Are the days of faces and heels coming to an end?
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I disaree fully with Strowman. Just because WWE makes the same mistake with Reigns they did made with Cena and the top babyface is booed once again doesn't mean the days of faces vs heels are over, that's just a lame excuse WWE made one of their employees (in this case Strowman) say to not make their top babyface look like a fool. If that's really the case (and the new WWE boss Triple H said something similar about Reigns) then why is WWE editing all the boos of Reigns but not the boos of Strowman if face vs heel doesn't exist anymore? Face it, Reigns is a great wrestler, was part of a cool stable and is perhaps a great person but he is a failure as a top babyface of the company and WWE will try everything to make us believe in their bullshit instead to admit that Reigns is a failure and Strowmans comment is a perfect example.
Look at Jinder Mahal, he is a typical heel, the way he wins, the way he cuts promos, his opponents are only babyfaces, so if he starts feuding with Reigns one day and the fans start to boo Reigns it's not because the days of faces and heels is over, it's that the babyface of the company sucks so much the fans are starting cheering for a heel.
People were on their feet for Sting vs Flair, Stone Cold vs Shawn Michaels in 1998, Hardys vs E&C in 2000 or Eddie Guerrero vs Kurt Angle in 2004 too and all of them did a great job too but there was still this good vs evil story.
People respect all the heels because they put their bodies on the line and I'm sure everybody wants to take a picture with them after the show but during the show they are booing the character and expect them to get their ass kicked in the final battle like heels are supposed to do.
People didn't stand up everytime when Hollywood Hogan or Mr. McMahon did something "hey let's cheer for them because they do their job right".
I'm buying a ticket to see a story told in a wrestling ring. Just like I buy a ticket to see a movie with my favorite actor Robert DeNiro, if he plays a good guy I'm happy that he kicked ass at the end of a movie, if he plays a bad guy I'm happy he gets his ass kicked if the story in the movie is great.
My favorite wrestler is The Undertaker and I cheered for him in his matches the last 15 years but when he was a heel I cheered when he got eliminated by Maven because it was an OMG moment, when Stone Cold interrupted the dark wedding, attacked Taker and saved Stephanie McMahon I cheered because it was the right thing to do in the storyline. When heel Undertaker faced Austin in the first blood match at Fully Loaded 1999 I cheered for Austin because the stipulation was that Mr. McMahon had to leave the WWE TV if Taker lost.
When Taker was a heel in 1999 I cheered for Austin, when Austin was a heel in 2001 I cheered for Taker because the storytelling was great.
why are people still bringing this up? They don't even do that anymore. The company accepted the fact that people don't like Roman Reigns, the irony is that the people don't accept the fact that WWE accepted it and still wanna complain that he's "not the babyface they're looking for". Well that's because he's not.
sorry to break it to you, but that's not how it goes anymore. The audience doesn't rate who they boo/cheer for by their character. They go by work rate and if you look at AJ Styles' heel run for example, he got a pop wherever he went, simply because people don't care about him being a bad guy anymore, they just wanna see AJ wrestle. We live in an era where booing a good heel isn't the thing to do anymore. If people enjoy a certain heel run, they'll cheer it no matter what.
here's the thing about that.. you were a kid, so obviously you fall more into the whole good vs bad thing. I think everyone of us loved a good babyface and hated a good heel as a kid. But you gotta realize that the age WWE's average viewers these days isn't 28 anymore. It's 54. Not as many kids watch the product as people may think, therefor they don't have to have this big babyface fighting every bad guy, which would never work for them anyways because any babyface that gets a huge push will get demolished by the crowd anyways. Cena got it, Reigns got it, anyone else would have got it.
why are people still bringing this up? They don't even do that anymore. The company accepted the fact that people don't like Roman Reigns, the irony is that the people don't accept the fact that WWE accepted it and still wanna complain that he's "not the babyface they're looking for". Well that's because he's not.
sorry to break it to you, but that's not how it goes anymore. The audience doesn't rate who they boo/cheer for by their character. They go by work rate and if you look at AJ Styles' heel run for example, he got a pop wherever he went, simply because people don't care about him being a bad guy anymore, they just wanna see AJ wrestle. We live in an era where booing a good heel isn't the thing to do anymore. If people enjoy a certain heel run, they'll cheer it no matter what.
here's the thing about that.. you were a kid, so obviously you fall more into the whole good vs bad thing. I think everyone of us loved a good babyface and hated a good heel as a kid. But you gotta realize that the age WWE's average viewers these days isn't 28 anymore. It's 54. Not as many kids watch the product as people may think, therefor they don't have to have this big babyface fighting every bad guy, which would never work for them anyways because any babyface that gets a huge push will get demolished by the crowd anyways. Cena got it, Reigns got it, anyone else would have got it.
I've been a wrestling fan for over 30 years and I can tell you that this is not the first time this has been discussed. In fact, older wrestling fans have told me that this has come up before my time as well.
This came up when Hogan became the face of WWE. Although Hogan is a face and a very popular one, he had no problem using heel tactics in the ring such as raking people in the back, poking eyes and using forum objects. At the time all of these things were forbidden if you were a face. But it didn't really change.
It came up when Steve Austin came around. Austin was technically a heel in every way, but he was a face officially. Also in Austin's time, ECW was also becoming big. And ECW really screwed with the face/Heel line. At the time, it was so skewed that PWI stopped rating popularity in their ratings. The majority of the Attitude Era really messed with this a lot.
Personally, right now, I don't see it nearly as unclear as it was during Austin's time. I don't think it's over any time soon.
This came up when Hogan became the face of WWE. Although Hogan is a face and a very popular one, he had no problem using heel tactics in the ring such as raking people in the back, poking eyes and using forum objects. At the time all of these things were forbidden if you were a face. But it didn't really change.
It came up when Steve Austin came around. Austin was technically a heel in every way, but he was a face officially. Also in Austin's time, ECW was also becoming big. And ECW really screwed with the face/Heel line. At the time, it was so skewed that PWI stopped rating popularity in their ratings. The majority of the Attitude Era really messed with this a lot.
Personally, right now, I don't see it nearly as unclear as it was during Austin's time. I don't think it's over any time soon.
You are praising this era as a sign of the end of this face-heel thing but it's nothing compared to what pro wrestling looked like in the late 90s when it comes to faces and heels, it was more extreme than today
We had in the late 90s a babyface Stone Cold who showed everybody the middle finger, used a chair and other foreign objects in his matches and gave everybody, face-heel-man-woman a Stunner.
Another babyface The Rock verbally humiliated other babyfaces, commentators and backstage interviewers.
Sting was a babyface who came down from the rafters and attacked even babyfaces and used a baseball bat like a typical 80s heel.
nWo Wolfpac was a stable that was against nWo but at the same time acted like heels, a tweener stable.
At the same time you had heels like nWo that started this "cool heels" thing. The Outsiders were cheered whenever they appeared and Scott Hall even humiliated the WCW with his survey every week "who came to see WCW and who came to see the nWo" while Eric Bischoff a member of a heel stable told the fans that he loves them instead of the typical "I am bad and you fans suck".
Scott Steiner was a heel the whole time in WCW since joining the nWo yet the fans loved the way he acted. When Ric Flair was a heel the fans still respected him by chanting Wooo! whenever somebody did the chop, same with his Horsemen during the nWo era, McMichael was a typical heel and Benoit worked very stiff but they were cheered because they were Horsemen.
I can name you numerous other examples like heel Jericho debut in WWE, the ECW wrestlers who got cheered for doing violent stuff, Corporate Champion The Rock, Eddie Guerrero's reason why he formed the Latino World Order, heel X-Pac return to WWE in 1998 and many many more.
If in the late 90s the days of faces and heels didn't came to the end then it surely will not be in 2017 or 2018 and to claim that is just a joke to defend the failure of top babyface Roman Reigns.
LOL I was 17 in 1999 and even if I was a baby back then there were still plenty of adults around who maybe thought a heel wrestler is cool but they never had the feeling the days of heels and faces are over because they respected the story those wrestlers told us.
Here is a perfect example
The Undertaker was around that time already a 9 year veteran in WWE so he was already respected. He was cheered a year before that promo and he would get cheered again 1 year after this promo but during that promo he was interrupted by Austin chants. most fans loved the Ministry Taker and respected the wrestler but this was a story told in the ring. Austin acted heelish during his WWE career but despite that everybody know he became a heel at WrestleMania X-Seven, same with The Rock, when you aske the fans when The Rock turned heel everybody would say shortly before No Way Out 2003 when he became Hollywood Rock.