the vault of memories.

The sports entertainment industry has been no exception to the wave of changes. It, too, witnessed changes, small and large, positive and negative. Changes came in the form of farewells, setbacks, accomplishments, acquisitions, and returns. An unpleasant change is that pro wrestling no longer dominates the pay-per-view buy rates.

Buy rate records are now being set by MMA promotions like UFC and boxing matches—indicating a shift in viewers' tastes towards real fights from entertainment action, which indeed is a matter of grave concern for this industry.

The vital point here is that even the WrestleMania buy rates have fallen compared to the previous year. 

2008 saw the end of a colossal career with the retirement of Ric Flair (Woooo!) at WrestleMania 24. Other notable changes include Mick Foley's arrival in TNA and Christian Cage's return to WWE.

But there has been one real positive thing this year and it is that a whole new direction has been reached in the creation and hype of the heel characters in pro wrestling.

As usual, WWE has been at the forefront in bringing this very positive transformation in the industry.

At the beginning of the year, WWE had two major mega heels stars—the Edge and Randy Orton. Edge the opportunist and Orton's shadow fighter with reptilian mannerisms had already established themselves at the top of the mega heel list, and personally it was the impact of their heel characters that brought my interest back in wrestling which had been depleting fast in 2007.

But 2008 saw both characters attain whole new dimensions, with Orton repeatedly taking out guys backstage and in the ring while Edge came back straight from hell to win the WWE title once again.

This year, a third mega heel has been created in the form of Chris Jericho—joining with the Edge, Orton's character, and a fourth unknown who seems to be in the making—looking at the possible return storyline of Christian Cage. Jericho's feud with Michaels was truly epic and it has cemented his place as a performer in the WWE.

Jericho's character, as he recently revealed, was based on the villain from the 2007 movie No Country for Old Men. In playing the character, he had actually attained both the internal mindset and external mannerisms of the movie role which is what made it really beautiful. The following are lines from a recent interview he did talking about his heel role.

"The guy was completely committed to what he was doing," Jericho told the Rocky Mountain News. "You could say he was evil and wrong, but in his mind, he was right and that's all there was to it. He was very calm, cool, and collected, and a complete psycho as well. I thought, 'These are the elements of a great (wrestling) character.'"

This, I think, is the basic factor behind the success of these characters. They have both an internal mindset, external behavior, and mannerisms like earlier heels. But overall, these characters are highly complex and difficult to play compared to traditional heels because of their unique internal characteristics, external attributes, and mannerisms.

By the end of the year, TNA joined in the new heel revolution by giving Kurt Angle a true mega heel character—complex and different from almost everything he has ever done.

This character combines his violent heel mannerisms in the past with a new lethal viciousness to verbally and physically hurt.  The character is willing to go to any extreme to inflict verbal and physical pain in his victory pursuit. The Angle-Jeff Jarrett feud is turning out to be very, very exciting as it approaches its climax in 2009.

Overall, the year 2008 proved to be the best year in the history of mega heels up to this point. Let's hope 2009 brings up something better—maybe with a similar revolution in the creation and hype of mega faces.