Logan Paul has had the opposite career trajector꧋y to Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. Johnson used his wrestli🔥ng prowess to propel himself to Hollywood stardom. Can you name a film - any film - that has released in the past three years that The Rock hasn’t been involved in? No you can’t. He’s in all of them. All the films.
Can you blame him? He’s probably the best to have ever worked the mic in the business - and he wasn’t half bad in the ring either. Contrast this to Logan Paul, who made his fame on YouTube and Vine, has practically become a household name for Gen Z and then made ಞhis way into the squared circle. I find him arrogant and self-absorbed and his boxing matches were clearly staged, but watching his WrestleMania match against the Mysterios on Saturday night made me realise something else: he’s the perfect wrestling heel.
For starters, millions of wrestling fans already hate him. Whether it’s his conspicuous consumerism, his YouTube videos of dead bodies, or just the fact he’s a young upstart with little-to-no wrestling training who’s managed to get a ‘Mania spot purely because he appeals to a new audience, he’s got heat. I audibly groaned when the match was announced for all of the above reasons. Rey Mysterio - a bona fide legen꧑d of the industry - would be facing a YouTuber at Mania? He’s faced Randy Orton, CM Punk, and of course the late great Eddie Guerrero on the grandest stage of them all, and now he’s been reduced to this?
However, Paul knows wrestling. As celebrity matches go, he performed better in the ring than David Arquette, b𒉰ut worse than Bad Bunny. His wrestling was okay. But he knew how to work the crowd, and how to draw heat as a heel. Paul has watched wrestling since he was a kid, and it showed.
Rey My𝓀sterio uses the Three Amigos - three suplexes in a row - as a tribute to his close friend Eddie Guerrero, who used it as a signature move. However, Logan Paul turned the tables and did the most disrespectful thing a wrestler could do: used Rey’s own move against him. Except, in this instance, it’s not Rey’s mov🤡e, it’s his dead best friend’s move. The crowd was livid, but there was more to come.
After the Three Amigos, Paul climbed to the top rope and - after a gloating dance - jumped into a perfectly 🌞serviceable Frog Splash to a prone Rey Mysterio. Another of Guerrero’s moves, this was intended to elicit a bad reaction from the fans. Of course, it worked.
The angle helped. Paul and his tag-team partner The Miz accused Rey’s son Dominik of nepotism, only being in WWE due to his father’s name. Of course, every fan knows that Dominik🐷 has been in the business since he was nine years old and that wrestling dynasties are passed through family generations for decades. The Miz and Paul are the opposite of that. As self-absorbed and “self-made” wannabe Hollywood A-listers, their characters attacking the nepotism that holds the wrestling business together makes a lot of sense.
The commen𝄹tary team leaned into it too, with heel commentator Corey Graves asking the real questions during the match: how much of a legend can Rey Mysterio be if he has a fraction of the TikTok followers that Logan Paul has? Really makes you think.
Whe💫ther you think all this is cheap heat or not, it worked on the crowd at WrestleMania, and it worked for me too. And, if you think about it, wrestling is a much better fit for Paul than the boxing ring. He’s fit, but doesn’t have the decades of training that professional boxers do. You need training for wrestling too, but an experienced tag team partner (like The Miz) or opponent (like Rey Mysterio) can guide you through a match. Floyd Mayweather did the same in the pair’s boxing match, but they had to somehow make out that it definitely wasn’t fixed. Outside of the ring though, he plays an extravagant billionaire playboy philanthropist etc. etc. character every day of his life, and that’s a ready-made wrestling gimmick that translated perfectly to WrestleMania.
There’s more to come. The Miz turning on his Paul at the end of the m๊atch, after the pair snuck a victory, sets up their next feud. If he has his own way, Paul will also “get more involved in the behind the scenes stuff with Vince [McMahon, CEO of WWE]’s approval,” in future, suggesting that he’s in the business for the long run.
From wearing a $5 million Pikachu Illustrator card (complete with diamond-encrusted case) to the ring, to using Rey’s best frien⭕d’s moves against him, to just being an arrogant di🐭ckhead, Logan Paul knows how to play the heel. And as much as I hate it, it really works, and he’s the perfect fit for WWE.