Wrestling Logic 101

[playmaker21]

The title of my thread, Wrestling Logic 101, is an ode to the basic, simple philosophies that the wrestling business was built on. Simple things, also known as wrestling philosophy, that has been lost in todays wrestling world.

The biggest one that irks me right now is the championship picture in the WWE. Currently every Champion in the WWE is a babyface. And their main "non-champion", John Cena, is a babyface. This totally goes against wrestling logic 101. The basic philosophy of the business is that the Heel makes for the better champion and the babyface makes for the better chaser of the champion. The heel champion brags that he is the best, he lies and cheats to win the title and then does the same to keep it. Where as the babyface is chasing the cheating heel, trying to win the championship clean without cheating. But at the end of the day, the heel cheats to keep the belt, even though the babyface beats the crap out of him throughout the match. But eventually you get the big payoff, where the babyface evens the playing field by getting the champ in a Steel Cage for example where the babyface can get by with using the structure as a weapon without losing credibility as a clean babyface.

But when the babyface is the champion, or in the WWE's case every champ is a face, it just doesn't work. Heels do not make for good chasers. And as a face champion, you have to put the babyface over clean as that is how he (or she) built their reputation chasing the title. So now you are having all your heel talent losing cleanly to all these babyface champions. So all the heels are losing their credibility where people don't care about them.

Take for example Dolph Ziggler. Yes I know he is appreciated by the smart fan base. But the casual fan doesn't care about him. Why? Because since the Royal Rumble in January when he lost a WWE Championship match to CM Punk, Ziggler has lost nearly every match on tv and/or ppv''s for the past 6 months. You can say the same thing about Cody Rhodes and The Miz. Big Show doesn't get over in his current role because he lost so many matches he became irrevalant.

You can look at tv ratings and see that when the babyface is the chaser, and the heel the champ, the ratings are higher. Ric Flair made his career out of this. He would travel from territory to territory as the NWA Champion. He would build a feud with their top babyface for about a month or two, leading into the big payoff at the end of the territory run by Flair. Ric Flair defending the title vs the territories top babyface. The Babyface would dominate most of the match, but Ric would use some underhanded measure to win, but in doing so he put the baby over to be a bigger star in the business. Or in a lot of cases, these matches would go to an hour time limit draw where no one won or lost, but Flair got over by retaining the belt by being "lucky" and the babyface would get over for going an hour with the champ.

So I hope starting tonight on Raw the WWE starts having some of these babyface champions drop their straps to their heel counterparts. It makes the business better when this occurs. But then again, in todays wrestling, logic seems to take a back seat.

 

[Ithil]

I hate all face wins at PPVs. It feels like something some kid in the audience wrote, where all the goodies won and the baddies got beaten up. When I was a kid, yeah, I wanted the good guys to win all the time, but when they didn't, it provoked a strong reaction too (even if I thought it was a negative reaction as a kid), where I was eager for the good guy to come back to chase the title again. Pandering to kids in this way is a bad idea, having all face champions who always win is an even worse idea.

It's not entertaining, it's boring.

 

[Deoxyribonucleic A.C.I.D.]

Right now the WWE is trying to build their next top guy and give him as much needed credibility. Hogan held the title for 4 years. Macho Man and Warrior for one year each. Hart did the same at some point. HBK was the champion for the most part of 1996. Austin never had that big run as a champion, but in his first year in the main-event scene, in 1998 he was always main-eventing. You would loose the title, which would make him a chaser but he would take it back 3 weeks later. That made good television as both faces and heels looked strong. However in the small period of 2 years (1998-1999) the title would change hands over 20 times. I don't have a problem with that, but most people do as they believe that the top man should be world champion and nobody else. Cena and Batista did the same as the others before Austin.

IMO because the WWE already has one well-established face in the ME scene, the next top guy should be booked like Austin was booked. Have the title change hands every month, on RAW, on PPVs even on SD!. You build both faces and heels and at the same time you keep your "non-champion" as the OP said away of the gold. In the end, at the right time you pull the trigger and put the strap on a heel and have him roll through the locker room with it. In the end, at a big PPV (Wrestlemania, SSeries, SummerSlam) the face would take back the strap something that will boost him to superstandom.
So yeah, I kinda agree with you OP.

Faces don't need long runs because in the fans' eyes the always look stronger than the heels. And by God, stop that crap with the lost of prestige of the title with so much changes. That's a virus that was created during the 80's and needs to go. The title will get more meaningful if the chasing become more entertaining.
It also makes the faces seem less "super" and more "hero". Isn't that what we want?

P.S.: The mentioning of the Attitude Era was just to give an example. That post does not say that AE should come back and all that crap. I just gave my opinion on how I believe I will be best entertained.

 

[2Sweet_4Life]

I agree there isn't even a top heel in WWE! Why? Because they can't get over if they are repeatedly buried by Cena or Punk. Who is the top heel? Big Show? Please stop laughing.

 

[The_Sharpshooter]

You're right, but I'll take it a step forward: There's no logic in building heels at all. Why should I hate Miz or Cody Rhodes? Because they're self confident? Because they're focused on themselves? They're single stars! Thats how their mindstate should be. Only difference to me between those two & Cena/Punk in character is that Miz/Cody talks about themselves, while Cena/Punk comes on the show later to chastise them. But when the heels speak in their own, morhped way, its the truth, so I root for them.

Another thing I've notice is that most heels have a sidekick or a clique. So only bad guys have friends that have their back? If Cena is Hogan 2.0, then why doesn't he associate with different superstars monthly like Hulk did with Beefcake & Big Bossman? Seems like they have a problem using faces to get over other faces: another example of lack of logic.

And you can't have the heels beat the faces because there are no dastardly heels nowadays except Del Rio. When Miz had Riley, he would do anything to make sure he didn't get pinned. Without Riley, he's another body for Broadus Clay to land on. There are no heels on the level of Cena, Punk, Orton, or Sheamus kayfabe, so what heels are you expecting to win those big matches? Let's continue looking at your example, Ziggler. You would think with him having Vickie & Swagger on his side, that there would be a lot of outside interference in his matches & could make for an interesting faction. But instead, they make them tag team fodder for makeshift champions & fill in the blank contenders to lose in PPVs. Wrestling logic tells me that putting two single stars with a manager allows them to focus on their singles career, while teaming up when necessary, not lose to who cares teams for bronze belts. Wrestling logic tells me that you put the lesser of two talents in the midcard title situation & the better of the two in the world title situation. Due to Del Rio's injury, they had to use some logic to put the best in ring talent not in a storyline to fill in. I hope they use the reaction Ziggler's been getting recently to keep him in the title picture. Seems logical to me.

 

[pshanbhag92]

WWE doesn't really have a top heel because every good heel gets cheered. As soon as the wrestler becomes good (entertaining), despite of being face or heel, he gets cheered. That's what happened with Orton. That's what is happening with Bryan and Kane, who I cant even tell are heels or not? And the same will happen with Rhodes and Ziggler.

That's why Laurignaitis is such a good heel.. Cause he is boring and the fans dont like that and thus boo him.

 

[Radical]

Interesting thread...

My first thought is that I agree, to a certain degree, that wrestling logic dictates that it is better to have more Heel champions than Face champions. In the current situation in WWE, even though all champions are so-called babyfaces I, personally, only like 2 of them so I'm kind of actually rooting against most of them to lose the titles. Now, technically, that may not be how most people feel and I don't think it is a bad thing to have all Faces as champions once in a while. Be honest, this doesn't happen very often at all so for the (I'll bet) brief amount of time all Faces are champions... might as well enjoy it.

However! I totally agree that the bigger problem is that they way they got this point where all Faces are champions is basically by beating a bunch of Heels and thus making those Heels look weak.

Perfect examples are Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger. Especially Jack Swagger. This is a guy who is tall, well toned and athletic. If built correctly he could appear to be an actual threat. But instead, he basically a jobber as he has not amassed any substantial victories in quite a while.

And didn't WWE screw up pretty big by not having Big Show win at NWO? I mean, wow, the weeks before NWO they did their best to build him up as an actual threat to Cena and the WWE roster but then to have him lose to Cena does exactly what Cena said in a promo... makes him the worlds largest dissapointment. Now he has ZERO credibility going forward. Oh sure, they can still put him in squash matches vs. much smaller opponents to try and build him up again but now we all know Cena can beat him... so who cares what Big Show does from now on?

 

[AndThat'sTheBottomLine]

I kind of agree with you. But when Hogan held the belt for 4 years where was your logic? I agree faces make for better chasers but it's hard to do that when you don't have that many good heels around. Ziggler, Kane, Bryan all get cheered. Those are all your good heels and they get cheered like they are faces. It makes no sense at all but that's how people think nowadays. Anybody that's entertaining gets cheered no matter if they are a good guy or a bad guy. The IWC is a part of this problem they push to cheer the ones who can wrestle and sell moves that we pay no attention to whether or not they're faces or heels. My younger brother cheers the good guys, and boos the bad guys. This is how things are supposed to work. You are supposed to boo the heel but we don't do this because the best heels they have now are heels that we love. The other heels like swagger and rhodes get booed because they speak in monotone and have a lisp. They are not really entertaining. Johnny Ace gets booed because he's boring and he's the authority figure and the ass kisser. All logic has gone out of the window but I don't mind it so far Punk is a good champion although I'd like to see Ziggler win the championship. Either one would be fine nd that's the problem. You're not supposed to want the heel to win but us IWC see things from a different perspective than the casual fan and it has changed how people in general view heels. Logic has changed in the wrestling business and in a way, it's all our fault.

 

[sdelfin]

Though some refer to this as basic wrestling logic, it's just the old Jim Crockett philosophy that Ric Flair has talked about a lot over the years. Does it work? Of course. But it's not the only philosophy that works. As pointed out already, Hogan had the belt for years. Then if you factor in Savage's reigns, Warrior, Hogan, Backlund... Heels wouldn't hold the world title in the WWF for very long. WWF's philosophy back in the days of Hulkamania was to have the hero champ, challenged by a string of gigantic, mostly credible heels. Then on top of that, Hogan had to deal with a formidable faction in the Heenan Family, a faction that was used to make babyfaces look strong by having the face beat their lesser guys while keeping the top heels protected until time for the big money match. And there are other wrestling philosophies. Right now, WWE is following pretty much no philosophy, other than maybe throw idea at a wall and see what sticks.

And to the above poster who said that frequent title changes do not damage the prestige of the title, that it's a virus from the 80s, you're just wrong. It may not bother you, but it certainly bothers lots of people. There is far more prestige in being a 1 time champ who defends the belt for a long time than there is being a 14 time champ in the span of 2 years.

 

[akathelaw]

If wrestling was booked logically, there would be no question as to who should be cheered and who should get booed. The internet changed the way fans look at wrestling, and in turn the way wrestling looks at the fans. Yeah, the writing could be better. There are also other factors that play into what we see transpiring on TV every week. Maybe it's time to accept that wrestling has evolved and the face/heel dynamic isn't the only way to do things.

 

[xavyer]

I agree with aka the law, the IWC has changed the way everyone looks at wrestling, but for this to work on the heels and faces is simple, they have to go a little old school on the characters, and at this moment the best heel for the job is injured, i'm talking about Wade Barret, he's the only heel that actually gets a heel reaction, and if they do things right for Dolph Ziggler he can definitly be a great heel, kind of like the Macho Man or Mr. Perfect, a phenomenal athlete who uses dirty tactics to win, the talent is there for the WWE, is just that they need to figure out how to use it, not allways make it about Cena/Punk/Sheamus, make Barret/Ziggler the top heels, use their talets to their favor and you will have your results right there........

 

[JaceEvans]

As much as it's boring it's a necessary thing to give the wins now to faces. It is Sooo much harder to build faces the crowd will get behind these days (in part to the IWC) so it makes sense that they would spend time building them up. The top two faces in the company are Randy Orton and John Cena, Randy Orton is suspended and on very thin ice and Cena doesn't need a well established heel to get over with the crowd so they have him work with "new" heels to build them up ala Show, Big Johnny. So once they establish a "super" face they use him to get over heels so you see you need this build of faces to make stronger heels. Once they have enough of these "super" faces maybe then they can build to "super" heels.

 

[Ithil]

As much as it's boring it's a necessary thing to give the wins now to faces. It is Sooo much harder to build faces the crowd will get behind these days (in part to the IWC) so it makes sense that they would spend time building them up. The top two faces in the company are Randy Orton and John Cena, Randy Orton is suspended and on very thin ice and Cena doesn't need a well established heel to get over with the crowd so they have him work with "new" heels to build them up ala Show, Big Johnny. So once they establish a "super" face they use him to get over heels so you see you need this build of faces to make stronger heels. Once they have enough of these "super" faces maybe then they can build to "super" heels.

The problem with Cena is that he never loses. You can't build up heels against him when he always beats them clean and stays invincible