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Well the title sorta gives it away I guess but here is a demonsparta article or Daemonsparticle... whatever happened to booing the villains?

As many people, like myself, have put it WWE is basically stunt men doing melodrama...with stage fights. In melodramas you have the villain and the hero, obviously who you cheer, and who you boo and hiss. In recent years this has greatly changed. Fans don't care about the heroes and villains anymore, often CHEERING for the villain..or heel as they're put. Now appreciating a well done heel is one thing, but a well done heel you're not supposed to root for. In older times you had the one and only super great Iron Shiek. He was an AMAZING heel, a good wrestler, and hilarious wonderful insightful icon on twitter today. Shiekie rules. However, people didn't root for him to win his matches against Hulk Hogan or Ultimate Warrior. They booed him..and why? Because you were SUPPOSED to and he was so good he made you want to. I remember a few years ago watching with my wife, she saw The Miz and went "I don't like him" I turned to her and said "well, you're not supposed to". Nowadays you cant say that anymore with people cheering for Bray Wyatt. Bray Wyatt the character is a man who wants to turnt he world upside down. He's insane and wants to ruin John cena's legacy in a negative fashion. He's the villain trying to corrupt our hero. However, half the crowd shouted "let's go wyatt!" ...so..you WANT a psychopath to turn everything positive negative? He is the heel, the villain, the bad guy. I'm not saying don't love and appreciate him, but..well...

Let me put it to you this way: It would be like when I was a child watching power rangers and rooting for Lord Zed to win. Lord Zed was ******** AWESOME and a great super badass villain..but he was the villain. It's about immersion, and unfortunately immersion is dropping with the IWC (Internet Wrestling Community) taking more audience seats. Now it's all who has the best technical wrestling ability, not who is the villain or hero. Hell Cesaro was pretty much FORCED into a face turn because he could get no boos. I get it, Cena panders too much (damn his booking) and people want to see him heel turn, but it blinds people. Immerse yourself into the story everyone and if you TRULY....TRULY... love the heels and villains who are well done...boo them...give them what they want. Give them the heel heat they try to build. I paraphrase Chris Jericho himself saying that. Heels shouldn't be cheered or really they're not doing a good enough job of being heels. I've acted on stage since age 8, and often have played a villain role...I didn't want the audience to ROOT FOR ME..imagine if you watched a cheesy melodrama and when a boo hiss sign came up everyone cheered, and then they boo and hiss when the dashing hero comes and the sign says cheer. Doesn't work right?

To quote Y2J "I don't want to leave to applause, I want to be dragged out kicking and screaming while people sing 'nanananana nananana hey hey hey, goodbye~'"

Anyway that's how I see it, feel free to share your own view.

The best heel over the last decade has been Edge. He was a great wrestler and he always got the right reaction out of everyone in the arena no matter where he went.

It's all because of the fast growing IWC. People are learning to form opinions for themselves, they are watching more companies because of the availability and convenience to watch them (please watch any and all Kenta Kobashi matches you can) and are starting to respect the in-ring work done by heels. The theatrics of American professional wrestling pretty much give heels most of the story telling and offense done in a wrestling match. Cena always overcomes the odds, Sheamus is just... I want to like the guy but I blame booking... and even Daniel Bryan, who has won technical wrestler of the year nine times in a row, is limited in his offense because of the formula of American professional wrestling: heel dominates the good first 75% of the match, then the face comes back from adversity and wins after a few false finishes.

Booking may have Bray Wyatt, Cesaro, and WOI BARREH listed as heels, but because of their array of offense and masterful promos (Cesaro has Heyman now), it's hard to not appreciate the work they put in.

I love working as a heel. Being a face is honestly so much more challenging. The constant shtick of "I have to overcome the odds, I am the underdog, it is my time to win" gets very old very fast. It leaves hardly much room for character development and they are limited as to how they can work a match.

We, the wrestling fans, are ******** up. We give a positive reaction to what we like, although it's the bad guy.

I agree with the whole argument that with the rise of the IWC, people learn to make an opinion for themselves, but at the same time, the best way to encourage a heel is to boo him, and the best way to diss a face is by remaining silent. If the performance of an individual satisfies you, give it the reaction he or she's looking for through her character. If you really like that character, that's what you should do, at least in my opinion.

And as far as Razor Ramon go, I guess it's what they were looking for. Some sort of in-between where you love the character although he does bad stuff, it was basically WWE's attempt to create an actual tweener, and their only successful attempt to create one actually because cheered or booed, the guy didn't change one bit.