Mark Madden: 'Heels' is more compelling than WWE and AEW

After a lifetime of watching wrestling that includes eight years of working in it, I’m not interested anymore.

Outside of a few instances, like the Bloodline plot and Cody Rhodes’ ascension (both in WWE), the storytelling is hackneyed and often non-existent.

There’s too much wrestling on television: Six nights every week plus “big events” (formerly pay-per-views) on weekends. That not only saturates the audience’s attention span, it puts performers on TV whose “talent” merits little better than working in front of 200 people at an independent show. You don’t have to be special, or anywhere near it, to make the big time.

But I watch “Heels” religiously.

“Heels,” in its second season, is the wrestling drama on Starz that features Stephen Amell. Amell is perhaps best known for playing the lead in the CW series “Arrow,” which ran eight seasons between 2012-20. Amell is a big wrestling fan and has occasionally participated, most notably in a tag-team match at World Wrestling Entertainment’s 2015 SummerSlam event.

Amell loves wrestling but is an actor first. On “Heels,” wrestling’s insider stuff is made accurate yet accessible. The viewer doesn’t need a translator.

Ex-Steeler James Harrison was a regular in Season 1 but isn’t in Season 2. Perhaps he fell asleep and snored during production meetings.

C.M. Punk, ex-WWE and currently with All Elite Wrestling, is a regular in Season 2. (More later.)

“Heels” has compelling storylines that WWE and AEW should envy. It’s realistic, behind-the-curtain stuff at a small-time, one-town wrestling promotion. Nobody makes money. It’s done for love but also ambition for something beyond.

Those in the industry probably don’t see the dark side of “Heels.” “Heels” accurately portrays the perceived brotherhood of wrestling, something wrestlers fairly wallow in.

Except they knife each other in the back at the first opportunity to get ahead. Then it’s back to the ritual of shaking everybody’s hand in the locker room even before the blood dries.

Wrestlers need a union badly. They need medical benefits, a pension, the whole nine yards.

But they’ve never had one and never will. That’s because despite the fraternity suggested, nobody will sacrifice for the greater good. If big-time athletes can do it, why can’t wrestlers?

Because they’re not big-time athletes.

Oh, in the physical sense, they absolutely are.

But wrestling used to be largely populated by former football players, ex-collegiate wrestlers, weightlifters and the like. Athletes for whom wrestling was Plan B.

That’s not meant in a bad sense. Quite the opposite. Such men and women have real-world sensibilities carried over from their previous pursuits. Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle never got carried away with wrestling’s nonstop horse manure.

Now it’s almost all wrestling lifers, undersized marks who pursued their profession since leaving the crib. All they know is carny. They see wrestling as a noble profession.

It’s not.

“Heels” captures that.

“Heels” presents the desperation and thinly veiled sorrow of a wrestling convention awash with broken-down old-timers. A washed-up performer’s refusal to walk away, like Chris Bauer’s character. It’s financially motivated, sure. But mostly, it’s all he knows. (Any movie or TV show is better for having Bauer in it.)

“Heels” captures the positive, too. The rush of the crowd popping for something well executed. The art of working a match. The moments when the camaraderie is real. The competition against a rival promotion.

“Heels” is great TV.

Backstage drama in real-life wrestling is often better than what occurs in front of the camera. But turning shoots into works has met with sporadic success.

In AEW, for example, certain stars hate each other so much that they’re isolated from each other backstage. Punk and his crew are on one side of the arena. Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks and their cronies are kept on the other. Punk has had talent sent away from the workplace for no good reason.

That wouldn’t happen in, say, the Steelers locker room. (OK, bad example. Mike Tomlin let Antonio Brown run amok.)

Punk’s faction and Omega’s gang legitimately fought backstage a year ago. Think “West Side Story” with less dancing. That resulted in Punk taking a lengthy break from AEW. (He’s back now.)

Can you put that legit drama on camera? “Heels” would. AEW probably doesn’t know how.

On the bright side, AEW will draw over 80,000 fans to London’s Wembley Stadium on Sunday despite few discernible storylines.

“Heels” couldn’t do that. Selling out the South Georgia State Fair is likely the Duffy Wrestling League’s ceiling.