10 Bad Habits WWE Must Kick In 2019
3. Turning Everybody Heel
Sami Zayn, Becky Lynch and Daniel Bryan once represented WWE’s holy trinity of pure babyfaces. All three, across 2017 and 2018, were turned heel, two of which were enforced decisions: Zayn and Bryan were portrayed as such feckless dorks that there was nowhere else for WWE to turn but the turn. Before fate intervened and did WWE’s job for them, Lynch turned heel because creative couldn’t fathom that she was more well-liked than office project Charlotte Flair. So, in effect, WWE either cannot recognise likeable people, or ritually removes any likeable aspect from likeable people. All three became incredible heels, but that's incidental to the point.
And then there’s Bayley, about whom WWE care so little that they cannot even make the effort of betraying her character.
If Vince McMahon actually watched NXT, he might remind himself of how to book babyfaces. Provide them with a goal, like one of those Championships nobody really cares about anymore. Map their journey towards it through early, competitive losses in which they show enough fire to warrant another opportunity. You like that word, Vince. You’ve no idea how to apply it, but you say it enough times through the headset.
Use those losses to put over that first major win, and, for f*ck’s sake, put it over. Don’t retcon it. If anything, have the babyface win more often, and only book them to lose when a villain becomes too threatened to stomach their march to the top of the card. Or just job them out and turn them all heel, each and every one of them.
One of the two.