It's one of those basic questions like Pepsi vs Coke or Facebook vs MySpace - do you prefer the good guys or the bad guys (not necessarily Scott Hall) on top?

None of this fencesitting "tweener" junk is allowed! The battle lines have been drawn!

I'm just thinking about all those long depressing heel title runs over the years (HHH, JBL, King Booker, Jinder, Roman, TNA Jarrett) and how much they just bored (and depressed me). Then all those millions of crap reigns guys like Del Rio, Edge and Sheamus had. Useless!

I always used to prefer heels as THE GUY but when Eddie won the WWE title, it all changed for me. Cena! Batista! Jeff Hardy! Daniel Bryan! Face AJ Styles! Christian for a few days! I even loved Universal champ Seth.

Yeah, there have been some crap face champions in the past few years (Drew, Kofi, Big E), but I'm usually on the good guys' side!

Faces are dweebs. Like you can't expect me to wanna see you succeed when goobers like Cole and Saxton are backing you up. This is the REAL REASON for long term heel champs right there.

I shouldn't be surprised by the Andrew Tate stan being on the heels' side!

In an ideal world, it'd have to babyface. Ultimately you want somebody who is so believable and charismatic that you want to see them as champion and represent the company. Not to be THAT guy, but the best champions when they were champions were all New Japan guys - guys like Tanahashi and Okada.

Personally I hated how they made Omega a heel champion in AEW and rely on cheap finishes under the guise of 'he's being bad on purpose'. Oddly enough, they didn't give him that crutch in TNA and those matches were largely better because they made him out to be a level above.

Heels. The only time a babyface is interesting is during the chase. Once they reach the end goal, then what? They're back to being boring. Then, unlike a heel reign, whom can keep the championship in many nefarious ways, keeping opposition strong, you have a babyface champion holding his reign with clean as whistle wins, often at the expense of heels on the roster. You have to do this. You can't have the babyface champion cheating, or getting lucky wins. So then you damage a lot of the roster to keep the babyface champion, who if he isn't already boring, surely will be soon, and it's just counterproductive. Especially considering the fans will most likely turn on the babyface champion at some point with this style of booking, so what's all this for? This is bygone era shit. Hogan in the '80s, last guy to be able to pull this off. Give me a heel champion or a tweener that can shapeshift into whatever is the more interesting path.

Variety is the spice of life. Context is everything. Presentation is key.

Nov 27, 2022 21:39:31 GMT Kilgore said:

Heels. The only time a babyface is interesting is during the chase. Once they reach the end goal, then what? They're back to being boring. Then, unlike a heel reign, whom can keep the championship in many nefarious ways, keeping opposition strong, you have a babyface champion holding his reign with clean as whistle wins, often at the expense of heels on the roster. You have to do this. You can't have the babyface champion cheating, or getting lucky wins. So then you damage a lot of the roster to keep the babyface champion, who if he isn't already boring, surely will be soon, and it's just counterproductive. Especially considering the fans will most likely turn on the babyface champion at some point with this style of booking, so what's all this for? This is bygone era shit. Hogan in the '80s, last guy to be able to pull this off. Give me a heel champion or a tweener that can shapeshift into whatever is the more interesting path.

This

Is Brock a face or heel?

And, to a lesser degree, is Sid a face or heel?

Nov 27, 2022 21:39:31 GMT Kilgore said:

Heels. The only time a babyface is interesting is during the chase. Once they reach the end goal, then what? They're back to being boring. Then, unlike a heel reign, whom can keep the championship in many nefarious ways, keeping opposition strong, you have a babyface champion holding his reign with clean as whistle wins, often at the expense of heels on the roster. You have to do this. You can't have the babyface champion cheating, or getting lucky wins. So then you damage a lot of the roster to keep the babyface champion, who if he isn't already boring, surely will be soon, and it's just counterproductive. Especially considering the fans will most likely turn on the babyface champion at some point with this style of booking, so what's all this for? This is bygone era shit. Hogan in the '80s, last guy to be able to pull this off. Give me a heel champion or a tweener that can shapeshift into whatever is the more interesting path.

Since you mentioned Hogan, I'll leave him out of this question/request, but can you broad strokes how you'd have booked Austin's world title runs if the fun for faces is only in the chase? Offhand, I'm picturing a potential alternative reality where Vince uses his power to strip Austin every month, Austin uses his this infinite contractual rematch clauses (and/or just ruins whatever other match Vince sets up) to always end up back in the title picture, and instead of getting Austin as the face champion not chasing but defending... we get Austin in a perpetual motion hamster wheel chase, re-winning his stripped title every month or so. Vince finally stops bothering after Austin breaks Flair's record by 2x because he realizes cunning Austin will always find a way to out-cun him, and he doesn't want to continue ruining the legacy and prestige of the WWF's flagship championship.

:lol:

Also, inspired by @ness's Batman thread, every face champion should either die a hero or live long enough to see himself become the villain. In pro wrestling terms, face chases top title and wins it with epic groundswell of fan support. A few successful defenses, gradually grows cocky and complacent. Eventually becomes insufferable. Fans want change or their "old" hero back, or are mad other wrestlers seem almost held down by the incumbent champ's presumed politicking, which grows ever more influential the longer the reign goes. Generally it should be a gradual and organic shift. Best closest example I can think of in real life is/was Cena, but then he & WWE chickened out when they had their opportunities because merch sales were too much to sacrifice.

Kilgore, nailed it.

When the bad guy is good such as Shane Douglas, Randy Savage & Raven, yes, let the good guys chase them. However, when you have HORRIBLE champions such, as JBL, Jinder & HHH, that turns me off & disinterests me. When a heel champion is bad, the entire roster suffers as a result.

Truthfully I've always wanted a babyface champ. Seems the way wrestling works they really can't be done. Sure Hogan was champ for years but even with Cena he was basically a heel in every measurable way. Perhaps we're too hung up on the chase. Or maybe we secretly crave Skynet.

Dec 11, 2022 21:47:48 GMT @ness said:

Truthfully I've always wanted a babyface champ. Seems the way wrestling works they really can't be done. Sure Hogan was a champ for years but even with Cena, he was basically a heel in every measurable way. Perhaps we're too hung up on the chase. Or maybe we secretly crave Skynet.

The chase is fine but the universal love of it implies every chase is good. That's not true. I got sick of Daniel Bryan getting screwed over all the time.

Dec 11, 2022 22:05:32 GMT Ed said:

Dec 11, 2022 21:47:48 GMT @ness said:

Truthfully I've always wanted a babyface champ. Seems the way wrestling works they really can't be done. Sure Hogan was a champ for years but even with Cena, he was basically a heel in every measurable way. Perhaps we're too hung up on the chase. Or maybe we secretly crave Skynet.

The chase is fine but the universal love of it implies every chase is good. That's not true. I got sick of Daniel Bryan getting screwed over all the time.

WWE during that time period was going extreme with HEAT. It was like they forgot how to create babyfaces. Maybe they never could and just got lucky with certain stars getting over in spite of Vince.

Yeah, Sami Zayn in NXT was a big one for me. He always kept coming this close to winning the big one and blew it every time. Then it got to the point where he said he'd quit NXT if he didn't beat Neville.

So yes! He beat Neville (obviously)! He finally won the title he'd been chasing for so long!

Then he got absolutely murdered by KO, lost the title and never even came close to winning it again. Depressing stuff!

(And the Sami/KO stuff is still going on seven years later - enough!)

The Daniel Bryan chase felt like active sabotage. When he stayed over they were just like, fine, I guess.

Dec 11, 2022 22:42:45 GMT @aaron said:

Yeah, Sami Zayn in NXT was a big one for me. He always kept coming this close to winning the big one and blew it every time. Then it got to the point where he said he'd quit NXT if he didn't beat Neville.

So yes! He beat Neville (obviously)! He finally won the title he'd been chasing for so long!

Then he got absolutely murdered by KO, lost the title and never even came close to winning it again. Depressing stuff!

(And the Sami/KO stuff is still going on seven years later - enough!)

You probably don't want to hear this, but it was going on long before NXT.

It's the millenial version of Raven/Dreamer. If KO doesn't show up at Zayn's funeral and package piledrivers his corpse I will be very disappointed.

The only time I wanted someone to chase JBL was if they were doing so leading him off a cliff. Foghorn Leghorn's run made me sour on wrestling. That's well-known about me. The philosophical shift between Vince sr. & jr.

Heels

Said this on 🤯 ‘s podcast but:

In films the heel is dominant, the babyface goes over then the credits roll. Obviously things keep going in wrestling and the chase is never as good as the reign.

You are suppose to want a babyface champion but you use to pay to see a heel champion defeated. And when the babyface finally get the win that how the story should end. And usually you don't want to continue a story once it is over. After that it becomes needless filler.

The frequent answer to this is it's heels because once the babyface has the title they become uninteresting because there is no hill to climb. I disagree, there is truth in that but there's a causality for it and I will use the best example that springs to mind right now with what I've been watching lately.

Brock Lesnar won the WWE title at WM19 and I did not enjoy that title reign, I found the SD's to be a slog, just largely uninteresting, then I pinpointed the problem, The Big Show, or what the Big Show represented, the top tier heels on SD at the time, of which there were none, Angle had gone for surgery, returned a babyface when he does come back, but Brock has no one interesting to work. The WWE model is largely about building a face up to Mania to dethrone a long standing heel, the problem with a long standing heel run is that it devalues the other heels on the roster, thus making them unthreatening to our new babyface champion. The interest in a title run is that it could possibly end, who wants to watch a fight, football match, you know the outcome of?

That then made me think about babyface title reigns that were interesting and good, and again the best example sprung to mind, Steve Austin in 1998, he was a face champion, held it for significant time with minor gaps but 98 is dominated by Austin as champion, why does this work? because he was constantly under threat, he had physical opposition in Undertaker/Kane, a McMahon backed Mick Foley, it is very possible to have an interesting face championship reign, WWE's general model just does not cater to it though, thus the perception it's better with a heel on top, build a face up, have him win at Mania and then reset the company to put the belt back on a heel.