Main problem with the current crop of WWE performers

[Psykohurricane55]

I've been realizing something lately, most new wrestlers especially those coming out of NXT seem to be one dimensional. I'm going to take for exemple charlotte and sasha banks since they are the hottest thing happening right now. Both girls are great heels they know what to do to get a reaction from the crowd but then if you turn them babyfaces, they feel just like another wrestler on the roster. All the charisma they have as heels seems to vanish as soon as they turn.

This is happening to alot of rookies that came through the nxt system. Neville is another one that felt like nothing as a babyface, then they turn him heel and finally I get interesting and feel like a star.

I don't get why this is happening so much with those that don't have alot of wresling experience. I think that when they train at the performance center and are getting a spot on the nxt roster, they should see which side the talent is more comfortable and put them in the opposite role to help them be confortable in both role like what they use to do back in the territories days. That way, you would get a more well rounded performers instead of a one dimensional one like they have right now or at less, have those that have long indy careers and are comfortable in both roles to help those rookies become more confortable in either roles andd be ready for all situations.

Another thing I think might help is if somebody is not really over as a single wrestler, why not just put him in a tag team. Some of the best exemple of that are the new day, the prime time players and cesaro and sheamus. Two teams that had guys that weren't over as single wrestlers and became super over as a team. The contrary happens for the prime time players, they we're super over as a team and now nobody cares about titus and darren as single star.

 

[LBGetBack]

I've been realizing something lately, most new wrestlers especially those coming out of NXT seem to be one dimensional. I'm going to take for exemple charlotte and sasha banks since they are the hottest thing happening right now. Both girls are great heels they know what to do to get a reaction from the crowd but then if you turn them babyfaces, they feel just like another wrestler on the roster. All the charisma they have as heels seems to vanish as soon as they turn.

This is happening to alot of rookies that came through the nxt system. Neville is another one that felt like nothing as a babyface, then they turn him heel and finally I get interesting and feel like a star.

I don't get why this is happening so much with those that don't have alot of wresling experience. I think that when they train at the performance center and are getting a spot on the nxt roster, they should see which side the talent is more comfortable and put them in the opposite role to help them be confortable in both role like what they use to do back in the territories days. That way, you would get a more well rounded performers instead of a one dimensional one like they have right now or at less, have those that have long indy careers and are comfortable in both roles to help those rookies become more confortable in either roles andd be ready for all situations.

Another thing I think might help is if somebody is not really over as a single wrestler, why not just put him in a tag team. Some of the best exemple of that are the new day, the prime time players and cesaro and sheamus. Two teams that had guys that weren't over as single wrestlers and became super over as a team. The contrary happens for the prime time players, they we're super over as a team and now nobody cares about titus and darren as single star.

Is it the wrestlers or is it simply the way they are booked? Because Sasha Banks has been super over at times in her face run. She's still reasonably over, but I think crowds cooled on her a bit because her character is more cookie cutter babyface now than it was when she first turned.

Dean Ambrose....pretty much the same thing.

They always make their faces so non threatening, as if that will make them more popular or something when it almost always does the opposite. They still book their faces like it's the 1980's-early 90s.

 

[Navi]

Going to go with the way they are booked to be honest. Charlotte and Sasha Banks have received great booking this year. Both girls have been the focus of the RAW women's division, even with Bayley being called up. Lot's of firsts from both of them, Hell in a Cell, Ironman Matches etc., and I wouldn't say either one is one dimensional.

As for the rookies coming out of NXT, you have to remember that NXT is in a small arena with a fraction of the amount of fans you get in the bigger arena's. And one thing we forget at times is these wrestler's aren't really actors, even though that is sort of part of their jobs. It's a lot for some of them to get used too, and might take longer for some of them.

Neville for example. Where was he after his injury, or even before that? The guy was booked for shit. None of his feuds made any sense, and he was jobbed out more than once. The move to the cruiserweight division is a Godsend for him. Now he can display his talents, which we've seen more of in the last two weeks, than months on the RAW roster.

Sheamus and Cesaro I believe were put into a tag team for two reasons. One was neither of them had nothing to do, so put them together. Secondly if they are in the tag team division then fans can't complain that they aren't getting a shot at the title. So that let's Owens, Rollins, Reigns and Jericho breathe a little easier. Because let's face it they are considered main event talent, Sheamus especially. But you can't just go around putting people into tag teams all the time. It worked for these two, but won't work for everyone.

The last two you mentioned are Titus O'Neal and Darren Young. Enough said about either of them. Titus has gone through a face turn, heel turn, face turn and another heel turn with almost no rhyme or reason for any of them. Now he is with the Shining Stars shilling property and watches. He's pretty much done as far as I'm concerned. Darren Young, well they are trying to make him great again, not going to happen, he wasn't great before and yea poor Bob Backlund has been given an impossible task here. Neither Titus or Young have been featured much and I expect with the next round of good bye's they might be on the list. Don't see them at house shows either, that's the kiss of death right there.

Truthfully though they are still trying to sort out the brand split. This is the first year of Mania with one in place, and with the Rumble coming it will be interesting to see how the winner is handled and what title he goes for.

As for the rest of the roster, they are doing well with what they are given. SD seems for some reason to let their wrestler's wrestle. Storylines aren't that complicated and easy to follow. The wrestler's even look calmer compared to the bunch on RAW.

Sorry went on a bit of a rant there and might have gone off topic a bit.

 

[The Samoan Heritage]

I believe its the booking AND the talent.

Sheamus was a great heel in 2009-10 and had a pretty good face run as well. Then wwe started making him tell old folk tales as a face, instead of being just this "kick arse" guy, and Sheamus star/popularity began to fall.
We've seen wwe book their faces like this a lot through the years, most recently being Reigns and "sufferin succotash" and Seth Rollins with "Sparkle crotch." Outside of the underdog, wwe has forgotten how to book faces.

Not to bash the "creatives" too much, I also think a lot of these guys just don't have much diversity.
"Fans" hated on Big Show and disrespected him with "please retire" chants in his previous run, but I can't think of a single guy currently on the roster that could turn between face and heel with a flick of a switch and have it be believable like the Big Show could/can. Put anyone from the current talent in place of HHH/Randy in their feud in 2009, how many could really pull off attacking someone in their home or destroying an entire family? How many could pull off the crazy entertaining backstage segments we saw with guys like Rock, Angle, Dx, Edge, and Eddie. Even Benoit, a guy who is known for not having the most personality, had more personality than a lot of the current talent.
The closest we've gotten to segments that felt genuine or at the very least were well acted were the backstage talks Reigns and Ambrose would have(post-shield).

 

[Psykohurricane55]

Nothing against creative because they might be a little bit in fault, but I look at some of the roster right now and you look at guys like kevin owens, seth rollins, aj styles, becky lynch and paige as exemples. Those guys have wat it take to switch from heel to babyface in a flick of a finger and make it look flawless. They are confortable with what ever role creative will give them and in my opinion that's a plus for a performer. That's not the case for a lot of the new talent. I look at somebody like sasha banks. Yes she was over as a babyface because of her wrestling skill, but as a performer she just plain akward as a babyface and you she how unconfortable playing a babyface. Charlotte was the same way when she started on the main roster as a babyface, if it wasn't for her father, she probably not be the heel she is today because the only reason she got over as a babyface and thn a heel at the beginning was because of ric.

So many guys and girls are not confortable in either being heel or babyface, you can blame creative if you want to but in the end, it's all on the performers to make those script look belivable and if you look uncorfortable with the role your playing, at some point, fans will feel it and stop caring about the character.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

The other pespective here is that these are the first real crop to have done "WWE Promo Class" who have made it... Guys like Barrett got by because they could ad-lib and even turn a flub into an amazing positive, he won that first NXT with one promo... Fast forward to the Dusty taught guys and gals and that ability wasn't really fostered in them, they were taught to go by a script, to memorise it and to not deviate.

That hurts talents abilities to change from heel to face... it's why people were screaming for a Barrett face turn and why the E never let him have one... if they had, then it would have proven that their promo class and way of teaching talents didn't work. Occasionally a Bray Wyatt slips through, but in the main there is no-one who has come through NXT who is "a great talker" in the traditional, off the cuff sense. The SHIELD had on paper the most freedom but then Roman got "Suffering Suckatash"... Ambrose is being told to do Pillman-lite when the reality is he should be going just as f***ing off reservation as Brian did if they want him over and Rollins is being pidgenholed as the new Trips.

The E are ironically letting some older talents loose again on the mic, guys like Miz, Jericho are all doing great cos they have time served and guys like AJ are being given the benefit of the doubt.

The only one truly benefitting from the new crop though is Owens, who will have learnt loads from this year working with Jericho... but NXT clearly "Can't Teach Dat..." whatever Enzo says, he's just a modern day RoadDog.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

In some ways, it's the way they're booked and in some ways it's because the wrestlers themselves are pretty low on personality and, in some instances, it's a bit of both.

It's easier to be a villain than a hero, it's a simple truth that holds time and time again. When you're playing a "bad guy", you get to let go of some of the various constraints and restrictions placed upon you via morality and society. Some wrestlers and a lot of actors have described it as a liberating feeling because at any given time or under any given circumstances, you just wanna tell the world and everyone in it, in no uncertain terms, to go fuck themselves with a stick wrapped in barbed wire.

If a wrestler is too much of a "good guy", he usually gets booed or doesn't get much of a response at all among today's fans. Usually, the more heelish a wrestler acts, the more fans applaud and that's the case not only in WWE but in just about every significant wrestling company in the United States. Even still, however, a reason why some of the babyfaces are a more one dimensional is sort of the same reason why we don't see a lot of heels acting hugely heelish. Over the course of last week, I went to various comment sections for various sites and do you know what people were ranting about? Karl Anderson twisting the head off a teddy bear last Monday on Raw. It was a little Bayley Bear, which are genuinely adorable, dressed in Dusty Rhodes' polka dot gear that Bayley gave to Goldust. You had some fans, though a ton of writers as well, who thought the segment was totally disrespectful towards Dusty Rhodes; Billy Graham, as if he needed any excuse to piss and moan, said it made him sick. WWE, especially Triple H and NXT staffers, frequently go out of the way to pay homage to Dusty Rhodes and the way some people were acting, you'd have though Anderson twisted off the head of a live puppy. Was it something that was edgy? No. Was it something that plays out as something a ******** would do? Sure. And that's how heels, bad guys, villains, etc. traditionally behave.

 

[johnbragg]

Over the course of last week, I went to various comment sections for various sites and do you know what people were ranting about? Karl Anderson twisting the head off a teddy bear last Monday on Raw. It was a little Bayley Bear, which are genuinely adorable, dressed in Dusty Rhodes' polka dot gear that Bayley gave to Goldust. You had some fans, though a ton of writers as well, who thought the segment was totally disrespectful towards Dusty Rhodes...

Great example of how villain is easier than hero. It's not hard to fantasy-book a pretty great promo for Anderson, playing off of and feeding the fans reaction. Different directions--the fans are soft-shelled idiots, purple-polka dot Dusty was the worst Dusty, Dusty Rhodes was no teddy bear, daddy; or go all-out Dusty sucks and always sucked, pulling out the fat jokes and anti-Southern stereotyping.

On the other hand, it's not obvious at all what you put on the index card for Bayley's promo, or Goldust's.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

This has nothing to do with this current crop of wrestlers. If anything, some of this current crop of wrestlers is better than the previous crop (Reigns being the most glaring exception). Bland faces are a WWE tradition, with the exception being the Attitude Era. Looking back at the faces of my youth who I loved, they were terribly bland and repetitive. Other than Hogan and Andre, the booking that Tito, JYD, and Steamboat got only made them look a bit better because I saw them maybe one fifth of the time compared to the amount of time today's mass content superstars can be seen.

Are Sasha's promos kind of not good? Sure. But I'll take that and New Day's humor, Enzo and Cass' energy, Ambrose's unpredictability, Ziggler's newly found humility, and Bayley's wholesomeness over whatever the Cenafriends did in the Hall of Justice for those bland years or even the crap I loved as a kid because I was a kid.

 

[Wald]

The biggest problem with being a babyface these days is that the heels don't try and get you over, they try to get themselves over. The nWo essentially destroyed the idea of what a heel should be for a generation of wrestlers. Gone were the days of the bad guy working a style that is meant to showcase the babyface and in came the idea that you're there to just get yourself over.

I know everyone loves Kevin Owens and I know I'll sound like Cornette with this but sweet god if I see him doing a standing moonsault whilst working as a heel I'm going to punch the wall. How is a babyface going to get over against a heel who is allowed be smarter and better than him in the ring?

 

[johnbragg]

The biggest problem with being a babyface these days is that the heels don't try and get you over, they try to get themselves over. The nWo essentially destroyed the idea of what a heel should be for a generation of wrestlers. Gone were the days of the bad guy working a style that is meant to showcase the babyface and in came the idea that you're there to just get yourself over.

I know everyone loves Kevin Owens and I know I'll sound like Cornette with this but sweet god if I see him doing a standing moonsault whilst working as a heel I'm going to punch the wall. How is a babyface going to get over against a heel who is allowed be smarter and better than him in the ring?

This sounds like a good point, but I'm not sure. It's plausible--face or heel, you can't help but admire the courage and athleticism of high-flying, break-taking, neck-breaking moves. But it's not the heels who have trouble getting over, it's the faces.

Your first paragraph maybe has the key. NWO cool heels get themselves over as pseudo-faces, getting the audience to like them without taking the responsibilities of the traditional babyface. I read a Paul Heymann story this week about his early days in Memphis, how he nearly caused a riot because the audience hated him so much. But even that's getting himself over as a heel--not getting the FACE over.

Any real old timers care to comment on that? Was that the old school heel's job, not just to get the audience to hate HIM, but to love the good guy?

 

[BestSportsEntertainer]

Booking is the problem.

Owens - Cowardly heel who can't win anything on his own.
Wyatt - Lost most of his credibility by jobbing out so many times.
Rollins - His face run has bombed.
Reigns - Has been rejected by the fans.

This has been said before, but I'll say it again - 2016 had some of the best wrestling ever but also some of the worst writing ever.

 

[Wald]

This sounds like a good point, but I'm not sure. It's plausible--face or heel, you can't help but admire the courage and athleticism of high-flying, break-taking, neck-breaking moves. But it's not the heels who have trouble getting over, it's the faces.

Your first paragraph maybe has the key. NWO cool heels get themselves over as pseudo-faces, getting the audience to like them without taking the responsibilities of the traditional babyface. I read a Paul Heymann story this week about his early days in Memphis, how he nearly caused a riot because the audience hated him so much. But even that's getting himself over as a heel--not getting the FACE over.

Any real old timers care to comment on that? Was that the old school heel's job, not just to get the audience to hate HIM, but to love the good guy?

I've watched wrestling since the 80s and I think you're off on your Heyman comment. The heels job is to get nuclear heat so they can then transfer it to the babyface. It is far easier to get heat as a heel than get cheers as a babyface so that is their primary function. Look at Bobby Heenan, absolutely nuclear heat as a manager wherever he went and could get a babyface over just be letting the babyface get a punch in on him. He never tried to outperform the face though and would often come a cropper when trying to outsmart them.

Admittedly its a lot tougher to do nowadays because its hard to keep your act fresh with so much TV to fill and people get tired of you outsmarting or being outsmarted by other wrestlers pretty quickly. But compare Heenan to Stephanie McMahon, for example, who is far too concerned with her own image and getting herself over. She hasn't allowed anyone get back at her for years, with the net result being that she has used wrestlers from Daniel Bryan to Brie Bella to Randy Orton and loads more to purely inflate her own sense of self-worth.

It's not really surprising that she has that bad habit though, really it was the Kliq, including her husband, that decided to get themselves over as heels at the expense of babyfaces and that's what changed the business.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

This sounds like a good point, but I'm not sure. It's plausible--face or heel, you can't help but admire the courage and athleticism of high-flying, break-taking, neck-breaking moves. But it's not the heels who have trouble getting over, it's the faces.

Your first paragraph maybe has the key. NWO cool heels get themselves over as pseudo-faces, getting the audience to like them without taking the responsibilities of the traditional babyface. I read a Paul Heymann story this week about his early days in Memphis, how he nearly caused a riot because the audience hated him so much. But even that's getting himself over as a heel--not getting the FACE over.

Any real old timers care to comment on that? Was that the old school heel's job, not just to get the audience to hate HIM, but to love the good guy?

that's exactly the point of a good heel and it became a lost art in today's environnement we're the wrestlers are more concern with making good money and being themselves outside the ring that actually making themselves hated.

I look at a guy like Chris jericho who i consider the last true heel in wrestling. You just look at the guy from what he'S doing in the ring to the fact that he's pretty much told them to not sell merchandise for his character and just the way he acts outside the ring, the guy know that he's a heel and he need to keep the appearance that his character is a heel. even when he gets cheered, he always try to get fans to hate him and that what a good heel has to do. Who he make more money if he had alot of merchandise for sell, probably, but it doesn't matter because he knows that if he'S able to get the babyface over then he's going to make more money.

The difference know betwenn when i started watching wrestling in the 80'S and today's wrestling is that back in the 80's, tv wrestling was mostly use to book the live event programs because you didn'T have alot of tv and ppv back then. Then the monday night wars happened and that's when everything change and now you we're a wrestling company booking for tv instead of live events and you had to hot shot everything and be bigger and bolder every week and the line between good and evil dissapeared and now you're trying to bring it back but nobody is buying it.

 

[Radical]

Heels have for a long time been more interesting than babyfaces. That goes for ALL of entertainment, not just pro wrestling.

Think of iconic characters? Think of characters that were engaging, enraging, unpredictable, devious, mysterious and interesting.

You might think of Darth Vader or Darth Sidious, Lord Voldemort, The Joker, Green Goblin, a Bond villain, or someone like that. The villains play outside 'the rules' and are usually more mysterious than the heroes so it engages you in the story and if the heels are interesting enough, you want to see "how will the hero survive or defeat this complex villain?!"

Not to say, that heros or babyfaces can't be interesting or have engaging character traits but they are usually less mysterious, more bound by social and ethical conventions so naturally are less complex.


So, in entertainment if the villain is interesting and engaging, as long as the babyface has a certain charm and charisma then you'll be able to invest in the story and you probably will enjoy seeing the hero win but you appreciate how engaging the villain was to get you interested in the story.


I think in today's WWE, more than any era before, the fans have to LIKE the babyfaces and appreciate the heels for good heel work so they can look forward to a match.

Because, I think if the fans like a babyface but don't appreciate the rival heel then they will not care about the outcome.

But a dangerous thing happens when WWE doesn't really listen to the fans because if the fans appreciate a heel for good heel work and they are facing a babyface the fans do not like then the fans will cheer for the heel and boo the babyface and the RISK is that they will TURN on the WWE if the babyface they don't like defeats the heel they actually appreciate AND LIKE.


I don't think that overall the talent is one-dimensional. I think uninspired writing hand-cuffs a lot of talent and they are not ALLOWED to be more interesting and resort to having to be pretty lame, even for WWE standards.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

I was listening to last week edition of the MLW radio podcast and something conrad thompson said made me realise something about WWE and the current roster. I Wanted to start a new thread but since i already had started one with a similar subject i will just posted this here.

What made me thing was when he said that he was watching Raw with his dad that knew all the key players but hasn'T been watching for years and Kevin Owens appeared on the screen and his dad's reaction was that guys ain'T so stuff and why does he have a world title, the guy doesn'T look like a world champion. Then he saw Braun Strowman and thought instantly that he was a main event guy because of how tough strowman looked.

So i got me thinking, is WWE trying to please to many audience at the same time? Because the way i see it, WWE has 3 completly different audiences.

They Have:

1) the Hardcore wrestling audience or IWC: these are those fans that watch everything wrestling releated and talk or complains about wrestling all the time

2) you got you're WWE faithful: that's those that only watch WWE and nothing else, they might go out and talk about it or write they're opinion on board but outside of the WWE product, they have no knowledge of the outside promotions and their star

3) The casual fans or families: I put those 2 in the same category because they are pretty much the same type of fans, their fans that don'T know who anybody is and will cheered and boo based on what they see in the ring and how well the overall presentation of the character is.

So WWE is trying to make everybody happy which in turn make for the roster you got right now, Because those guys that the hardcore'S might see has a main event talent might not be the same as what the casual and families see as a main event talent. In other word here'S a exemple of what i'm talking about

You put Kevin owens, Finn Balor, samoa Joe, Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman in a lineup and put a casual fan and a hardcore wrestling fans. The hardcore wrestling will automatically go toward Owens,Finn and joe, while the casual fan will probably go more toward reigns and strowman as main event talent.

And that'S we'Re the problem lie in my opinion, they need, both the performers and the writers, to found a way for the presentations of their character to please all 3 group and to make them feel like they belong in the position they are in.

Personally while i am a big fan of Kevin owens and have been i fans of his since he started is career in the verdun auditorium for jacques rougeau'S promotion. The guy as the presentation of a mid card comedy act since winning the universal title and that'S a problem because he's already has some obstacle going against him because of how he looks, you don'T need to make him look like he doesn'T belong in the main event picture which is pretty much what they did with his booking and that'S the problem with alot of the talent today which i think is because they rather do what they are told and not ruffle any feathers then actually bring any idea to the table that could help their character grow and that'S kinda the problem right now that need to be fix if any of them want to become a megastar like cena and Aj styles.

 

[LBGetBack]

I believe its the booking AND the talent.

Sheamus was a great heel in 2009-10 and had a pretty good face run as well. Then wwe started making him tell old folk tales as a face, instead of being just this "kick arse" guy, and Sheamus star/popularity began to fall.
We've seen wwe book their faces like this a lot through the years, most recently being Reigns and "sufferin succotash" and Seth Rollins with "Sparkle crotch." Outside of the underdog, wwe has forgotten how to book faces.

Not to bash the "creatives" too much, I also think a lot of these guys just don't have much diversity.
"Fans" hated on Big Show and disrespected him with "please retire" chants in his previous run, but I can't think of a single guy currently on the roster that could turn between face and heel with a flick of a switch and have it be believable like the Big Show could/can. Put anyone from the current talent in place of HHH/Randy in their feud in 2009, how many could really pull off attacking someone in their home or destroying an entire family? How many could pull off the crazy entertaining backstage segments we saw with guys like Rock, Angle, Dx, Edge, and Eddie. Even Benoit, a guy who is known for not having the most personality, had more personality than a lot of the current talent.
The closest we've gotten to segments that felt genuine or at the very least were well acted were the backstage talks Reigns and Ambrose would have(post-shield).

As far as booking faces, it's like they don't pay attention to how much of an edge their most popular faces had to them. Hogan, Savage, Austin, Rock.....all aggressive and edgy for their times. Take Hogan in '86, the heart of his biggest baby face run where he was the biggest star out there. Anyone remember him busting King Kong Bundy open and then continuing to fire punches into his cut to make him bleed more, raking his back, poking him in the eyes...and then after the match running after Heenan, dragging him into the cage and whupping up on him? And the crowd LOVED it!

Someone like Bret Hart...he wasn't no punk. He was no nonsense, going out to whip some ass. It's like they only paid attention to the catchphrase, jokey aspect of Rock's character and ignored that he would absolutely murder people on the mic with things that were funny because they were TRUE. Everybody is not the Rock. They don't have the chops to pull that off and when they try they just become another "corny joke telling guy". Doesn't cut it.