How WWE Turned Heel
The episodic TV model, all five hours of it on the flagship, feeds on this mentality. To pad it out, to draw us in from one week to the next, the heels are favoured, under the apprehension that we want to see the babyfaces fight heat with fire. The problem, beyond the repetition (and the faces falling for the same sh*tty tricks) is that WWE has extinguished what it means to be a babyface so resoundingly that they’ve become unwilling and inept.
Stephanie McMahon has been a major part of this endless TV for five deadening years at this point, too. WWE is incredibly high on the spiteful, pithy character—to the complete detriment of almost the entire roster. She is a very, very good performer. Her delivery towers over so many others. But so does her presence, and since she’s literally sold on a big stage with a degree of conviction about, what three times?—years and years of dismissals, eye-rolls and condescension have accrued, creating a fetid stench over the product.
It feels as if all of this coalesced and lit the torch paper for WWE’s company-wide heel turn. When was the last time you felt genuine happiness over a main roster babyface victory? Though recent events will change this in the brightest future timeline, it wasn't over Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 32. That WWE completely denied their top 2010s babyface was in fact the top heel hardly babyfaced themselves, nor did the utter relentlessness and spitefulness with which they pressed on with the push. It became Vince's prized "competition" in recent years: a competition with his audience.
We enable it, too, by constantly engaging with a product we say no longer suits our needs. Our actions—mine, too—say otherwise. And that only encourages them; they call our bluff, and instead of crafting absorbing, long-term storylines, which require time and effort at odds with the mass consumption model, they needle us into a response. We respond, on Twitter, a measurable metric, and thus the engagement strategy is secured.
The result?
This is now a company fundamentally unable to recognise, much less promote, likeable performers. Bayley is like Miss Elizabeth, if Miss Elizabeth could craft classic matches. She is a loser now. On RAW, Chad Gable creates din where there was once silence with his jaw-dropping, how-the-f*ck-does-he-do-that power game. He is portrayed as an annoying pissant. And now Daniel Bryan, nine months after a return for which there is no other word than magical, has turned heel at his own suggestion because he realised this, too.
Let that register. Put aside for a moment that Daniel Bryan Vs. Brock Lesnar could be something very special, and let the principle register:
WWE turned Daniel Bryan heel nine months after he returned, against all odds, to resume the most organic babyface narrative ever.
CONT'D...(4 of 5)