Faces of the Pro Wrestling Heel #3 - Salute to Foreign National Anthems

When it comes to being a Pro Wrestling bad guy, there really are only a handful of character options.

 
You can be a conceited prick who cheats...

...an effeminate guy...

...a fat or otherwise hideous giant monster...

 
...or a dastardly foreigner.









Dastardly foreigner is always a great way to go if you're trying to get a crowd of American Pro Graps fans to wish bodily harm upon your person. There's nothing Americans hate like someone who isn't from America, but still has the audacity to love their country of origin.

Faces of the Pro Wrestling Heel # 2 - Showing Ass

There are about a million things that can add up to a great pro wrestling villain - being foreign, scaring children, punches to the junk - but there seems to be almost universal agreement that the one thing that makes a great heel is a willingness to "show ass."

"Showing ass." This is one of those expressions you come across somewhat often if you tend to read a bunch of nerds on the internet arguing back and forth about fake fighting, and yet there aren't any sources that I could find that offer a concrete definition of what exactly the concept means. That's probably because - like most of those insidery wrestling terms - the meaning of the phrase was likely only known to wrestlers and those in the business, until the popularity of pro wrestling exploded around thirty years ago, and these terms began being tossed around by fans who want to sound like they know what they're talking about even when they probably don't. 

Granted, I could easily fall into that same category, but my attempts to give the term a concrete definition have more of an academic basis - if we're going to talk about acting like a big enough asshole so that thousands of people will boo you and want to see you get your ass kicked in an academic way, we must define our terms, people. And this is a simple one to define, really - basically "showing ass" means if you're going to be a convincing asshole, you have to be willing to go above and beyond to look like one. 

Take, for example, Ric Flair. Yes, most of the time he acted like the coolest motherfucker on the planet, but even he wasn't above dropping to his knees and begging Sting to stop beating the shit out of him in pretty much every match they ever had (especially if it left a window open for a swift thumb to the eye). 

The reason for this is so that good guy Sting seems way cooler than Flair, even though Flair rocks jewel encrusted bath robes, massive pinky rings, and a beautiful feathered platinum mane. That's the essence of showing ass.

In fact, some of the greatest pro graps villains have at times indulged in a somewhat rare bit of self-aware meta interpretation of this trope, in which the bad guy will literally show his ass during a match. Ric Flair himself loves doing this. What better way to look foolish than to be running around with your bare ass out in front of an arena full of people and millions watching at home?

To better illustrate this phenomenon of literally showing ass, let us study this classic instance from the main event of Wrestlemania XIV, in which Shawn Michaels shows us how it's done.

Faces of the Pro Wrestling Heel # 1 - Screaming Red Velour

The Vault welcomes you to its new series celebrating the pro wrestling heel (the greatest gig in all of entertainment) through the use of hilarious out-of-context pictures. And we're kicking things off with an entry from The Miz and his slick Zap Brannigan style red velour jacket.
 

#1: Be sleazy as fuck, wear a preposterously stylish suit.

#2: Bluster directly into the camera. 

#3: Get laid out by the good guy, making sure the bottoms of your shoes match your ridiculous suit jacket for maximum comedic effect.

This has been Faces of the Pro Wrestling Heel # 1. Shoutout to MGFanJay of the awesomely old school Death Valley Driver Video Review Forums for these fantastic screencaps I stole.