The Take: Why Shotzi Blackheart Isn’t A Heel
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- Ranking Every RAW Women’s Champion in WWE - May 7, 2022
- 2018 Royal Rumble: 10 Matches that Need to Happen - January 30, 2022
- The Take: Why Shotzi Blackheart Isn’t A Heel - November 6, 2021
Shotzi Blackheart isn’t a heel. It’s something I’ve tweeted out and feel like screaming from the bottom of my lungs. Maybe I’m taking it all too personal, maybe seeing a woman who likes the same things as me and dresses like me as a ‘bad guy’ isn’t something I wasn’t to see on my TV. Maybe I feel like it’s not as new and refreshing as the people in the back think it is.
Charlotte Flair is a heel, plain and simple and she is really good at it, possibly one of the best in the company. For a woman like Charlotte, who is a second-generation talent who is well on her way to equaling her fathers’ accomplishments. She can work against anyone, we all know she is one of the women who consistently puts on good matches, the less said about her match with Nia Jax the better and is the perfect first feud for any potential babyface, if you want to make a star you need to put them in the ring with Charlotte Flair, Asuka or Sasha Banks.
Her match against Charlotte Flair was fantastic and really showcased why Shotzi should be in the main event scene on SmackDown. Since then, it seems that Toni Storm has positioned herself in that role but that doesn’t mean Toni and Shotzi can’t battle it out for number one contendership. SmackDown is in desperate need of some top faces, and it seems the decision to turn Shotzi heel, by attacking perpetual tweener Sasha Banks after the match was to serve a narrative within the Survivor Series team than to actually position Shotzi in a position of power. The real question is what does Shotzi Blackheart do now? And when will we see her face off against Charlotte Flair again?
Shotzi Blackheart and the Becky Lynch effect
This feels like another instance of the WWE not reading the room. The crowd was booing but soon it turned to loud ‘SHOTZI’ chants, which mysteriously ‘disappeared’. We already know that the WWE has a history of changing crowd reactions, they did it on the SmackDown after Becky Lynch attacked Charlotte Flair at the 2018 SummerSlam Pay-Per-View. It has remained untempered on their YouTube channel since it was re-uploaded last August, and this feels like another instance of this.
Since the start of her heel turn, the crowd has fallen in line, in a way. There are still cheers for the green-haired rocker and it feels more that the crowd is booing the idea of Blackheart as a heel and not her work as such. Wrestling fans are smarter or at least very much aware of the industry as a whole, we don’t like being told who to like and who to not like. I personally will like someone or should I say enjoy them no matter what they do.
There are wrestlers who can be both face and heel, but it wouldn’t take away their popularity or character work, there are others who should always be face and those who should always be heel [see Rey Mysterio and MJF as good examples of this]. Shotzi for me, and this might be different from fan to fan, should always be a face, something just doesn’t sit right with me seeing her as a bad guy and it doesn’t feel genuine like Britt Baker or Charlotte Flair. This all feels so forced and there are more than enough heels on SmackDown that this feels very unneeded considering the current landscape of the division.
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