If WWE Was Being Honest About Heels And Babyfaces

Over on SmackDown, Becky Lynch is playing the role of a heel despite being fully justified in her turn within WWE’s narrative, and not merely our own.

Charlotte Flair didn’t cheat to win at SummerSlam, but she back-doored her way into both match and victory. It was an entitled and clinical means of putting the SmackDown Women’s Title around her waist that fans, naturally, rejected - especially since she was pushed in the babyface role at the expense of Becky Lynch, whose organic rise to favour was completely ignored. Tellingly, Lynch was scripted on Tuesday’s SmackDown to say the word “B*tch” - WWE’s go-to insult of the antihero. Aware that they have drastically misjudged crowd sentiment, this angle, and the John Pollock-fuelled rumour that we’re now in for an all-tweener programmes, feels like something new, if not permanent.

This feels like a positive development in both character portrayal and audience response - but, since WWE is only reloading the gun having shot themselves in the foot, this is hardly an Attitude Era announcement of a mission statement. And let’s just see who wrestles Ronda Rousey at WrestleMania 35. It seems doubtful that the performer fans are most receptive to will enter into a battle of the armbars.

For the more cynical among us, this recent development is difficult to reconcile. We are only suspicious and quick to label acts as babyfaces and heels because those labels are elsewhere are plastered onto our eyeballs.