Why shades of gray are a good thing/ no heels and faces a good thing

[Wrestlingfan100]

Now I understand the basics of pro wrestling are built upon heel and face but in today's "reality era" it's not that simple. Goood people dislike good people, nice people can have mean friends. Everyone was up in arms months ago when WWE tried this with Miz and Kofi who were both face at the time. I liked it because I was aware that for four or five years they've been rivals. I know continuity is mixed in WWE but even the best characters aren't good or bad: Austin, Punk, Ambrose, Randy Orton etc.

This is proven also by the fact that sometimes nice people don't get along.
Ricardo who got released a while back has a shoot video out, I watched the preview, he stated that Triple H only cares for his new boys( The Wyatts, Shield guys) and also stated that when they beat him up in a segment they were to stiff and he yelled and cursed at them, this is a seemingly nice, funny guy.

The reason why Cena and Ambrose works is because it's realistic. I'm a goody-2-shoes nice guy I've been bullied by and have close friends like Ambrose. Not everyone needs to be an anti hero or anything but it wouldn't hurt if say Kofi Kingston and Sheamus but heads.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

What matters most is that fans have a pony to back or can find some other interest in a match. It is easiest to do this with the heel/face dynamic. It can still work with a face/face dynamic. It is very difficult to do this with a heel/heel dynamic. It is getting easier to do this due to the large smark population who will root for The Shield over The Wyatt's but it is still difficult like with Cesaro and Swagger. I blame the shades of gray for that feud failing. They didn't clearly define one guy as the face in that feud and it suffered. They added RVD adding some clarity but even his addition didn't make things clear. I thought Miz and Kofi flopped as well for a similar reason.

So many wrestling fans are either kids that need clear boundaries older folks that really don't pay much attention/can't keep up with 16,732 hours of wrestling a week to the point that they can get in to shades of gray storytelling.

 

[Mudlup50]

I fully agree with you. I hate that it has to be one or the other sometimes. As I suggested previously. If they turn Orton face, and partner him with Cena to take on the Authority. Then you can have Ambrose/Reigns/Bryan(depending on who comes back first) as the pure face team. I like not knowing what to expect. Say next week on Raw Ambrose comes out with a chair: Cena's laid out as is Kane. I want to be able to think...who's he going to hit?

The main event right now is very very heavy on your shades of gray if you think about it.
Is Lesnar really a heel? He's basically just a mercenary..that's his gimmick, it's who he's fought and Heyman who make him heel.
Ambrose hates the Authority but he also has beef with John Cena.
Orton is the Authority but doesn't like Rollins

And then you can reverse them. It adds a sense of mystery but it needs to be more in my opinion.

You can tell they don't like doing face v face matches as Usos v Dusts almost immediately became face v heel. It was smarter to leave the Dusts face I think as you had more heel teams than face.

Even people on this forum don't like the idea of face v face or heel v heel. Tweeners remedy that big time, in the Orton/Lesnar match who would fans cheer for? Lesnar because he's stopping Orton from taking over the main event again? Or Orton because they don't want Lesnar as champ? Tween v Tween works in my opinion

 

[Jack-Hammer]

It works fine that way with a few wrestlers on the roster, but it definitely loses its impact when everybody on the roster is, for all intents and purposes, a tweener or some other variation of an anti-hero. At one point during the Attitude Era, pretty much every relevant guy on the roster fit into those categories and I thought it heavily watered down the concept. What made Dirty Harry so cool? Aside from the memorable catchphrases, it was that he was technically a good guy, but he'd take it to the bad guys every bit as bad as they'd take it to anyone else, sometimes even more so. If every other cop on the force was more or less the same, then the character wouldn't have worked as he would've just been another face in the crowd.

When it's all said & done, the age old formula for any hero, whether it's a traditional walking the straight & narrow good guy or one that straddles the line between hero and villain, fans need someone to ultimately cheer for and someone to cheer against. With so many smarks in pro wrestling, that can be difficult to do because so many simply don't want to suspend disbelief, plus a whole bunch of them think that every face or heel needs to be this walking juggernaut that embodies the term badass who doesn't have to cheat to win or they'll complain.

 

[sMark]

There are few characters who can work in shades of grey - CM Punk, Chris Jericho, Kurt Angle, Bray Wyatt, Dean Ambrose - they are talented enough to do/say anything and get cheered for it, because each of them combine at least 2 out of 3 things that needed for it: shades of grey is either fit their character, or they talk very good, or they loved for their wrestling ability.
But most characters only works well being full heel or full face, turning everybody into shades of grey is wrong thing to do.

 

[L@RISANO]

I think the majority of the guys at the top of the card need to have shades of gray somewhat, as at the end of the day, their main motivation has to be winning the Main title and beating whoever is in front of them, Face or Heel.

However, all the characters ultimately has a leaning to one side, either Face or Heel, which ultimately shows their allegiance in the end(Case in point, Ambrose, who is a tweener with Face leanings).

Obviously, some guys' characters dictate how much of a Face or Heel they would be(like DB whose underdog persona leaves him as much more of a Face, whilst Rusev is an all out heel with no redeeming features).
But, as I mentioned above, ultimately, the Main guys all need to have a shade of gray in some for or fashion, especially since there is only One title to fight for.

 

[Mustang Sally]

The shades of gray add an air of unpredictability to sports entertainment that differentiate pro wrestling from it's historic roots. Long ago, good guys were so virtuous it must have been sickening, while bad guys were so bad you figured they were one step from being arrested. Guys who changed from face to heel (or vice-versa) completely changed personality in their ring behavior, which had to have been ridiculous to watch.

It's too bad so many fans are "bored" with what's going on today, because the landscape has changed so drastically. I mentioned being arrested? We saw "good guy" Stone Cold Steve Austin being led off in handcuffs more than once, right?

But, you counter, wasn't Stone Cold a good guy?

No? Then what was he? He wrestled bad guys almost exclusively, right? He fought on the side of justice, didn't he? He saved damsels in distress, yes? He chugged beer with Lilian Garcia, right?

The shades of gray make sports entertainment more like reality because no one is all good or all bad......and it's those elements of seeming contradiction in a performer's character that spice up the proceedings, keeping us guessing as to what they'll do next. Even if we know the apparent outcome, it might be achieved in ways that confound our expectations.....and get all of us talking about it the next day on wrestling forums.

Of course, jobbers are never 'tweeners; they are there to oppose the guy who's featured in the match, so jobbers don't have the privilege of operating on the fringes. The stars, as well as the up-and-comers, rate the privilege of being 'tweeners; of engaging in behavior with both good and bad elements, sometimes displaying both in the same match.

John Cena isn't all good.....and Seth Rollins isn't all bad.......and that's how it should be.