WWE: Abrupt turns are emblematic of a broken creative process

Turns matter, but does WWE care?

In each of those examples, the wrestlers exhibited signs of dissent. Hogan’s Turn Heard Round the World was him reaching his breaking point after the very fans he pandered to over the years were no longer buying what he was selling. Hart grew increasingly disillusioned by a fanbase that favored Austin over him.

Andre grew tired of constantly having his greatness compared to Hogan’s (this included a segment where Hogan received a giant trophy for holding the WWF Title for two years while Andre received a significantly smaller one for his “undefeated” streak). Zbyszko became frustrated with living in Sammartino’s shadow. Orndorff endured slights from almost every heel on the roster at the time, as the called him Hogan’s “little buddy” or “Hulk Jr.”.

These turns didn’t materialize out of thin air. These characters didn’t wake up one morning and decide “Hey, I want to be a babyface/heel today!” (unless one of them is secretly The Big Show). It took a series of events and circumstances to alter their worldview and force a dramatic shift in their personality.

You know, like actual human beings.

Apparently, WWE CEO/head booker/Richard Pryor hater Vince McMahon — who once said that he didn’t want to “insult his audience’s intelligence” with traditional “good guy vs. bad guy” stories — doesn’t view people through this lens, especially when you see what he has put on his television shows over the last few weeks.

It all started on the Sept 2 episode of RAW when Bayley re-aligned herself with Sasha Banks and turned heel for the first time in her WWE career. The fallout from the current SmackDown Women’s Champion’s move to the dark side has perplexed a lot of people, but the hotshot booking produced another unintended consequence: the apparent face turns of Alexa Bliss and Charlotte Flair.

There’s only one problem: neither Bliss nor Flair actually turned! These ladies never atoned for their past actions. They never articulated why the fans should embrace them as relatable, likable performers. They simply showed up and the audience was expected to cheer them accordingly because their opponents were heels.

Whether you believe that Bliss and Flair can thrive in a more affable role, sending them out there without an impetus for their reformed ways does no one any favors. It inhibits their ability to connect with an audience that doesn’t know what to make of them, which hinders their opponent’s ability to play off of them for heat, which makes the stories involving the parties less compelling.

To be fair, Bliss and Flair’s respective characters haven’t changed that much — it isn’t like they’re coming out slapping hands with the fans and grinning from ear to ear — but the idea that WWE thought they could trot those two out as fan favorites without giving the viewers any reason to cheer for them outside of a Pavlovian response to whatever WWE scripts for the show illustrate a much larger problem.