Has WWE Forgotten How to Book Babyfaces?

Are the days of having heroes such as Hulk Hogan, The Rock, and Stone Cold Steve Austin behind us? Have WWE forgotten how to book baby faces?

It’s been a question I ponder to myself quite often watching WWE over the past few years. It seems to always be that whenever it feels like they might have that guy who could be the next transcending baby face at the top of WWE, something is always done to eventually knock them down. But why? Why can’t WWE give the fans a hero that they can get behind?

Creative direction

There are a lot of complications as to why this is currently a problem, and one of them is just a general shift in creative direction. It seems like from when I watch WWE, the focus, more often than not, is “what can we do to get heat on the heel?” And that’s a completely fair thing to think, but the thing about it is that for all of the time you spend figuring out how to get that heat for the heel, it should eventually lead to getting that heat to transfer to a conquering baby face.

A good example of this we can find by looking back to the first ever women’s Money in the Bank ladder match last year. The finish to that match had James Ellsworth, a man, pulling down the briefcase for Carmella, and dropping it down to her for the victory. As we remember, the heat this generated, not just from a kayfabe point of view, but to many of the hardcore wrestling fans, was resounding. The deal at the time was that so many people were upset with this because in a monumental moment for WWE’s Women’s division, it was a man who was the first to pull down the briefcase, and quite literally hand it to the winner.

That’s heat, and it’s good heat. The problem comes in how they capitalized on the heat that they had on Carmella and Ellsworth. As I said earlier, eventually the baby face has to get their conquering moment over the heel, and this was such a perfect moment to do this with Becky Lynch. Becky is the one who looked like was going to win the match, had it not been for James Ellsworth, and on the SmackDown following Money in the Bank, it was announced that they would have a rematch of that Ladder match to have a decisive winner.

This was a perfect moment to take advantage of the heat that was gathered to have that conquering moment for the baby face, Becky Lynch. Instead what they did was have Carmella again win the briefcase, this time pulling it down on her own. It’s just counter productive to me to do that. You have so much heat on Carmella after that, what’s the point in having her win the match again? Take advantage of that and use it to give someone else their crowning moment.

Scripted promos

Another big thing that makes it hard for baby faces to get over with the fans is over scripting promos. Something that WWE has been lacking for a long time is the sense of spontaneity or the feeling of things being organic. There are quite literally hundreds of examples I could use of scripted lines killing a baby face’s momentum, as it feels like there are some of those every week, but I’ll try to narrow it down to just a few.

One that springs to my mind right away is a line that Shinsuke Nakamura had during a promo about Jinder Mahal when Nakamura was chasing after Mahal’s WWE Championship. Going into this, Mahal had cut promos that were considered to be racially inclined on Nakamura, making fun of the way he looks, the way he talks, etc. It was clearly a hypocritical thing to do of Mahal, considering that a large part of his gimmick was saying that people didn’t like him because Indian.

Regardless though, this put a lot of heat on Mahal. We can argue on whether or not it was a good kind of heat to have, but it was heat none the less. So how would Shinsuke respond this? In an interview when Nakamura was asked about his feelings of the things Jinder Mahal had said, Shinsuke’s scripted line was “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Really? How is it possible for me as a fan to care if Nakamura will beat Mahal and win the WWE Championship, when he is given dialogue such as that?

There’s a much simpler way of doing that, which would help get fans behind Nakamura, who was already quite popular at the time, even more behind him. Simply having Nakamura confront Mahal, and point out how much of a hypocrite Mahal is. Then Nakamura can also say that the reason that the fans don’t like Mahal isn’t because of the way he looks, or where he’s from, they don’t like him because he’s a coward who cheats to win. Doing that, you have real conflict between the two, and a reason to care who will win.

Another example that I can think of came after this year’s WrestleMania, where Charlotte, the women’s champion at the time, defeated Asuka, putting an end to the years of her undefeated streak. Now whether or not Asuka’s streak should have ended there is a discussion for a different time, but the crime here came in the aftermath of that match. On Charlotte’s first promo following that match, she said that her and Asuka made magic that match, with one of her lines being “who will I make magic with next?”

This promo came straight out of a Disney movie, and it was nauseating to listen to. Charlotte just ended the biggest undefeated streak in WWE’s history at the biggest show of the year, of what is supposed to be presented as a combat sport, and we’re talking about magic? Give me a break. That’s not the only line Charlotte has had like this, as since turning face most of her segments have been very boring with not much substance to them. Charlotte is clearly a natural heel, but her run as a baby face could still be much better without some of the dialogue she is given.

Start-stop pushes

This is an issue that can harm everyone, but it’s very hard to care about a baby face when they start to get pushed, and then end up fizzling out down the line. There have been plenty of instances of guys gaining momentum, seeming like WWE is going to push them to the top, only for them to fall off and go down to just being another guy. This has happened a lot with guys like Dean Ambrose, Dolph Ziggler, Bray Wyatt, even Ryback has fallen victim to it.

Another big example of this I can think of for this was a couple years ago with Sami Zayn. When he debuted on the main roster awhile back and had his blood feud with Kevin Owens, it seemed like Sami had all the tools to be a great underdog baby face. Once their feud ended though, with Sami beating Owens, Zayn became just another guy, while Owens would soon after become Universal Champion.

For a very long time after this, Sami was just another guy on the roster, and did nothing of note, until down the line when he eventually turned heel and aligned himself with Kevin Owens. There were long months for Zayn not being involved in any major programs, being in throw away matches that nobody cared about, until he finally did turn heel and reinvented himself that he’s been in more important programs like he was heading into WrestleMania this year.

This isn’t arguing that Sami shouldn’t have turned heel when he did. When it became clear Sami wasn’t going to do anything as a face, no reason not to turn him heel. The problem is that it never should have gotten to that point. Sami had everything it took to be the underdog baby face everybody wants to see succeed, and he was booked so badly that there was no choice left but to turn him heel. That speaks volumes to me on how WWE is failing booking baby faces right now.

When to turn someone heel/face

The biggest example I can think of for this right now is Rusev. Since being paired with Aiden English and having his own day, which just so happens to be every day, the fans have loved Rusev. Every time Rusev is on TV, and even at points where he isn’t, the fans will constantly chant “Rusev Day.” Even with how over Rusev has been, WWE has insisted on him remaining heel.

I personally think WWE should go with the flow on these sort of things more often, but I think their mentality is that they know where they want someone to be, and what their role is, and are stubborn in going away from that when things change.

Let’s talk about Roman Reigns

Roman Reigns is one of the biggest failed experiments as a baby face over the past few years, and obviously he’s on a different level than some of the guys I’ve mentioned earlier. The reason I say that is because WWE wanted nothing more than Roman Reigns to be this eras Stone Cold, Rock, or Hulk Hogan. In fact, they’ve tried everything they possibly could to make this happen.

The problem in this was that it was too transparent, and when people started to realize that WWE wanted him to be “the guy”, he was rejected. To no fault of Reigns, he’s a very good wrestler and in the right role could succeed and still be over with the fans, but in this role, he never will be.

This in itself is also shows one of the biggest problems in WWE’s booking of baby faces that I touched earlier; they’re too stubborn. They see Roman Reigns as being a transcendent performer, and no one can change their mind on that. We’re on 4 plus years of WWE trying to make Roman Reigns the top guy of this company, and it’s never been accepted by the fans. So, instead of doing something different, they’ve stuck to their guns and done what they want.

This was on display as early as the last WWE PPV, Backlash, where Roman took on Samoa Joe in a non-title match that was the main event of the show. It was clear that the idea for that match was to have Joe wrestle a boring match, and keep Roman down in rest holds to try to make the crowd turn on him and cheer for Roman to have a comeback. Instead of that, what happened was people just started leaving, and the ones that were still there couldn’t wait for this match to be over.

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Beyond that, Roman’s current role is that he is calling himself the “uncrowned Universal Champion” and is blaming everyone but himself that he’s not, yet he is supposed to be the face here. I could not possibly want to see another Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar match less, and I really hope that isn’t where this leads.

The booking of Roman Reigns over the past 4 years itself proves the point of this piece more than any; WWE has forgotten how to book baby faces.