Being the face of the company is the biggest honor you can achieve in WWE. The list of people who were worthy enough of being WWE's #1 over the last 50+ years isn't long. The first traditional face of the company being Bruno Sammartino, followed by the likes of Hogan, Bret, Shawn, Stone Cold, The Rock and John Cena. With this impressive line up of people who really helped elevate/maintain the company's popularity during their respective eras, it's really hard for me to see anyone else on the current roster who's doing the same for the product now. Reigns is the only one who came close to it, but his run never turned into what it should have been.
To really establish who is or should be the company's #1 priority, it's good to dissect what qualities a wrestler has to have to be in that conversation, by going off of the qualities each of the former faces of the company had, which is basically me boiling it down to the bare essentials for any wrestler who wants to be a prominent figure in WWE.
so with all that being said, there are a couple names I could see scoring in 2 out of the 3 qualities but imo, John Cena is still the last person to hit all 3 and it's been a long ass time since he's been considered their top guy.
General questions now are, who do you think could or should be the face of the company? And who would you say is the current face of the company? This, of course, includes the women, given that Becky Lynch is probably a favorite in this conversation with Vince now officially taking her under his wing and making her his #1 priority. For me, it's a bit too soon to have her up there, she's been a vocal point over the past six months but I'd still wait and see how the rest of the year pans out for her. She definitely has the most potential to become the first female face of the company.
Another person who I could see turning into the face of the company, is Drew McIntyre. The dude can talk like he means it and he looks incredible. Wrestling wise, he hasn't really had that many marquee singles matches ever since coming back to WWE, besides that one Andrade match in which he injured himself, but his in-ring work is definitely more promising than it used to be during his first run with the company. After a couple well performed world title matches, I could see him turning into a hot commodity real quick.
Reigns rising back to his prominent position is probably the most realistic option here though, given the spike in ratings for his return and positive fan reaction. If that happens, I hope he'll have more luck with his promos and storylines this time around.
Sorry if this is a bit too long for some, I just felt like going in depth with this
To really establish who is or should be the company's #1 priority, it's good to dissect what qualities a wrestler has to have to be in that conversation, by going off of the qualities each of the former faces of the company had, which is basically me boiling it down to the bare essentials for any wrestler who wants to be a prominent figure in WWE.
- natural charisma/authentic mic work
Being able to talk on a mic is basically in the job description of a "WWE Superstar™", but having natural charisma and cutting promos that sound like a real person is talking, rather than sounding like a puppet who's reading a script, separates PC/NXT graduates from legitimate main event talent. If I were to count every current main roster talent who sounds like a real person when they cut a promo with my fingers, I wouldn't even have to lift my other hand. Getting a bad script and delivering it on TV are 2 separate things. If a talent can turn a bad script into a good promo or, even better, pitch a better script during rehearsals, it automatically puts them above everyone else on the show. The 2 people on the current roster I thought of while writing this were Samoa Joe and Daniel Bryan.
- wrestling ability
The obvious one. Especially nowadays, when having a good match matters more to people than the person who's winning it, it's a must have. What's supposed to put the face of the company above the rest of the roster though, is the ability to bring the best out of most of his/her opponents or to hang with wrestlers that are better. Being a good wrestler doesn't automatically mean that you'll have great chemistry with whoever they put up against you, so keep that in mind. There have been so many wrestlers who're supposedly good in the ring, but they just didn't gel well enough with most people on the roster to be considered an all-rounder so they crumbled under the pressure. AJ Styles & Seth Rollins are 2 good representatives of this quality, they pretty much have good-to-great matches with almost anyone they're booked against. I could have named more but I wanna keep it to 2 different names per quality.
- look and marketability
This is something that gets overlooked constantly and even made fun of a lot (by the fans at least), but it does matter a lot how strong/legit a wrestler looks. There's a real reason as to why "small guys" usually aren't considered to be the face of the company, and it's not just Vince being a mark for big guys. It comes down to the simple idea of "do I believe this?". Would you believe that a guy like Daniel Bryan or Finn Bálor could be a consistently dominant force amongst talent like Braun Strowman or Brock Lesnar? You be the judge, but I wouldn't believe that for a second.
I'll never forget when a friend of mine, who doesn't really watch wrestling, told me that this Reigns guy looks pretty legit because he saw a clip of him on Youtube. It honestly changed my view on wrestling as a business forever. He couldn't have known about how Reigns has been doing on the mic or in his storylines but the initial hook was there and that's what's important. WWE needs someone they can put on a talk show and make the host and his viewers go "fuck, this guy's huge. I wouldn't wanna piss him off". So, given that there are no weight classes in WWE, the biggest, strongest and most impressive looking guys/girls should logically be the talent to beat. The obvious wrestlers I thought of while writing this one were Reigns and Strowman, they fit this category like a glove. If I show someone an image of either one of them, they'd believe that dem boys can send anyone to the hospital if they wanted to.
so with all that being said, there are a couple names I could see scoring in 2 out of the 3 qualities but imo, John Cena is still the last person to hit all 3 and it's been a long ass time since he's been considered their top guy.
General questions now are, who do you think could or should be the face of the company? And who would you say is the current face of the company? This, of course, includes the women, given that Becky Lynch is probably a favorite in this conversation with Vince now officially taking her under his wing and making her his #1 priority. For me, it's a bit too soon to have her up there, she's been a vocal point over the past six months but I'd still wait and see how the rest of the year pans out for her. She definitely has the most potential to become the first female face of the company.
Another person who I could see turning into the face of the company, is Drew McIntyre. The dude can talk like he means it and he looks incredible. Wrestling wise, he hasn't really had that many marquee singles matches ever since coming back to WWE, besides that one Andrade match in which he injured himself, but his in-ring work is definitely more promising than it used to be during his first run with the company. After a couple well performed world title matches, I could see him turning into a hot commodity real quick.
Reigns rising back to his prominent position is probably the most realistic option here though, given the spike in ratings for his return and positive fan reaction. If that happens, I hope he'll have more luck with his promos and storylines this time around.
Sorry if this is a bit too long for some, I just felt like going in depth with this
