Villains in Wrestling: Making People Hate You

okay it's december 27th 1987 and antonio enoki is one of the biggest wrestling stars on the planet and the biggest in his home country of japan this is the man who fought muhammad ali to a draw started new japan pro wrestling was a forefather of mixed martial arts and would later in life even negotiate the release of japanese hostages from saddam hussein hiro barely touches it enoki was an icon beloved by the nation of japan and at this point was enjoying a winning streak that had gone on for four years but tonight he faces something different the gigantic completely unknown foreigner big van vader and in the moments that followed the audience at sumo hall would witness something horrifying as their icon is torn apart vader pummeling the national hero into unconsciousness shattering his four-year win streak and all in just three minutes the eleven thousand fans and attendants were so enraged they'd reportedly set their cushions on fire and hurled them into the center of the ring erupting in a riot so severe that new japan would be banned from sumo hall for years but none of that likely mattered because tonight what the promotion had done was create a monster invader a true villain who for years would be hated by the people of japan imagine it was your job to walk out in front of tens of thousands of people and then make those people hate you as much as possible that is the business of a heel wrestler something i've always been a little fascinated by and so in the third of a series of videos i may as well call no dad wrestling is for grown-ups i why won't you look at me i want to talk about the strange art of heal wrestling how they make us hate them and how they channel that hatred into storytelling and to see how powerful an impact heels can have on audiences we need look no further than one of the first and best it's the early 1950s and you are a regular working class american joe you and your fellow countrymen are putting in long hours of back-breaking manual labor in order to pull the us out of the shadow of world war ii but on the weekends you and your buddies decide to blow off some steam by taking in a wrestling show and that's where you see him his hair quaffed into delicate golden curls his luxurious robe adorned with ruffles and roses there's an arrogance to his stride as he stares down disdainfully at you and your working-class brethren and when he reaches the ring he refuses to enter until a mink rug is laid down before him and the canvas sprayed with perfume this was gorgeous george a world-class heel did he perhaps lean into some stereotypes that would later be found to be harmful yes but was he a master at making the working class america of the 50s despise him absolutely he would cheat he would hide behind his female valet and he would refuse to acknowledge his own losses the audience was so outraged after his first title win that he was swarmed and punched in the head but if anything that was only proof at how good a heel george was millions would tune in to watch a gorgeous george match to the point that he was instrumental in popularizing early televised wrestling his impact could be condensed into a single piece of advice he gave to a 19 year old muhammad ali one that would echo not only throughout ali's career but through the entire future of wrestling a lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth this right here is the essence of heel wrestling you don't have to be nice or likable or anything as long as the audience is booing it doesn't matter how you got there become a terrifying clown threaten to make people pay their taxes tell people pollution is bad or whatsoever kurt angle is going for here i would like to talk to you tonight about something that gives your olympic hero great joy the joy of celibacy oh yeah there is an incredible amount of creative freedom that comes with making people hate you and that freedom has led to some of the most exciting characters in wrestling the rock stone cold steve austin shawn michaels becky lynch it was becoming villains and freeing themselves from audience expectation that gave them the freedom to create characters that would go on to define their eras but too much freedom can also be a bad thing and so before we understand what's good we need to know what's bad and to do that what say we take a little trip through what i like to call the hall of terrible wrestling heels santa claus was santa's evil twin brother who hailed from the south pole mantar was a uh kind of furry i think oz was doz from the wizard of oz t.l hopper was an angry plumber the goon was an angry hockey player knuckleball schwartz was an angry baseball eric rowan carried around a spooky mystery cage for three months and ooh what's inside it was a spider it was a [ __ ] plastic spider and i'm still angry about it friar ferguson was a very large monk who would do things like this for some reason a depiction of a sexually promiscuous clergyman struck a nerve with the catholic church and the gimmick was axed after just one match with that same wrestler rebranded a few months later as bastian booger a large man with poor hygiene who enjoyed eating however unlike friar ferguson bastian booger would go on to be wildly successful and beloved by fans enjoying years of popularity before finally fighting sean michaels to a 60-minute draw at wrestlemania 12. some of that did not happen seven was a spooky man who could fly and would steal your children i think that's what was going on here and if you can't get on board with that neither could dustin rhodes you can take this silly looking thing seven and shove it up your ass beaver cleavage a parody of the 1957 sitcom leave it to beaver in which a wrestler played a mentally disabled incestuous version of the little boy actually you know what no no we're done we're done i'm i'm done we're not talking about this anymore that's it go home everybody wrestling is very silly and i love it but if these are all bad heels what separates good heels from everything we've just talked about and to answer that i want to take a look at a wrestler who has the ability to turn an entire arena against him with just a few words video games video games yeah i love video games and then i lost my virginity my favorite thing about aew's maxwell jacob friedman isn't any of his solid in-ring work or even his excellent heel promos but how he messes with our perception of him on tv he plays a nightmare combination of every suburban [ __ ] rich kid and every douchebag frat boy you've ever met but it's off tv that he's at his most interesting he's infamous for staying in character at all times to the point that he will actually ignore fans at public events and even outright insult them hey josh it's mj i've heard you're a big fan guess what i don't give a [ __ ] go [ __ ] yourself there was one incident last year where he gave the middle finger to a little boy at a fan meet and greet and when the boy's father took to twitter upset he simply replied and i quote [ __ ] them kids besides it being objectively hilarious i think what mjf is doing here is really fascinating unlike a stage play where the boundaries of what's real and what aren't are very clearly defined wrestling is a lot blurrier and particularly with heels unlike villains in a stage play heels can see us hear us and interact with us in other words they exist in our reality despite being fictional personas and so there's a very soft boundary between artificial hatred and real but it's that boundary that mjf is a master at distorting in 2018 the documentarian kenny johnson released a 30-minute film on mjf johnson's known for making these really heartfelt documentaries on the lives of rising indie wrestling stars often giving these really poignant looks at the people behind the personas and that's how his video on mjf's starts but after a little while things start to get strange despite it being a documentary mjf insists on doing the same takes over and over and over his home is filled with stuck photos he has these bizarre shifts in mood and we hear his parents but we never see them and the more time johnson spends with mjf the more he starts to realize that everything about him from the house he lives in to the people that live there it's all a bizarre fabrication and when johnson starts to peel back that illusion he catches a glimpse of something much more unstable and dangerous no part of me believes that this isn't a work that it wasn't a collaboration between johnson and mjf but it's also this kind of fascinating piece of media where a deeply unstable fictional persona is trying to convince us that they are just a normal person and it gives you just enough room to believe that maybe something is really very wrong with maxwell jacob friedman this is the line that separates good heels from bad because in order for us to hate them we first have to believe them take a character like bray wyatt how easily could he have landed in our hall of terrible wrestling heels a maniacal children's tv host that transforms into a scary monster it's ridiculous but never as ridiculous as it should be because from the moment wyatt introduced his themed persona everything about him from the way he walked to the way he talked to how he moved in the ring it all changed and became so eerily convincing that it lets you buy into this character in a way that feels real even if it obviously isn't but what if it was real what happens when a heel crosses that boundary between fiction and reality and starts using real life hatred the montreal screwjob took place between brett the hitman heart and the heartbreak kid sean michaels two supremely talented wrestlers both at the peak of the wwf the only problem being that they [ __ ] hated each other in real life michaels had previously refused to drop the championship to heart and now heart was refusing to do the same for michael's and especially in front of his hometown montreal crowd the problem though was that heart was about to leave wwf for its biggest rival and management could not let him leave the champion and so a scheme was put in place at this point in the match michaels has heart locked in hart's own finishing move the sharpshooter and the agreed upon finish between michael's heart and management was that hart would reverse this into his own sharpshooter submitting michaels and giving up the belt the next night but instead the bell was rang at this precise moment making it look like heart had tapped out heart was beyond furious he had been lied to and lost the title in the most humiliating way possible to a man he hated and the montreal crowd turn poisonous on michael's if you're a fan of wrestling i'm sorry you had to hear this for the 12th time but if you're not i need to drive home that this was all real and not part of wwf's fictional storyline and so years later when michael's returned to that same arena the montreal crowd still held a hatred for him that was so pure and michael's leverages it to do some utterly insane heel work mocking the crowd telling them how they would never see bret hart in a wwe ring again when suddenly hearts music hits and the roof comes off the [ __ ] arena as the people of montreal wait for their hero and they wait and they wait and they absolutely nuclear heat real genuine hatred towards a fictional character but what if we take this one step further what if that character wasn't fictional what if that character was new jack to understand new jack you need to know three things one he did not like white people two he performed in front of the predominantly wise predominantly redneck audiences of smoky mountain wrestling and three he delivered this promo following the horrific murder of o.j simpson's wife nicole brown simpson and her romantic partner ron goldman i'd like to send a special shout out to my homeboy oj simpson keep up the good work baby two less we got to worry about you understand keep up the good work new jack leveraged racial tension in a way that is so uncomfortable to watch but was so effective the knoxville tennessee audiences hated new jack but he thrived on that hatred he loved drawing out the most extreme reactions possible and it began to fuel his matches which over the course of his career would grow more violent and unhinged to the point that the staged violence stopped being staged at all he viciously beat a 17 year old boy so badly that the boy never wrestled again he'd legitimately tried to kill a wrestler he had a dispute with and at one point when an opponent upset him he took out a knife and began to stab him over and over and over this is a violent person masquerading as a wrestler and people could feel that people were afraid of new jack and while honestly i find a lot of what he did deeply deplorable new jack does show that there are heels able to operate on a level beyond hate fear and to show you how powerful fear can be in heel work we need to talk about one of the only other people able to do this we need to talk about the king it's difficult to grasp what monaro suzuki is when you first see him but this man scares the [ __ ] out of me watching a minor suzuki match is like watching a spider pick the limbs off a fly he brutalizes his opponents stalking them mocking them dissecting them with a glee that feels so malicious and pure to the point it comes across as disturbingly real watch this forearm strike on tamahiro ishii and tell me you don't feel like you're watching one man inflicting violence on another watching your favorite wrestler face minoru suzuki is less about hoping they win and more hoping they survive and that's all intentional suzuki's storyline is that he was forced out of new japan in 2015 only to return two years later driven by a single-minded ambition take the icons of new japan pro wrestling and break them destroy the pillars that hold up the company and rebuild it in his own image this storyline reached a horrifying climax last year when suzuki locked his gaze on jushin thunder liger if suzuki is the embodiment of evil in new japan liger is the good an old school legend who's been with the company since the early 80s and wrestled 4 000 matches no one is more beloved and respected than liger however late last year he announced that after 35 years of wrestling he'd be retiring and something about this incensed suzuki who set about physically erasing liger assaulting him torturing him dragging out the very worst of the old hero of new japan in a feud that genuinely felt like two men trying to kill each other the story culminated in a match at king of pro wrestling where the two would face each other one final time liger fights valiantly but he cannot stand against the violent madness of the king and he falls but it's what followed that would be remembered as possibly the most shocking moment of suzuki's career he approaches liger steel chair in hand and in that instant the violent persona and all the awful things he's done it all falls away and all that's left is a man in his 50s saying goodbye to someone he deeply respects in that moment the fictional storyline and reality of the situation become impossible to pull apart and it's beautiful you can feel the emotion everywhere here in the voice of the commentators in the tears of the audience and on the face of suzuki this is the mark of the best heels in wrestling the ones who are able to take something real and blend it into their character to the point that no matter how villainous they are there's still something human there to grasp onto and before we go into the final section of this video there is one more wrestler i want to talk about and one who embodies this may be better than anyone else kegetsu is sheer chaos despite the concepts of face and heel being a little softer in japan than they are here kigitsu is nothing but a straight up villain one whose vicious brutal in-ring style let her carve a knife right through the heart of world wonder ring stardom a joshie wrestling promotion meaning women's wrestling which some of you might be surprised to know is some of the most brutal and hard-hitting wrestling on the planet and kagetsu is the chaotic heel embodiment of that as she dismantles her opponents with razor sharp kicks batters them with weapons and spits mist in their faces nothing is off limits to kagetsu at one point she even made a running joke out of hanging her rival mayu iotani from balconies and then kicking her downstairs the moment kagetsu became a true monster however came in 2017 when she took control of the heel faction and next to the prim and proper pop idols of stardom ohio tai were the freaks the outcasts like he gets to herself thai weren't necessarily evil they just didn't give a [ __ ] what anyone else thought and were going to have fun at other people's expense they'd humiliate their opponents even performing elaborate dance routines because who is gonna stop them at one point they even dressed up as the straw hat pirates which honestly has no relevance to any of this whatsoever but i think it's cool and over the next two years kagetsu surrounded by uedo tai would run riot over the company and rise to the very peak of stardom kigitsu ripping the world title away from tony storm beginning a championship reign that would last 300 days in which time kagetsu would become the brutal final boss of stardom an impenetrable wall that any rising star would have to break through but so few did kigitsu felt indestructible able to absorb massive amounts of damage to the point that you could even see the look of horror on her opponent's faces desperate to find a way to finally surpass the demon queen of stardom and the result was much as so intense and emotional that you really felt like you were watching two performers struggle to break their own limits with kigitsu's message at the end of these matches always the same if you hate me then get better than me the reason kigetsu felt so real is because she was from the early days of her career she set about with the goal of ushering in a new era of joshi wrestling an industry still being dominated by the same stars it had been since the early 90s and so kagetsu became a villain all the heel is [ __ ] she do all the brutality all the cheating it was all in the name of pushing her opponents as far as they could go forcing them to become stronger so that they might one day surpass her and become the future of joshi wrestling in reality kagetsu is known for taking younger performers under her wing raising them up and helping them grow she even became the head coach of the promotion in 2018 spending her time shaping the next generation of young female wrestlers and so whether you view kagetsu's matches as real or staged either way you are watching a woman fight for the future of joshi wrestling and i think that's really [ __ ] beautiful tragically on christmas eve of last year after an absolute war with her old rival mayu iwatani kigetsu announced that after 11 years of wrestling she'd be retiring and it's sad watching her retirement match as she takes on the entire roster of stardom in a gauntlet match slowly being worn down until finally the invincible final boss of stardom falls i say tragic because what kills me about kigetsu is that she's virtually unknown outside hardcore circles and particularly outside japan fighting for a much smaller promotion than any other wrestler we've talked about and because of that i don't think she's ever reached the level of notoriety she deserves meaning there's a chance that this video could be the most western exposure she ever gets so please if you take nothing else away from today remember kagetsu she deserves to go down as one of the all-time great villains in wrestling i hope by now it's becoming obvious that heels can make us feel all kinds of things anger hatred fear hell even love but there's one final aspect of wrestling villains i want to talk about and that is the heel turn this is when a face a good guy wrestler falls to the dark side and becomes a heel and if used right can be such a powerful storytelling tool that has resulted in some of the most infamous and shocking moments in wrestling and the last thing i want to talk about today is a story centered around one of these moments january 4th of this year tetsuya naito is the fourth entrance in the double gold dash a hyper elite four man tournament between the very best of new japan designed to crown a single undisputed champion but for naito it's been a long road that's brought him here his early career was disastrous rejected by fans disregarded by his promotion and was only after a trip to mexico that naido returned as a spiteful heel and he did so with the help of his best friend and running mate a man known only as evil the king of darkness a silent stoic brawler who for a time was one of naito's only friends on the planet together the two had formed the heel faction los angeles they upon the ungovernable a home for the most rebellious and unruly wrestlers of the japanese wrestling industry unlike other factions lij were small and tightly knit each remember a big deal adding something unique and different like the ice cold sonata whose lethargic devastating style would lead to him forming a tag team with evil and capturing multiple tag titles or hiromu the young explosive wild man of the group who would run riot over new japan's junior heavyweight division people loved lij despite the fact that they were basically heels the crowd never reacted to them that way and i think that was because if you felt weird or different or like an outsider lij captured that feeling and made it their strength signified by their silence los angeles fist salute and for years that's how they were the star night oh backed by his lij brethren but as the years went on naito's dream of being the best started to fade despite his popularity his title runs were short and infrequent and worse he was constantly in the shadow of his bitter rival kazuchika okada the rainmaker and longest reigning iwgp heavyweight champion of all time and so when the two met in the finals of the double gold tournament it felt like a last stand for naito if he couldn't do it here then this could be the end but after a hellacious battle that pushed both men to the brink naito did it becoming the first double champion of all time and finally standing at the very peak of new japan pro wrestling only to be brought crashing down by kenza the current leader of the bullet club the bullet club were and are the biggest heel faction in new japan vicious cold and massive where lij had the fist salute bullet club had their two sweet salutes kenta humiliating naito in what should have been the greatest moment of his entire life but kenta is not our villain today knight i would defeat him a month later where finally his championship reign could truly begin and then the virus happened and new japan had to shut down poor night though months later new japan would reopen with the new japan cup a 32-man tournament the winner of which would go on to face naito for his double championship which is why it was so unsurprising to see okada make it all the way to the finals but it was across the ring from the rainmaker that a more disturbing story was playing out because you see the other finalist was evil see at this point evil had stood behind naito for five years and as naito star rose evil just watched from the shadows 2019 having been an especially bad ear for evil seeing him take several devastating singles losses and worse he'd arguably been surpassed by the younger members of lij hiromu had captured the junior heavyweight title multiple times and evil's own tag partner sonata had been finding a massive success as a singles wrestler even challenging okada for the world title people were now beginning to talk about evil as the least important member of lij and that failure seeped inside evil evil entered the new japan cup with a choice fade into nothing or become something different evil attacked the tournament with a violence that shocked fans breaking his opponents leaving them injured and unable to compete and so a thick tension hung in the air when in the semi-finals he met his own tag team partner sonata but it didn't matter evil destroyed sonata as the crowd watched in silent horror as he stepped over the body of his lij brother and into the finals where in the most shocking victory of the tournament evil would defeat okada meaning he would now face naito for the championship in just 24 hours after the match naito a look of reluctance in his eyes comes to the ring to congratulate evil and celebrate the first ever all in gobernoblast title match and offers evil the lij fist salute just like they'd done so many times before and evil would answer with the symbol of the bullet club i've watched lij for years i've seen them live i own their merch this moment was heartbreaking evil walking away from the man he'd been through so much with now a member of the bullet club the next night the two would meet but what awaits nato is a brand new evil flanked by the bullet club everything about the man naito once knew was gone evil's old lij entrance music replaced by a song that sounds like the world is ending and for naito it is heartbroken and betrayed by his friends naito cannot focus and evil uses that to destroy him with a hatred of someone who'd spent years being forgotten evil tearing away his double championship and everything naito had spent his entire life working towards and in that moment the king of darkness ascends to become the god of new japan after the match hiromu the youngest member of lij confronts evil demanding how he could do something like this and evil just responds evil just walks away leaving lij and the world of new japan in flames what i really love about this story is how it took five years of history to create this heartbreaking narrative where a person betrays everything they know in order to not be forgotten and because of that evil feels unbeatable but that's now the storyline of new japan and exactly how vader felt when he destroyed enoki 30 years ago but the thing about that story is that when the two rematched a year later it felt like watching this japanese hero climb a mountain like we're witnessing our hero struggle to overcome something frightening and real and impossible and when he finally does when he finally defeats the man who ruined him there's a real euphoria to it even now 30 years later and that's the thing heroes are only as great as the challenges they overcome but to me there's something more to heels too i think the appeal of wrestling when you really peel it all back is it's just a story of characters of people and the appeal of heels personally i spend a lot of time worrying about what people think of me and again a lot of people do and so for me when i see these big impossible villainous characters put everything they have into showing the world what they are no matter what anyone thinks i think there's something kind of beautiful about that and so no matter how much heels try and make us hate them hell it's because of that that i can't help but love them friends thank you for joining me today on this way too long video on wrestling i hope you had a good time i want to thank xxx ichiban on twitter for giving me some guidance with stardom as i hadn't watched a lot of it before i started researching this i'm going to link his articles on kigitsu they're super great i want to particularly thank my patrons this video and if you'd like to become one you can do so over at patreon.com forward slash super eyepatch wolf where hey i've made the patreon list alphabetical so you can find your name easier special shout outs this week too rafterman raleigh payne paula netera maya egg forest elizabeth bateman and not adam in a trash singing find me as ever on the let's fight a boss video game podcast or on twitter at ipatchwolf friends take care of yourselves and i'll see you next time

Channel: Super Eyepatch Wolf

Views: 1,123,858

Keywords: Wrestling, wwe, Heels, AEW, New Japan, Evil, The Fiend, bray wyatt, villain

Id: bYKOw8Ao9t8

Length: 36min 2sec (2162 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020

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[u/Wireless-Wizard]

Step one to making people hate you is to ask them questions about Hunter x Hunter

[u/Silantro-89]

I thought for sure when Montreal was bought up he was going to discuss Vince

[u/SuplexCity-Mayor]

This should be interesting! This is the same guy that made Professional Wrestling is Stupid and Beautiful and I Love it and The Undertaker: Long Term Story Telling in Wrestling.

[u/DrHorrible10]

Loved the video. Some decently deep dives into a few shining examples of heels that connect with the audience and why they’re so great. I’ve been telling myself that I need to start getting into Stardom this year and I think I just found a great starting point!

[u/daney08]

His take on MJF is really interesting!

[u/TheSpiritualAgnostic]

The guy just gets what makes wrestling the greatest anime ever.

[u/nWo1997]

Oh, hell yeah! Another SuperEyepatchWolf wrestling video!

[u/TheFatJesus]

I love this video. Heels fascinate me too. The only problem I had with it is a pretty small one, and that is putting Becky Lynch in the category of people that got over after being a heel. I think the only person that has ever seen Becky as a heel is Corey Graves. They tried making her a heel for what, four weeks?