WWE: Can Real Heels and Faces Even Exist in Today’s World?

Becky Lynch’s recent heel turn is just the latest example of a WWE superstar getting an opposite crowd reaction from what’s planned. While the blame is usually placed on “smarks” doing what they want, could it just be a brand new world promoters need to navigate?

When Becky Lynch attacked Charlotte Flair after the SmackDown Women’s Championship match at SummerSlam, it was pretty clear what was happening. Especially after a fiery promo and a pull-apart brawl two nights later, the end result was Becky Lynch turning heel, and embarking on a new chapter in her WWE career.

At least, that’s what the intended goal was. Because if you listened to the crowd reaction in the Barclays Center, you’d think Becky was the hottest babyface this side of surfer-boy Sting in the late 1980s. Both at SummerSlam, and on SmackDown Live, Becky was cheered like a conquering hero, despite viciously attacking an unsuspecting friend and using deluded logic to justify her behavior.

It’s not the first time something like this has happened, where the crowds ignore the script and boo or cheer their favorites, regardless of alignment. Obviously, the most notable example is Roman Reigns, circa 2015-present. No matter how many good and heroic things The Big Dog does, the crowd sees him as unworthy of adulation, so they boo.

To a lesser extent, many top stars have been cheered despite being booked as evil. Kevin Owens, Samoa Joe, and Sasha Banks are just a few examples of superstars on the receiving end of positive audience response, while acting more on the unscrupulous side. Even Braun Strowman’s face turn was less an actual turn than the creative team finally acknowledging the cheers he had been getting for some time.

Those are just some recent examples, but it goes back even farther (although much less frequently). In the mid nineties, a young blue chipper by the name of Rocky Maivia was the pluckiest of plucky babyfaces — and the crowds hated him. They hated him so much that they literally wished death upon him. So he did what any normal person would do — became an arrogant jerk, called himself “The Rock,” and then got cheered while acting like a villain.

Go back a little further, and even the Immortal Hulk Hogan was part of a crowd ignoring alignments. At the 1992 Royal Rumble, Hogan was eliminated from behind by Sid Justice, in what was supposed to be a heel turn for Sid. But when Hogan went over the ropes, the Albany crowd cheered — they were sick and tired of the Hulkster, and he wasn’t even a pariah yet. (It was so bad and unheard of in WWE that the audio was altered in post-production for the home video release, so Hogan’s elimination was met with the intended boos.)

The Hogan incident aside, most of this is “blamed” on the behavior and actions of “smarks.” For those not in the know on your pro wrestling lingo, a smark is a “smart mark,” or a fan who’s in on the show. Someone who enjoys the past body of work of a Becky Lynch will cheer her out of loyalty and a desire to see her pushed to a championship, despite the story indicating a different reaction.

But with a growing number of fans ignoring the script and the story laid out for them, is it possible that the world is just too different than it was twenty and thirty years ago, and true heroes and villains don’t exist?

It was widely reported about five years ago that Vince McMahon himself had decided there were no more heels or babyfaces in wrestling, because in real life everyone falls somewhere between good and evil. That concept was ridiculed at the time, and even now it seems a little ridiculous because there are obvious efforts to get certain superstars booed or cheered.

But maybe there’s an element of truth in that — not so much that heels and faces don’t exist, but maybe they can’t exist. We live in a world where everything is described in extremes; grey areas are non-existent. Politicians, celebrities, and other people in the national spotlight are basically caricatures of good and evil. The vast majority of the population agrees with one side or the other, and vilifies anyone with a different opinion.

This makes the real-life “heroes” and “villains” almost impossible to replicate in the entertainment field. If Star Wars was released today for the first time, half the American population would side with Darth Vader because “he’s just doing his job,” and those same people would take umbrage at Han Solo being a renegade smuggler, committing the intergalactic equivalent of tax evasion. Even Avengers: Infinity War featured a villain that, despite wiping out half the universe’s population in a millisecond, inspired a subreddit dedicated (sarcastically or not) to his noble intentions.

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Maybe it’s possible that fans are so used to seeing the real-life caricatures plastered on televisions and computer screens that a pro wrestling hero seems like a goober. Or a villain in the ring might be misguided, but onto something. After all, if someone like Becky Lynch isn’t legitimately a Nazi, how bad can she really be?

Entertainment is always influenced by the time in which it occurs. Rap and hip hop developed from Bronx block parties in the 70s; those existed as a means for marginalized communities to band together after the powers that be wrote them off, which is why hip hop lyrics are often to this day about the oppression of minorities by the system in one way or another.

In today’s world, the very concept of a “heel” or a “babyface” is tough to grasp. Too much evil exists in the world — both in the US and abroad — that the audience is desensitized to villainy, and heels are often rejected unless it’s blatantly obvious that a character is evil. And even then, if the performer’s body of work has inspired many rabid fans, those fans will try to justify his or her actions to continue supporting them.

The 1980s were a simpler time, with telling who was good and who was evil being much easier. When antiheroes came into vogue in the 1990s, things went a little haywire. But it’s really the last few years where the real world has eliminated the impact of “good” and “evil,” and WWE — and the larger pro wrestling world — need to adapt their storytelling accordingly.