Predicting The Next 10 Alignment Changes In WWE
9. Raquel Rodriguez
For fans of black-and-gold flavoured NXT, there's something deeply disquieting about seeing the former Raquel Gonzalez playing a smiley babyface on Smackdown.
Actually, let's rephrase that. For people with any common sense about how wrestling works, there's something deeply disquieting about introducing a 6-foot, powerfully built badass to your mainstream audience as a smiley babyface.
Raquel Rodriguez is, simply, a natural heel. It's why she was chosen to end Io Shirai's incredibly popular reign as NXT Women's Champion (via a brutal powerbomb to the concrete), and why her current happy-go-lucky gimmick isn't working.
Raquel possesses a huge size and strength advantage over her competitors, to the extent that anyone opposite her in the ring automatically enters the role of plucky underdog. Not only that, but her powerhouse offense is designed to elicit sympathy for whichever poor sap is on the receiving end of it. As such, the former Ms. Gonzalez really doesn't work as a cheery, aw-shucks babyface.
Hopefully WWE will see sense and switch Raquel back to playing the heel. Some tropes just work, and "Powerful Monster" is one of them.