10 Most Effective Wrestling Babyfaces Of The 21st Century
1. Daniel Bryan
Roman Reigns is an antiquated ideal of a wrestling babyface - a man who despite his athleticism and presence is booked as an all-conquering hero in an age in which that mode doesn't pass muster.
Daniel Bryan - the man he supplanted to widespread fury - was his antithesis. Lost amid the accolades placed on him from all corners is that Bryan wrestled more like a traditional WWE face than is often remembered. He was so mechanically sound that the Wrestling Observer renamed their Best Technical Wrestler Award after him because he won it so many times consecutively - but he popularised his own moves of doom variation by lulling his opponent into a clothesline with a backflip before performing a diving version of his own lariat.
That one move crystallised his appeal to both knowing adults and naive children. He had a routine with which to appeal broadly, but his matches elsewhere were so intelligently worked that he earned a permanent place in the hearts of the so-called smark set.
Bryan was a babyface sensation by both design - he adopted the "Yes!" chants with which he got over huge without broaching officials - and by accident. His agonising and protracted rise to the main event was born from the refusal of his legion of fans to accept him merely as a "good little hand".
No man before or since has reconciled the divided audience to the level Bryan did between 2013 and 2014. That WWE couldn't grasp his appeal is a bleak premonition for his babyface successors.