Jim Ross has declared that there are no true heels in wrestling currently, not even at All Elite Wrestling, where he's now employed.
Where AEW is concerned, MJF could someday turn out to be just that, while WWE has Baron Corbin who's evolving into a legitimate villain. But JR reckons there's no one right now who has already fulfilled their potential of being a hated character.
Speaking on the most recent episode of Grilling JR, the former WWE announcer shared his thoughts on the matter.
“You had heels with heat,” he explained (h/t 411Mania). “You had heels that were over. You had heels that provided great dancing partners to their babyface adversaries. And tell me today in any wrestling promotion, that doesn’t have red-hot heels that are lightning rods. Who are those companies, and if they had that, how much better would that be? Well, we know the answer to both those questions.
"No wrestling promotion is doing a stupendous job of creating villains right now. Why, there’s a lot of reasons, but they’re just not doing it. Who stands out? Who stands as a legitimate — not potential, not ‘Well, he’s gonna be good someday’ — but today, a star bad guy, who is the straw that stirs the drink. And never let anybody convince you otherwise, folks. Because those great heels have a way of ingratiating themselves to a certain degree, but [also of] getting on the radar. So I don’t know of any heels in wrestling today, real heels, who are vividly on radar.”
“And maybe you’ll disagree, and that’s certainly your prerogative. I won’t curse you for disagreeing with me, for god’s sake," he told Conrad Thompson. "I’m just saying that you’ve gotta have more focus on becoming great heels, and we had — think about that. God dang, Conrad, think about this roster. Guys, where we had five guys in one group [The Hart Foundation] that in America where most of the money was coming from, were great villains!”
JR isn't wrong here. If we're speaking specifically about WWE, there's no one around who could quite get the blood boiling like the likes of Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Randy Savage, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and CM Punk used to. The closest thing we have to that is Vince McMahon himself. Is it that it's just really not the way to go anymore?