In professional wrestling, heat can refer to both crowd reactions and real-life animosity between those involved in a professional wrestling angle, or match.
In terms of crowd reaction, heat is usually used to denote how much of a reaction a heel wrestler receives, but can also be used for a babyface. Although the term can in some contexts refer to either positive or negative crowd reactions, heat is usually used specifically to mean a negative crowd response (e.g. booing), with its opposite being a "pop" or positive reaction (cheering, clapping, etc.).
As heat typically refers to a negative reaction that a wrestling character gets from a crowd in a performance setting, it has also become slang for a negative reaction that a wrestler gets backstage from colleagues, management or both. Backstage heat can be garnered for both real and perceived slights and transgressions.
Cheap Heels can draw "cheap heat" (called "cheap" because it is an easy way for the villains to receive boos) by blatantly insulting the fans, a local sports team, or the town in which they are performing. Fan favorites would sometimes do the equivalent, referred to as a "cheap pop", by referring to the town (which Mick Foley popularized) or promising to "win one for the fans". The villains can also draw cheap heat by referring to a mainstream news event as part of their promo, especially if the event has strongly emotional or political ramifications (e.g. a natural disaster), although they sometimes do not mention it by name. Historically, another common practice of villains to draw cheap heat involves using racial and ethnic slurs to offend the collective sensibility of wrestling fans. For example, in 1972, when the American Indian Movement was gaining momentum, Baron von Raschke was known to refer to Native American WWA World Heavyweight Champion Billy Red Cloud as a "dirty low down Injun" as a means of drawing cheap heat.
Another example of a wrestler using cheap heat was Sgt. Slaughter, who often delivered anti-American promos during the Gulf War (and Operation Desert Shield immediately before it) as part of his Iraqi sympathizer gimmick; one of those promos came at the 1990 Survivor Series, where Slaughter insulted servicemen stationed in Iraq for Thanksgiving. In 2003, The Rock used the Lakers-Kings rivalry to gain cheap heat during a WWE Raw show in Sacramento (The Rock even claimed that he was friends with Laker star Shaquille O'Neal) when he was singing a song about leaving the city; the song's last lyrics were: "I'll be sure to come back when the Lakers beat the Kings in May." In 2004 during a WWE live event in Germany, John Bradshaw Layfield used Nazi salutes and was booed heavily by the crowd. In April 2006 during his feud with Shawn Michaels, Mr. McMahon used religion and the city to get heat from the crowd in St. Louis, Missouri by saying he went to hell that morning when his driver "got lost and ended up in East St. Louis".
Other examples include CM Punk and Paul Heyman in March 2013 mocking through displays of flippancy and disrespect towards Paul Bearer (who had just died), stealing his trademark urn and with Punk going as far as assaulting The Undertaker and constantly beating him with the urn (with Heyman being dressed up as Bearer) before then boldly opening the urn and emptying its contents over a fallen Undertaker. In November 2015, Paige mocked then Divas Champion Charlotte about her late younger brother Reid.
In October 2018 at the Key Arena in Seattle, Kevin Owens and Elias received over six minutes of continuous booing after mocking the city's loss of the SuperSonics basketball team to Oklahoma City.
Canned "Canned heat" refers to playing a recording of cheering or booing through the arena sound system or adding it to a taped show, to either amplify a crowd reaction or mask silence from the crowd. Pre-taped crowd reactions from other events are also spliced in with the programming to make the crowd look more energetic than it actually is, or if promoters want a storyline to go in a particular direction.
For example, in early 1992 the World Wrestling Federation was attempting to push Sid Justice as a villain. During the Royal Rumble match in January, Justice – who had become popular due to his charisma – was loudly cheered when he eliminated Hulk Hogan, and commentators Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon picked up on this as a fair act. However, the reaction was edited in future television replays, with Sid being booed heavily and Monsoon describing him as a "jerk".
Before SmackDown went live in 2016, WWE usually overdubbed cheers on it and professional wrestling magazine Power Slam joked that the company has had to "fire up the Fake Crowd Roar Machine™ to add an artificial atmosphere"."What's Going Down...", Power Slam, issue 222, March 2013, p.5. This was particularly done for Roman Reigns, who was heavily booed at the time despite being booked as a babyface.
Gillberg's entrance mocked on this concept, which features pre-recorded "Gillberg" chants in reference to accusations of World Championship Wrestling using pre-recorded crowd chants in entrances of the wrestler Gillberg parodies, Bill Goldberg.
This concept would end up being used outside of professional wrestling such as the National Hockey League during the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs as the COVID-19 pandemic hit United States and Canada that impacted the sporting world. The crowd noise was provided by Electronic Arts, combined with recordings of team-specific chants by season ticketholders of participating teams in bubble cities in Edmonton and Toronto (the latter of which was also played in-arena). Similarly, in the National Football League, Fox lead commentator Joe Buck in an interview with Andy Cohen stated that the network had not ruled out the possibility of using artificial crowd noise on its telecasts for the 2020 season to make up for the possibility of limited or no attendance at games, and that Fox was also exploring the possibility of masking empty stands with CGI crowds. WWE would later follow up on the concept by installing LED boards on Amway Center and later Tropicana Field, branded as WWE ThunderDome on-screen and mixing arena's audio with that of the virtual fans when the promotion began moving tapings from the WWE Performance Center in August 2020.
Go home "Go home heat" (sometimes called "go away heat" or "nuclear heat") occurs when fans boo or jeer a legitimately disliked character or, sometimes, the wrestler playing that character. Go home heat can be given to wrestlers who are viewed negatively, either for their booking, their character, or even their actions outside of the show; thus, both heroes and villains can get this kind of heat. However, nuclear heat can also mean a heel character getting genuine disdain from fans, simply from great character work. This is much less common in the present day, as fans may be more clued in to the inner workings of professional wrestling, and this type of heat is transformed into a pop. This is due to smarks realizing how good the character work is, and cheering instead of booing.
Generally speaking, go home heat happens either because the fans feel the promotion has been too aggressively pushing a certain wrestler (regardless of his character alignment) who they feel is undeserving of their push, or because the character has become stale, boring, and uninteresting. While it can be difficult to distinguish the good heat for the villain from go away heat, with some fans and critics claiming it is indeed go away heat and others claiming it is good heat, there are a few example which are closer to be go away heat, most notably in WWE because of its major exposure. Notorious examples of the concept are The Rock as Rocky Maivia, X-Pac (who popularized the term in the early 2000s so much that go away heat is also known as "X-Pac heat"), Triple H, John "Bradshaw" Layfield, Lita, Stephanie McMahon, Michael Cole in 2011, and more recently Death Riders, Roman Reigns (see Public image of Roman Reigns), Baron Corbin, Mercedes Moné, Jon Moxley, Young Bucks, Daniel Garcia, Wheeler Yuta, Gable Steveson, Nia Jax, Logan Paul, Karrion Kross, Austin Theory, and Charlotte Flair.
Rocky Maivia Between 1996 and 1997, Rocky Maivia was the first major example of go away heat and also the best example of turning the go away heat into a star by 1998. Hyped as the WWF's first third-generation wrestler, Maivia was a clean-cut heroic character who was pushed heavily from the start and won the Intercontinental Championship despite his wrestling inexperience. This was during a transitional, but more edgy period that would lead to the Attitude Era, therefore audiences became increasingly hostile toward Maivia, with chants of "Die, Rocky, die!" and "Rocky sucks!" being heard during his matches. After suffering a legit injury in April 1997, Maivia would return as a villain character in August 1997 by joining the Nation of Domination and refusing to acknowledge the Rocky Maivia name, instead referring to himself in the third person as The Rock, insulting the audience in his promos as well as WWF television interviewers. The Rock would eventually become the Nation's leader and draw good heat, then starting getting cheered while still being a villain before being officially turned back into a fan favorite character by September 1998. During his time in the Nation, The Rock would get back the Intercontinental Championship and held it for 265 days (the second longest in the 1990s and the longest until Gunther in 2022), with his second reign being better reviewed and the ladder match in which he lost the title to Triple H at SummerSlam being rated 4.25 out of five stars by journalist Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter (WON).
Despite now getting the desired reaction, the WWF would turn him back into a villain (from November 1998 to April 1999) to feud with Mankind (Mick Foley) and become the top villain to main event WrestleMania XV as WWF Champion and drop the title to the company's "poster boy" Stone Cold Steve Austin. In April 1999, The Rock would turn back into a heroic character and would become one of the most successful characters of both the Attitude Era and WWE history. Despite getting some mixed reactions in 2001 and 2002, most notably against Austin in the main event of WrestleMania X-Seven at Austin's home state, "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania X8 and Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam, The Rock would never draw go away heat and would instead use both the fans turning on him and him getting more successful in his actor career to turn back into a villain in 2003 to end his full-time career, before becoming once again a fan favorite ever since 2004.
X-Pac During the Invasion storyline, where the WWF side (to which X-Pac belonged) was mostly portrayed as the heroes, the fans were vocal in their disapproval of X-Pac, which was acknowledged on-screen by both Alliance member Billy Kidman and later by WWF member Edge. This mass disapproval led to the term "X-Pac heat" as described above.
Triple H Between 1999 and 2001, Triple H had a successful run as the main villain of the WWF—especially in 2000, when he became the first villain to win the main event of WrestleMania and thus retain the WWF Championship, as well as winning the "Feud of the Year" award by both PWI (with Kurt Angle) and WON (with Mick Foley) and the WON "Wrestler of the Year" award due his accomplishments and performances. Dave Meltzer would rank Triple H's drawing power as the number one of the 2000s.