Today's Heels

[Maluco]

Originally Posted by Kalyx triaD Taz and RVD in Old ECW: Champions. Not only did they have it a long time, they happily defended their titles to whoever stepped up. One angle saw Taz invited Masato Tanaka all the way from Japan to face him. And RVD couldn't wait to take on Jerry Lynn and Sabu - who were both legit challengers to the ECW TV Title. What I'm getting at is WWE, somewhere along the way, let story override title prestige. They're not won over but stolen, and lusted upon by guys who the story points out doesn't deserve the title. WWE is telling us the titles mean shit more than am employee of the month prop. So if you're a heel and win, you stole it. If you're a face and you win, who cares, you beat a coward who didn't deserve it anyway. This goes to a bigger argument that WWE has very little credible bad guys who become weak looking champions. This may help story in the 'people like seeing bad guys get it' sense, but it hurts the title in the end.

A quote from Kalyx in another thread, the 'quantity vs quality' thread. I think this quote deserves a topic of it's own because I feel like it is a vital issue in the story lines of today.

I could not really verbalise what was bothering me about storylines today until I saw this quote, and the reason I enjoyed ECW was that two guys wrestling were credible and deserved their shot.

For example, in todays WWE, I think Edge's character is great, but has it gone too far? Can he not beat anyone serious without cheating or 'being an opportunist'? Surely his matches, and the likes of JBL's matches would be better if they were also booked on a level with the faces in terms of ability?

For me, matches like the recent Batista/JBL bout that ended in about 2 minutes killed JBL, and no amount of people saying that the promo made up for it, will convince me otherwise.

What are people's thoughts on this topic? Where is the balance to be found?