Breaking Down The Myth: The NWO Saved The Wrestling Business
6. Cool Heels And Neutered Babyfaces
When looking at the landscape of wrestling here in 2020, it's often said how it's hard to be a genuinely adored babyface or a routinely booed heel. Part of this is obviously down to the wrestling business having well and truly pulled the curtain back on its inner workings, but another part of the reason for the problematic heel/babyface dynamic of today can also be traced back to the nWo.
For better or for worse, the New World Order - much like early D-Generation X - made it cool to be a bad guy.
Granted, wrestling fans may have been looking for something different, something counter-culture, and something that had a badass edge to it, but in the New World Order we got a supposed heel group that did all of this in an effortless manner which completely neutered the babyfaces they went up against.
If fans are clamouring to cheer for the antics of the nWo, why would they cheer the babyfaces that the nWo were targeting? They wouldn't, and they didn't. That in itself took the legs out from under any and all babyfaces who ran up against the initial incarnation of the nWo - so much so that, as an example, Sting had to undergo a complete character overhaul.
Randy Savage and Lex Luger were two babyfaces who fans turned on during those early nWo years, in turn seeing both Savage and Luger join the villainous faction. Likewise, Sting himself would eventually end up donning the nWo letters, as would so many others.
The only thorough babyface who didn't see his star fade thanks to the nWo, was DDP - and that was because his lone wolf 'man of the people' act was in full force by the time audiences had grown tired of the nWo.