7 Ups And 5 Downs From WWE Roadblock

4. Subtle Changes

Face turns can happen in a variety of ways. Sometimes, a hated heel saves a babyface or someone in distress to win the day. Other times, it€™s a slow turn from villain to hero. But the worst kind of face turn is when it just happens all of a sudden with no real reason (think Big Show).

Thankfully, we€™re watching a slow turn for the New Day, a team that€™s being cheered most of the time these days, but technically are still heels as the WWE Tag Team Champions. Saturday night, the champs took on heel tag team the League of Nations (Sheamus and King Barrett), which created a situation where fans had clear heels in the challengers, giving them a reason to favor the New Day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtaYFZSlcnE

Although New Day did their usual shtick, they added a few small things, with the duo playing to the crowd a little more. Kofi Kingston went for a few more athletic moves than he has in a while. Also, the announcers were a little more neutral on the group, leaning toward being positive about them. Rather than outright turning New Day into good guys overnight €“ despite getting cheered €“ this method of easing into it at Roadblock worked well, and hopefully will give fans a real reason to cheer them when they become full-fledged faces.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.