Does Tweener booking work?

[Wald]

I remember months back, could even be over a year now, where backstage reports said that the WWE were going with a more tweener style of booking, guys who aren't quite heels and aren't quite faces. I know lots of people think the nWo or the Attitude Era ushered in that style of wrestler but it really didn't. The nWo were always booked as heels when they were meant to be heels, sure you had Nash trying to get himself over to sell more t-shirts but their booking remained villainous.

In the Attitude Era things were still as defined as ever. Austin may have cursed and flipped people off but he was still a face going against a dastardly heel in Mr. McMahon. The Rock may have been charismatic as a face and as a heel but his matches and booking changed depending on what he was. Triple H is the one who really embraced the tweener character but that was more in 2003 and mostly because he booked himself as a face during actual matches whilst portraying a heel in segments.

But does it work when it's a company wide policy?

Found myself asking this again whilst watching Brock Lesnar return to beat up Chris Jericho last night. Now, traditionally speaking, the audience were supposed to cheer Jericho as the face and boo Brock as the heel. But try sit down with a non-wrestling fan and explain what was happening to them. Tell them one wrestler put himself in a match with non-wrestler that is nearly 50 years old just so he could beat him up for his own entertainment. Then tell them the guy coming to make the save is the WWE Champion who is friends with the near 50 year old guy and he's coming down to stop it and beat up the wrestler who started it all.

It sounds like a classic case of a bully getting his comeuppance right? The bully being Jericho, who we're meant to be cheering for.

Obviously that's just one segment but the past while you can look at Bray Wyatt not having any fully thought out reason for being who he is, you can look at both CM Punk and AJ Lee playing a cocky, better than you character whether they are heel or face, you can look at Dolph Ziggler using the same in-ring moves whether he is face or heel or you can use any number of examples really. Look at all of that and ask yourself if it's getting characters over as much as they should be?

I think a lot of the WWE Universe is apathetic towards much of the product now and I think a lot of it has to do with this tweener booking they have being doing. I'm not saying a heel should be a twiddly moustache villain with an evil laugh but I am saying don't have your only monster heel come down to save a guy from a bully if you want to highlight his match against your number one good guy. It just seems counter-productive to me and I think it's having an affect on fans.

 

[DCLXVI]

I actually fell asleep before this match took place so I didn't see Lesnar come out. I watched the long opening promo set up with my dad who would have rather watched football, and it seemed stupid. You're right... Jericho setting up a match with Paul Heyman makes no fucking sense. Why wouldn't he just deck him right then, why did he need a match? Then Lesnar saves him but they are still the "bad guys"... Why was Jericho wrestling a fat, older man who he was calling "a walrus" in the first place?

 

[Mustang Sally]

I like the 'tweener booking; it enables characters to act in ways that aren't dictated by the traditional good-guy/bad-guy roles practiced in pro wrestling since the "sport" began. Complexity can be added to personae that previously could function only as they were "supposed to." If you were a good guy, you could do only good things....no exceptions.

Take two of the original 'tweeners: Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Rock.

They were good guys? Can you imagine what the fan of the 50's and 60's would have made of them? They are characters that couldn't have existed back then. The guy who throws fingers and pounds Coors Light in the middle of the ring also rescues a helpless Stephanie McMahon from danger? Impossible!

That the Rock is perceived as a face is something that could only happen in pro wrestling. We cheer him like mad as he disses his good guy opponent, making fun of the guy's positive values and giving the poor guy a Rock Bottom when the guy comes out to make peace with the Great One. This is a good guy?

But the fact that this is how things are today has added layers of complexity in a form of entertainment that badly needed it. The writers can work more freely, knowing they have options in depicting characters that previously had to follow patterns of behavior that were limited according to whether they were face or heel.

Look at Randy Orton. Now, he's apparently going to be a good guy.....but he'll never be completely good, will he? Nor would we want him to. With 'tweener booking, he can work on the side of law and order, but occasionally perform a dastardly deed on some unsuspecting schmuck....and we'll love it, because we know he's essentially a good guy......today, anyway.

I remember a skit WWE did in....well, probably 1986, when I was 7. It was one of the Superstars of Wrestling recap shows right before New Year's, and between matches, the camera would focus on a wrestler, who would give us his New Year's resolution. Good guy Brutus Beefcake appeared, telling us he wanted to promote peace and good will throughout the year. Davey Boy Smith went on next, saying he wanted to help poor people. Then, Greg Valentine comes into view, telling us his resolution is to kill Brutus Beefcake and Davey Boy Smith.

Yeah, the line dividing good and evil has been breached; it's possible for good people to have evil characteristics.....and vice-versa. To me, this increases interest in watching these performers, not lessens it.

 

[Zeven_Zion]

No, the whole concept is bullshit. It's born out of writers' inability to write cool good guys, so they are given bad guy qualities which have been cool since the early 90's. That's all it is. A good guy can be a good, clean cut, vanilla character and still be cool. See Stone Cold. His coolness comes from subtle things like his beer drinking, his skull logo, the black colors, his attitude, the way he carries himself and sometimes not so subtle things such as flipping the bird. It's right in front of you, and yet it isn't. They existED. But that's harder to write, that takes time and brains and wrestling writers do not have any of those. So they just make a good guy do obviously bad things that go against the character and all of a sudden the idea of tweeners being the future of wrestling pops up. Tweeners shouldn't exist, great writers should.

Not every good guy has to be a big block of cheese, smiling and kissing babies and not every bad guy has to be emotionless, violent and cowardly. Some bad guys are cowards, some are as brave as the heroes, some bad guys have reasons for being bad that you can even relate to and understand but the way they try to go about it is what challenges everyday moral issues, some bad guys are straight up better than the good guys. On the other side of the spectrum, some good guys are brave and others are not, they're cautious and careful and calculating, they don't all throw themselves out for the first challenger. Some of them are darker than the bad guys, some are even more evil than the bad guys but the way they accomplish whatever goal they have makes them good. Examples of such characters are Dexter Morgan for instance. Where are THOSE in wrestling? Down the shitter, because boring, linear writers write boring linear garbage.

Imagine a Dexter like character in wrestling. What's the worst thing a wrestler can do in the ring? Cheat? Or perhaps put someone out of commission for a while. Let's go with cheating since cheating heels are found more often. What if we have a character who goes after cheaters and his only goal is to cheat on a cheater. He doesn't care about belts, he doesn't care about money, he doesn't care about fame. He goes after bad guys and beats them in the way they have fucked over so many good guys before them. He gets a kick out of it, gives him a sense of justice. That is fucking COMPELLING. It's never been done in wrestling, it's a completely new premise for a character that once conveyed properly to the audiences might just click. It's interesting, it's a good guy taking out bad guys in ways that good guys never do. That's what made Dexter so damn good and interesting, there's absolutely no reason to think it cannot be incorporated in wrestling. Rip the whole Dexter character off for all we care. Have him have a unique entrance. Before a match with the next victim, show flashbacks of how that bad guy fucked over good guys. It's amazing. He shows him how he'll beat him before the match, and then HE DOES IT. Doesn't even have to be every match. Build up his victims like Dexter builds up his big serial killers every season. Have filler matches until the big confrontation and have every week build up toward the bad guys' reckoning. Why ... the hell ... not.

Well, wrestling did incorporate a cool movie character back in the day. A good guy with bad guy ways. Damn right ripped it off. There was the Crow, and then there was Sting. Sting, who went on to become arguably the biggest WCW legend and one of the prime reasons why WCW became what it became. So there's even evidence of this working, under the right writers. But hey what do I know, I'm just a smark.

 

[rmp0012002]

Its odd to define Tweener. Essentially you're either a good guy or a bad guy. You can flip but you're either one or the other at a given time. Now being a heel doesn't mean you can't be a fan favorite as Austin, The Road Warriors and Flair have shown.
If you're defining it by ring style no one is a Tweener, as wrestling isn't defined that way anymore. Old school, a face would try to win clean while a heel would do whatever but today they will wrestle the same style as to the fans a win is a win.

 

[The Mattitude Era]

I agree with the OP. Most guys commonly referred to as so-called "tweeners" were always either heel for face. Stone Cold, as the prime example, was always a face when he was at the top. I really don't buy the concept of a tweener. Maybe Cesaro for about 2 days this past year (Wrestlemania/day after wrestlemania), and Bray Wyatt showed occasional signs of tweenerisms, but his booking was still always as a heel.

 

[MartialHorror]

I agree. I like the wrestlers to develop characters who can either become heroic or go down darker paths naturally, like Ambrose or Roman Reigns. How can Daniel Bryan go from the pompous douche into a crowd catering nice guy? Too forced.

lol, I finally learned what tweener means! I was thinking...did it have something to do with tweeting pictures of ones penis? Because I don't see how that will help with booking...Although that also might explain quite a lot too based on the product.