How do you make people happy with a face champion?

[autisticgeordie]

What I mean is that people are going to complain either way; people complain that Becky is being booked too strong, but then, when a champion is booked too weak, people complain about that, too.

So, no matter what happens, people aren't going to be happy with the way that WWE books a face champion, their either booked too strongly (they're the champion, why the f*** shouldn't they be billed strongly?!) and then people complain when a champion loses all the time like when Rey Mysterio lost to a bunch of huge hosses like Mark Henry, Great Khali and Kane when he was the World Heavyweight Champion back in 2006.

Honestly? I think the best received babyface champion in a long time was Kofi Kingston, but I imagine that, if he had held into the belt longer, the fans would've done what they always do and go "Oh, he's winning too much, even though he's the world champion, so, logically, of course he's winning a lot!"

It just seems impossible to please wrestling fans when it comes to making a babyface champion, they'll turn on them eventually. People often complain that WWE don't know how to make good babyfaces; which I can totally understand, but maybe, in this era of wrestling, the fans are too 'smart' to want to accept a long-running babyface champion??

[Deleted]

Jan 14, 2020 16:48:07 GMT -5 autisticgeordie said:

Honestly? I think the best received babyface champion in a long time was Kofi Kingston, but I imagine that, if he had held into the belt longer, the fans would've done what they always do and go "Oh, he's winning too much, even though he's the world champion, so, logically, of course he's winning a lot!"

Well, "Super Kofi" was becoming a thing on here when he was champ.

[Toilet Paper Roll]

Give the fans a legitimate reason to get behind them. Make them cool, sympathetic and not a drooling dummy who falls for the same old cliche wrestling tricks from the 80s

[autisticgeordie]

Jan 14, 2020 16:54:38 GMT -5 @dax said:

Jan 14, 2020 16:48:07 GMT -5 autisticgeordie said:

Honestly? I think the best received babyface champion in a long time was Kofi Kingston, but I imagine that, if he had held into the belt longer, the fans would've done what they always do and go "Oh, he's winning too much, even though he's the world champion, so, logically, of course he's winning a lot!"

Well, "Super Kofi" was becoming a thing on here when he was champ.

Do fans even want to give babyface champions a chance or do they just enjoy complaining about them online?? Like, why are wrestling fans so damn flippant when it comes to babyface champions and how quickly they just turn on them?

[DrBackflipsHoffman]

Dont make them dance, tell shite jokes or hang around with drips should be number one priority

[Deleted]

Jan 14, 2020 16:59:03 GMT -5 autisticgeordie said:

Jan 14, 2020 16:54:38 GMT -5 @dax said:

Well, "Super Kofi" was becoming a thing on here when he was champ.

Do fans even want to give babyface champions a chance or do they just enjoy complaining about them online?? Like, why are wrestling fans so damn flippant when it comes to babyface champions and how quickly they just turn on them?

I think it's a combination of wrestling fans these days just enjoying the chase more than the catch and babyfaces in general being very bland. When AJ was in his second reign they turned him into a boring family man begging Samoa Joe not to f*** his wife and they just about stripped Becky of her goofiness, which is what people love her for, and turned her into too much of a srs (l)ass kicker. Kofi pretty much stayed the same guy, but I see him as an outlier.

[Deleted]

The thing with modern babyfaces in WWE is they don't struggle with adversity especially after they win a title it ends up just being a line of challengers that don't pose any sort of real or different challenge but this is less a wrestler thing more on the creative aspect.

I look at Stone Cold as champion and all the adversity he constantly faced and how different each challenge was.

Vince was his boss so he had to meet this challenge more with brains and wit then with in ring ability

Taker posed a much more physical threat so he would have to up the violence against him

HHH and Rock were in kayfabe his equals

It wasn't just a different challenge in the ring but a different challenge as far as the overall feud and thus every feud he had brought something new and different.

Nowadays it is the same feud no matter what and also does not help that title reigns go on for f***ing ever so it is not just the samething but it is the samething for a lonnngggg stretch of time.

[The Trashman]

Competitive matches and feuds that make sense without doing the same matchups over and over?

[Chiral]

Modern WWE face champs have the problem where they fall into the rut of them never really having any peril. Like they win every title match easily, and the only "win" the heels ever get on em is making them mad. See all the title matches where the match layout is the heel going like "CMON HIT ME WITH A STEEL CHAIR" and the face is like "OOOO BUT I'M A GOOD GUY " it's really boring and takes forever and a heel getting a DQ win from that makes them look like a total loser when the face crushes them every other time then rinse repeat with the next guy they feud with, for a long title reign that always ends flatly and randomly (see: booking of the WWE title the last few years of Smackdown outside of the Bryan/Kofi feud). Then the heels end up being the underdogs because they really do feel like they have no chance of winning, while the face you just get tired of because they win everything so easily.

My go to example food blueprint for a face champ is Christian's ECW run. Pretty much every match he had his opponents came out looking better, and he always looked like a fighting champ.

[fw91]

make them an anti hero

[Deleted]

I mean, with Becky it'd help tremendously if they weren't just padding out her reign for the hell of it despite having absolutely nothing for her to actually do as champion - she's had the belt for nine months at this point and only had three challengers during the entire reign, and hasn't actually defended the belt in over three months.

[Milkman Norm]

Something I was thinking about when I was using the bathroom last night (it's were I do 80% of my thinking) that relates to this. There is a correlation between the increase in "writers" in WWE and babyface looking like idiots. Back when promos were promos and guys were selling themselves most if not all of the comedic jabs came from the heels at the babyfaces, when the babyfaces were established not being in the same location and couldn't defend themselves. Heels were cowards and would always back down from a fair fight. The babyfaces would cut fired up promos about getting revenge for whatever the heels did. Sometimes they would mock the heels, but it was rare. They'd rather beat them straight up in the ring. That doesn't work for the script writers. Wrestling needs to be removed from wrestling as much as possible. You can do that to a pretty great extent with the heels, their job is to annoy, embarrass and harm. Word can be great at that. You can't do that with babyfaces because by their nature a great face promo is one that wants to see you get their hands on that sonovabitch and beat the F out of them. Writers can't get that passion they way that can get the jokes so as a result we end up with incompetent faces most of the time.

[cabbageboy]

I've been watching Mid-South on the Network and here is my solution: Horrific beatings. Seriously, you want a face to get over? Have him take sick, vicious heel beatings and be bloodied and then next week come back and cut a fiery, vengeful promo. Have the face get over for a while, then screw the face over. Then finally the face wins again. That is one area where the Attitude Era had it right. The faces got wins, but then not hugely long title runs. A couple of months later Austin would get screwed, or Rock got screwed, etc.

[The Rick Jericho]

Would a surfer Sting type babyface work today in 2020?

So Sting from 1988-1993 levels of babyface heat. It worked then.

Today? Are we tired of jerk babyfaces?

[Fake Jesus]

Face title reigns aren't hard. Don't fool yourself into thinking something can't be done just because WWE can't do it.

The last good face title run in WWE was Dean Ambrose in 2016. Kofi was done in by near-replica AJ Styles booking.

[Cyno]

WWE has completely forgotten how to book faces for long-term success in the face role.

[defectiveepitaph]

Jan 14, 2020 18:03:13 GMT -5 fw91 said:

make them an anti hero

And silent badasses.

[Wieners=$$$]

I see the problems with modern WWE's babyfaces on three fronts; product overexposure, bland and uninspired creative direction, and the refusal to let organic overness flourish.

These problems aren't exclusive to their babyfaces, but to the WWE product as a whole.

[warden]

Go with a bald guy. They've had success in the past with that type.

[Powerline]

Jan 14, 2020 17:33:37 GMT -5 @sigmax said:

The thing with modern babyfaces in WWE is they don't struggle with adversity especially after they win a title it ends up just being a line of challengers that don't pose any sort of real or different challenge but this is less a wrestler thing more on the creative aspect.

I look at Stone Cold as champion and all the adversity he constantly faced and how different each challenge was.

Vince was his boss so he had to meet this challenge more with brains and wit then with in ring ability

Taker posed a much more physical threat so he would have to up the violence against him

HHH and Rock were in kayfabe his equals

It wasn't just a different challenge in the ring but a different challenge as far as the overall feud and thus every feud he had brought something new and different.

Nowadays it is the same feud no matter what and also does not help that title reigns go on for f***ing ever so it is not just the samething but it is the samething for a lonnngggg stretch of time.

The other thing about that was Austin wasn't made to look like stupid.  He often had a step up on Vince and co. and if he didn't, it was because he was bull-headed and the numbers were too much.  It wasn't him falling for an obvious trap; and if the trap ever WAS too obvious, he struck back on that.

Compare that to Daniel Bryan's leadup to Wrestlemania 30, where they made him look like a complete drooling moron every week from Summerslam to Mania (save the one week he hijacked the show with the fans).  There's a reason why Austin has so many feud "moments", and not ONLY because he took things to an extreme, whereas all they want anybody to remember with Bryan is him holding the belts to close 30 and NOT the fact that they got in their own way time after time after time getting there with how they booked him.

But that's a big part of it to me.  I know heels are in and you want to make heels a convincing threat, but if I HAVE to pick between a stupid heel or a stupid babyface, I'll take the stupid heel all day long.