Nikki Bella Breaking AJ Lee's Divas Championship Record Generates Massive Heat

Fans reacted to Nikki Bella surpassing AJ Lee as the longest-reigning Divas champion in WWE history as if she had burned the American flag in the center of the ring.

In an era where the audience cheers for heels, where riot-inducing heat just doesn't exist, Nikki emerged from Monday's title bout as hated as anyone on the roster right now. She cheated to beat the well-liked Charlotte, which in turn allowed her to break an even more well-liked wrestler's record, and put on her best self-important grin and bragged about it afterward.

That's Heel Booking 101.

AJ, like her husband, CM Punk, was the kind of wrestler who drew in the Internet Wrestling Community. She was fiercely independent, mocked the status quo and borrowed heavily from Japanese wrestling with her move set. Simply put, she was cool.

Nikki is the polar opposite. She's conventionally attractive and the star of a reality show. She's the cheerleader to AJ's edgy misfit.

Despite how much she has worked on her in-ring game, she is still seen by many as what is wrong with the women's division. 

That sets up an easy way to irk fans: The often-disliked, braggart champion gets the added rub of breaking a record that belonged to a wrestler the IWC held dear. Nikki didn't just escape Charlotte on Monday's Raw; she defeated AJ that night as well.

That's two heat-generating results in one.

The story of Nikki's reign has been that she and her sister Brie (and eventually Alicia Fox) made up a dominant force. The cocky cheaters stayed atop the women's division, no matter how hard Paige and everyone else tried to take them down. 

Eventually, that empire will crumble. That will be a great moment for the babyface who does the crumbling, but delaying that moment was the right move.

Save it for the pay-per-view. Let the TV show beforehand be the setup. That's how WWE has done it for years.

WWE did well to hype up Charlotte's bout with Nikki on Monday's Raw. A ticking clock marking the time before Nikki broke AJ's record popped up on the big screen over the last few weeks. The company produced a video package in which Nikki bragged about starting the Divas Revolution.

That's a heel move in itself. The Divas Revolution was in part a movement born as a way to reject Nikki and Brie's stranglehold on the division. 

To claim that to be her doing is like Triple H's taking credit for the "Yes!" Movement. 

Once the bout began, Nikki made Charlotte suffer by driving her knee into the challenger's arm. She had her writhing and screaming and seemed to be loving every minute of it.

Charlotte made the expected babyface comeback, fighting off the pain and eventually looking to have the match in hand. Brie slipped into the ring, though, taking Nikki's place. She took the pin, fooling Charlotte and fans into thinking that Ric Flair's daughter had followed his footsteps and captured gold. 

Stephanie McMahon reversed the decision.

The result was a gut punch to the audience as much as it was to the woman who realized the championship she held in her hands was not actually hers. The emotion on Charlotte's face showed on the screen.

Credit: WWE.com

The heartbreak she experienced in that moment was supposed to mirror what the crowd was feeling. The hero's triumph turned to dust. The villain got away again.

Online, a mob of angry fans pounded their fingers onto their keyboards. Many have trashed the ending to the match and the decision to let Nikki beat out AJ. The controversial ending and what it accomplished only bolstered Nikki's position as a heel, though. 

Justin LaBar of Chair Shot Reality nailed it when responding to a fan:

This is all about making her eventual loss more meaningful, and angering folks along the way. The key word in that message is "heat."

The heel is supposed to be hated. Heels are supposed to stand in the protagonist's way, preventing a happy ending whenever they can. That's exactly what Nikki did here.

As Cageside Seats explained, Nikki's unscrupulous route to breaking the record makes it all the more powerful:

Charlotte will get her rematch at Night of Champions. She can then finally give the heel her comeuppance. She can benefit from being known as the woman who ended the longest reign in Divas title history.

Meanwhile, Nikki will get the kind of heat that Brock Lesnar got for ending Undertaker's undefeated streak at WrestleMania.

If there's any doubt about the huge impact her passing AJ has on her status as a heel, one need only read the responses to her recent tweet. Not long after making it past Charlotte, Nikki rubbed it in, posting a shot of herself with the title:

The messages that fans sent here read like the kind of stuff one would imagine fans would write about Gorgeous George at the peak of his heeldom. Nikki's boast inspired the audience to send her photos of middle fingers, a succession of curse words, snark and vitriol. 

A good number of WWE's other heels would love to have that kind of heat.

Nikki is at the center of a firestorm. She's the central figure in a moment that brought about fervent emotion from fans. That's the result of a successful story playing out, as WWE left the audience dizzy with anger and made Nikki more hated than she's been in her career.