I still like Steph, sorry. And I think she does a good enough job to make people dislike her that we create threads like this and I applaud her for that.
You know, people got into this silly good heat/ bad heat debate and I have always hated this. Heat is heat in my book. People think heels should have "good heat" which basically means they are likable bad guys. As the great Colonel Potter would say:
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Bad guys are the people you're supposed to hate so in my view, if you hate Steph, she does her job better than most heels.
I figure this is a great topic that can use a lot more discussion around wrestling fans as a whole... Usually I subscribe to this for modern day fans in a post-kayfabe world, I could see Kevin Owens being an all-time great back in the older days when they still tried to keep kayfabe alive, with his precise motivations and ruthless attitude he'd be a heat machine!!! And not only would you have the more focused company making sure the writing is on point to keep the heat, but the fans would probably be so against this that he could get almost anyone else over and... Now he's a baby face (he's written as one) that the crowd loves.
It would be nice if they would go back to just caring about kayfabe being back. I think that may be my biggest issue with Stephanie (besides being traumatized by 20 minute Authority promos where she sucks up heat like a vacuum and uses it to get nobody over), we just watched a year + of Stephanie trying to get herself over as this beacon of change and progression for Women's wrestling and applauding herself for giving the women all these platforms... You can't just do that and then heel it up for the Wrestlemania build.
Anyway for the point of the first rant, a "good heel" gets recognized as a good heel, but a bad heel changes the channel, so how can you get heat... I look at Enzo Amore. You could argue he was a channel changer but this dude was over here being slightly more annoying and totally clueless in the ring and when he won a Cruiserweight Title nobody gave a crap about it was THE WORST INJUSTICE EVER... At least since Nikki Bella broke AJ Lee's record nobody gave a crap about, and then I don't even remember who broke her record since then lol. But yeah, Enzo was so hated during his initial run as Cruiser champ that it would have been a worthwhile debut for Aleister Black to come in and blast him with a roundhouse instead of wasting that spot on Kalisto.
See also, I am no fan of Carmella as Ms. Money in the Bank - largely because I dread her title reign - but I can't deny, the whole pairing with James Ellsworth may have inspired Grievous to change the channel but I felt like that act of stuck up hot trophy chick dragging around loser guy got some good heat. Ellsworth made me get lost in the moment and beg to see Becky beat her ass after the Me MITB debacle...
But there in lies the problem. They wanted us to hate the performers but all the heat went on WWE...
