Being a “heel” in pro wrestling is easy-you just have to make everyone hate you.
I learned from some all time greats-Dick Murdoch, Stan Hansen, Skandor Akbar, Freebirds and the best of them all, imo, Dave “Fit” Finley.
We were in Europe where I lived for two years wrestling for both Otto Wanz and Peter William in Catch Wrestling in the early 90s, basically the carnival circuit-not as part of the carnivals, but we followed the carnies all over Europe and lived like they lived and worked where they worked often sharing a parking lot as our “home”.
We lived in trailers behind the tents that made up our wrestling arenas. My trailer was 16 feet long and 6 feet wide with no running water-I had to go inside for a shower or bathroom. “Inside” meaning into the tent, or building, where we wrestled-and in the case of Bremen it was about a ¼ to ½ a mile walk and in the freezing winter night, no fun. In Graz, home of Arnold, and in Vienna we lived, during the summer, on campgrounds with the traveling gypsies.
One day as we were sitting in the locker room one of the young guys had just returned from the ring. He was a big guy-over 6’6”-and had done both a dropkick and a hurricarana, very impressive for someone his size. Fit Finley told him they looked great and it sounded like the crowd loved it-the young man said thanks.
What Fit said next is the essence of being a heel, “don’t ever do it again.” That simple. That is the essence of being a heel.
The young man never got it; he loved to make the crowd “pop”. The young man never figured out that you would never make money doing things the crowd loved if you are a heel, in fact-just the opposite; you only do what they hate. Needless to say the young man never made it big, he could have-but loved being cheered too much to be a heel.
