The Art of the Babyface

[Heelish]

Why not Xavier Woods?

I mean....Xavier has experience putting babies on faces

 

[stro]

I think it's a cultural thing. America (but really the world as a whole) has been in a cynical k-hole for the past 25 years or so. You can't find anything with pure good guys. Even comic book movies have heroes with tortured pasts who sometimes do morally dubious things and the movies end with some bittersweet, pyrrhic victory that leads to the next story and the story conclusion always ends in them dying in sacrifice instead of retiring into the sunset to be a happy good guy in old age. Cartoons have neurotic weirdos as main characters. Sitcoms are full of neurotic weirdos at best, full on sociopaths at worst.

No one buys pure babyfaces in any medium anymore. No one is looking to see someone without flaws or problems, because it's an unrealistic and unreasonable reflection for the viewer.

 

[Playaz Eyez]

Great answers here. In short, they simply forgot how to write for faces without making them look like total goofs. Often times during promos between heels and faces today, the heels are never wrong, as you can see and understand the motives to their decisions, which makes the faces look like dumbasses.

 

[Novembruh]

It's sad because it isn't difficult to write this to work. I could easily bang out a storyline to carry someone from lower midcard to challenging a dominant heel champion on a big event, and I honestly believe, still have them be over whether they needed to win or lose that match. Without utter burial of anyone else on the roster, as the times for burials should utilize local talent. And like... I'm not even saying I'm the best writer ever. It's that its so fundamentally easy. And I honestly refuse to believe that it's a cultural thing that makes us unable to enjoy it. I see the prevalence of antiheroes and such - I embrace and love it, really. I prefer it in my writing because of the nuance.

But that's the thing. Pro wrestling isn't supposed to be built off of that, fundamentally. When it's best - what it's best at - is the black and white, good and evil struggle. Even in this landscape of greys... it ain't hard. Mafukkas just lazy. Getting paid to write a flat circle that goes nowhere and just loops around on itself because they don't care about telling a full story from start to finish. They care about being longest-running-episodic nonsense where no one gets over, no one ultimately wins, and the cream rises to the top in spite of them, not because of them, because in a land where wins and losses don't matter, but where wins and losses are what literally every other competitive endeavor is built on... all you got is characters who stick to people's ribs. And that isn't something you can manufacture.

One could say... you can't teach that.

No. People who get over in this era do so because they would have in any era. The writing is a detriment. And that's utterly stupid.

It should be the easiest thing in the world to write a way to break up New Day, and within a calendar year, have Kofi beat E for the WWE title and then effectively reunite them all as brothers again on the biggest stage possible, having shown escalation and growth in the whole goddamned team. And no one gets buried. And honestly, no one even has to turn.
Seriously I could write that in my sleep. And that's just one storyline off the top of my head that's sat there waiting for them.

But nah. Let's turn our top male face in the whole company heel less than a year after he comes back from potentially never being able to wrestle again, and act like anyone is going to buy that shyt.
God I hope Roman doesn't come back to wrestling. Because if they fukk around and do this to him... boy I tell you.

 

[Berniewood Hogan]

It should be the easiest thing in the world to write a way to break up New Day, and within a calendar year, have Kofi beat E for the WWE title and then effectively reunite them all as brothers again on the biggest stage possible, having shown escalation and growth in the whole goddamned team. And no one gets buried. And honestly, no one even has to turn.
Seriously I could write that in my sleep. And that's just one storyline off the top of my head that's sat there waiting for them.

"Thank you, Shelton."

 

[RegB]

It’s easier to work around who the fans hate then to try to artificially build up wrestlers In an effort to get the fans to love them..

Build up and push heels that fans will actually hate/want to see lose then the rest is easy.. case in point — how The Miz made guys we all forgot about like Alex Riley and Damien Sandow phenomenons and pretty much saved dolph ziggler’s career in 2016 just by being an a$$hole and associating with them..

 

[Rayzah]

The problem really stems from the fact that the company doesn't understand what a babyface is meant to be.

Your face is meant to be the protagonist of your storyline. The audience is meant to identify with them. They carry the watcher through burgeoning conflict and resolution of conflict. But during the attitude era - where the villains were the cool guys who everyone wanted to be so the babyfaces needed to be the uncool, shytty foils - it flipped everything around and the company lacks the desire, nevermind the understanding, to loop it back rightways.

And it's unfortunate because in the political climate of the world as a whole, it would work if done right. But they are intent that a babyface has to be a nutless competitor who lacks agency and simply allows things to happen to them. And as a result, it leads to a situation where any time the crowd gets behind someone, it's when that person is a 'heel', almost solely because they want the person to have agency, but also to reject allowing things to be done to them passively. People like heel turns because it means the person is finally going to nut the fukk up. Which is stupid. Because your babyfaces should be the one out there refusing to allow shyt they disagree with. They should be the one who march up to the chickenshyt heels, tie them in knots and win the day. Not viciously or without sportsmanship, but also not...

Babyfaces these days are idiots for the most part. They have to be for the simplistic storylines major wrestling runs.

Sad thing is, when they happen on a legitimate, true face - NXT Bayley, for example - they spend so much time shytting on the character and destroying them, they become impossible to root for. So what happens? People ask for heel turns. People were calling for a heel turn for Bayley, bruh.

All it would take is for someone to debut, be good at what they do, rack up some wins, run afoul of a heel that actually operates as a proper antagonist and villain instead of trying to be smarmy and cool, and let them clash. It's writing 101. The face loses? Fine. They get up, they become better, probably without interacting with the person that beat them for a while, so when they do clash back against each other, there's excitement for it. And the face can win and the viewer can know that the setback made them stronger. It is the easiest shyt in the world. Ain't nobody ask for a Goku heel turn the first time he got his ass kicked and he fukking died. No. We got training montages. He put in the work. He came back and he wrecked shop. And motherfukkers cheered.

It isn't hard. People just don't want to do the work because why bother when you can have all the antiheroes!!!!!

Answer: Because the antihero thing only works for certain people. They tried it with Roman for ages. Never caught on. But you take your time, build that man up like someone who is good at wrestling, loses sometimes, has to dig deep and become better, even if it means falling down the card and needing to bootstrap his way back up it... then by the time he's holding that title, he damn sure isn't getting booed.

It's no coincidence that what I just wrote is the actual trajectory of the last two organic babyfaces the company made - Becky and Bryan. Also no coincidence that the WWE thought they were heels even while everyone knew they weren't.




tl;dr: Wrestling companies are still caught up in the 90s and don't have the patience or desire to make babyfaces. And it's ruining their own storytelling as a result - because it really isn't that hard.

wwe is to arrogant, that is their problem, they think that because their investors are happy hten nothing else mattters. they will spin everyone being bood into "well as long as they make noise" it bullshyt. Vince wants you to lie who he likes and that is why they cant write around it, these guys arent actors some people arent believable babyfaces. Vince still knows how to do it but he just chooses the wrong people for the wrong reasons.. Also being so out of touch with pop or twitter culture doesnt help

WWE is good at bullying..and promoting those characters..Braun, Bliss, heel Charlotte, Heel Sasha, making fun of Bayley for loving wrestling her whole life(same thing Foley used to brag about, same thing Edge bragged about)...

How the fukk DO YOU MESS up Bayley or push Shayna over Kari Sane? Crazy.

And holding a grudge against Rusev because he can pull Lana? What kind of gay ass, sucker rich white boy shyt is that?

And Cena..for all his make a wishes, was a BULLY SUPER FACE. What he did to Mysterio and Ryder is explanation enough.

because of her ties to Rousey, htats all it is. Its like when they get a likeable face they have all these old antiquated reasons why they cant push that person

too small
not muscular enough
not american
its stupid because their fanbase wants to cheer for someone they an somewhat relate to not the largr than life superstar Vince is obsessed with. A guy like rusev shouldnt have Lana, in their eyes.

@Novembruh shut the thread down already, but plain and simple, WWE doesn't know how to write for babyface characters.

It's nowhere near as complex as they make it. The person just has to be someone the crowd wants to root for and see succeed in their endeavors. That's why Daniel Bryan worked so well in 2013/2014. We saw that he was being held back, we saw that WWE didn't have a lot of faith in him, and we saw that he deserved more than what he was getting. It was the classic come-up story, and Bryan was booked well as a character. He wasn't made to look like an idiot (for the most part), he didn't take anyone's shyt, and he was ready for the action when it came to him. And then he was rewarded for his efforts, like the best babyfaces should be.

Conversely, this is why Bayley hasn't worked at all for more than a year. She was roughly the same character down in NXT, but she was treated more like Bryan was when he was hot. She took losses, but she bounced back, was ready for more action, and proved that she was more than meets the eye when it came to getting shyt done. She busted her ass and got rewarded for it.

After some time of her being on RAW, that all changed. It was cool for a few months, but then they had her get embarrassed and ran through by Alexa Bliss on multiple occasions, she was made to look like a tool, and when the time came for the action, she said she wasn't ready for it. That's terrible character writing. She didn't get a chance to show any human emotions until she beat Sasha down and said she wasn't shyt. And what happens months later? The whole thing is forgotten about, her and Sasha are in pointless tag matches, and neither of them are even on the card for Survivor Series.

That's the problem with WWE. They want us to like certain people, but they don't want to put the work in to make us like them. They had a gold mine with Asuka and they destroyed her character in less than a year. They wanted us to root for Charlotte over Becky with no irony or self-awareness, and they were forced to tweak Becky's character slightly because nobody is going to boo her for a damn thing. Even now, it's not clear what alignment she's supposed to be because WWE wanted us to hate her, but because we understand what nuance and grey areas are, they're just letting her do her own thing until the wheels fall off.

TL;DR - WWE fails at writing babyface characters because they don't want them to be complex or multifaceted or act like human beings. They want them to be cookie-cutter puppets with no real personality.

I think it's a cultural thing. America (but really the world as a whole) has been in a cynical k-hole for the past 25 years or so. You can't find anything with pure good guys. Even comic book movies have heroes with tortured pasts who sometimes do morally dubious things and the movies end with some bittersweet, pyrrhic victory that leads to the next story and the story conclusion always ends in them dying in sacrifice instead of retiring into the sunset to be a happy good guy in old age. Cartoons have neurotic weirdos as main characters. Sitcoms are full of neurotic weirdos at best, full on sociopaths at worst.

No one buys pure babyfaces in any medium anymore. No one is looking to see someone without flaws or problems, because it's an unrealistic and unreasonable reflection for the viewer.

Another real problem is the WWE itself is a heel and they dont even know it. Big powerful company squashing all the small startup dominating the industry and bragging about it. Being stupid rich, displaying the worst type of nepatisim and only knowing how to push bully characters. They are no longer fightiting for their life or trying to get respect, the only guys people gravitate to are the ones still tryin to make a name and prove they can succed on a big stage.

It's sad because it isn't difficult to write this to work. I could easily bang out a storyline to carry someone from lower midcard to challenging a dominant heel champion on a big event, and I honestly believe, still have them be over whether they needed to win or lose that match. Without utter burial of anyone else on the roster, as the times for burials should utilize local talent. And like... I'm not even saying I'm the best writer ever. It's that its so fundamentally easy. And I honestly refuse to believe that it's a cultural thing that makes us unable to enjoy it. I see the prevalence of antiheroes and such - I embrace and love it, really. I prefer it in my writing because of the nuance.

But that's the thing. Pro wrestling isn't supposed to be built off of that, fundamentally. When it's best - what it's best at - is the black and white, good and evil struggle. Even in this landscape of greys... it ain't hard. Mafukkas just lazy. Getting paid to write a flat circle that goes nowhere and just loops around on itself because they don't care about telling a full story from start to finish. They care about being longest-running-episodic nonsense where no one gets over, no one ultimately wins, and the cream rises to the top in spite of them, not because of them, because in a land where wins and losses don't matter, but where wins and losses are what literally every other competitive endeavor is built on... all you got is characters who stick to people's ribs. And that isn't something you can manufacture.

One could say... you can't teach that.

No. People who get over in this era do so because they would have in any era. The writing is a detriment. And that's utterly stupid.

It should be the easiest thing in the world to write a way to break up New Day, and within a calendar year, have Kofi beat E for the WWE title and then effectively reunite them all as brothers again on the biggest stage possible, having shown escalation and growth in the whole goddamned team. And no one gets buried. And honestly, no one even has to turn.
Seriously I could write that in my sleep. And that's just one storyline off the top of my head that's sat there waiting for them.

But nah. Let's turn our top male face in the whole company heel less than a year after he comes back from potentially never being able to wrestle again, and act like anyone is going to buy that shyt.
God I hope Roman doesn't come back to wrestling. Because if they fukk around and do this to him... boy I tell you.

The thing is they have no problem doing this with the SHIELD, any other team or faction would be disbanded for good after a injury during their "push" but the shield members have all suffererd injuries at the wrong time but they always seems to pick up where they left off.

 

[R=G]

wwe is to arrogant, that is their problem, they think that because their investors are happy hten nothing else mattters. they will spin everyone being bood into "well as long as they make noise" it bullshyt. Vince wants you to lie who he likes and that is why they cant write around it, these guys arent actors some people arent believable babyfaces. Vince still knows how to do it but he just chooses the wrong people for the wrong reasons.. Also being so out of touch with pop or twitter culture doesnt help



because of her ties to Rousey, htats all it is. Its like when they get a likeable face they have all these old antiquated reasons why they cant push that person

too small
not muscular enough
not american
its stupid because their fanbase wants to cheer for someone they an somewhat relate to not the largr than life superstar Vince is obsessed with. A guy like rusev shouldnt have Lana, in their eyes.





Another real problem is the WWE itself is a heel and they dont even know it. Big powerful company squashing all the small startup dominating the industry and bragging about it. Being stupid rich, displaying the worst type of nepatisim and only knowing how to push bully characters. They are no longer fightiting for their life or trying to get respect, the only guys people gravitate to are the ones still tryin to make a name and prove they can succed on a big stage.



The thing is they have no problem doing this with the SHIELD, any other team or faction would be disbanded for good after a injury during their "push" but the shield members have all suffererd injuries at the wrong time but they always seems to pick up where they left off.

Yeah..who is Lana supposed to be with? A old 73 year old dinosaur? A big nose goofball from Connecticut who you probably can't find one picture of him hanging with anybody even olive skinned growing up? Lol. 1950s shyt.

 

[Rayzah]

Yeah..who is Lana supposed to be with? A old 73 year old dinosaur? A big nose goofball from Connecticut who you probably can't find one picture of him hanging with anybody even olive skinned growing up? Lol. 1950s shyt.

ex athlete, jock type, with abs and perfect teeth.. so stereotypical..

 

[StatUS]

Nobody wants pure babyfaces anymore. Even Superman hasn't been like that for decades

 

[Mr. Manhattan]

Have a babyface be an excellent wrestler
like Johnny Gargano and they'll be fine

 

[Alexander The Great]

the more influence HHH has over the product, the more you see heels being the focal point. the guy grew up a Flair mark. when was the last time they made a babyface that wasn't a geek or that didn't come off as corny?

 

[snikt6384]

Lotta good comments in here. Thank you Coli brehs. I think when it comes to babyfaces, its partially true that no one wants a "Superman" as he's stereotypically portrayed. But Superman is at his least relatable when he's both untouchable AND has no issues. But look who works right now for the masses. Captain America. People want vulnerable ass kickers that they can get behind, and he was presented in the MCU in a way where he's STILL about hope and optimism but he's not lame.

And WWE fails at that so hard. They just don't have the patience and the foresight. To make the comparison, WWE feels like Zack Snyder with virtuous good guys. They seem to actually have some contempt for them. I don't think this shyt is rocket science at all. As has been said, give them some balls, don't make them look goofy while the heels look smart...give them agency.

 

[TrueEpic08]

Lotta good comments in here. Thank you Coli brehs. I think when it comes to babyfaces, its partially true that no one wants a "Superman" as he's stereotypically portrayed. But Superman is at his least relatable when he's both untouchable AND has no issues. But look who works right now for the masses. Captain America. People want vulnerable ass kickers that they can get behind, and he was presented in the MCU in a way where he's STILL about hope and optimism but he's not lame.

And WWE fails at that so hard. They just don't have the patience and the foresight. To make the comparison, WWE feels like Zack Snyder with virtuous good guys. They seem to actually have some contempt for them. I don't think this shyt is rocket science at all. As has been said, give them some balls, don't make them look goofy while the heels look smart...give them agency.

They have contempt for them because, now more than ever, WWE is a reflection of Vince's psyche. It used to just be the John Cena character at its worst, but now its the entire fed, with certain babyface promos reflecting the contempt Vince has for certain character types (white meat babyfaces, "millennial" types).

The fundamental problem, as @Rayzah noted, is that Vince and the WWE don't understand they they're not good guys. But Vince sees himself that way, so until that changes, you're going to keep having this issue.