I haven't actually watched much WWE wrestling in a while, but I read the latest about Raw and NXT on WithLeather.com every week courtesy of the great Brandon Stroud. So despite not watching, I have a good understanding of what's going on storyline-wise.
That said, I took some time this morning to watch the better part of the Hulu Plus special edition of last night's Raw, which is probably a better way to watch anyway: rather than three hours, it's edited down to the best 90 minutes of the show.
Having not watched in several weeks, though, I almost got whiplash watching this edition of Raw. See, over the last few months, many of the most popular performers on the show have been WRITTEN as bad guys, meaning the crowd's reaction to the big matches is often counter to how the writers probably intended it. It's not uncommon for characters to do switches from bad to good and vice versa, to "swerve" the crowd in an attempt to recalibrate how they're treated by the crowd. What's somewhat more uncommon, however, is when several major stars are going through this recalibration simultaneously.
Current World Heavyweight Champion Alberto Del Rio just spent the last few months as a good guy, a babyface, a proud Mexican wrestler embracing his American success, wearing the Mexican flag on his trunks, smiling and hugging his manager/personal announcer Ricardo Rodriguez rather than grumping around and throwing Ricardo into danger's path as he had several months earlier, when he was the aristocratic, snooty, disdainful heel champion.
For this arc, he was the face because his opponent for the title was the charismatic, athletic, entertaining and extremely popular Dolph Ziggler, who happens to have been written as a heel for the last couple of years. This despite his overwhelmingly positive crowd response (he often gets a more enthusiastic reception than the forever-designated company face John Cena). But now that Ziggler lost the Big Gold Belt to Del Rio, he's being written a bit more favorably and Del Rio is back to sneering at the crowd and being matched against crowd favorites such as Chris Jericho (as he was Monday) to provoke a more negative crowd response.
So in that case we have two opponents in a story arc pivoting simultaneously, trading places in the good/bad continuum. In the case of longtime fan favorite Daniel Bryan and, well, longtime fan favorite Randy Orton, also opponents in an ongoing story arc, you have a somewhat more subtle, but still noticeable double switch happening. Orton, for the last several months a rather bland and ineffectual babyface, is starting to revert to the more nasty, conniving, brutal figure he used to portray as the "Apex Predator," a guy who was willing to maim his opponents in the ring for a win. Honestly, regardless of how Orton acts in the ring, the fans love him, or at least they love his finisher, the RKO, so in his case the repositioning has more to do with how effective he is in the storyline than how the crowd reacts to him.
Similarly, Daniel Bryan has been getting huge (HUGE) cheers from the crowd since the Wrestlemania before last, regardless of how his character acts in and out of the ring. Lately, he's been occupying a strange middle space in the good/bad spectrum, wrestling more or less as a comedic figure with tag team partner Kane, entertaining crowds with a story that revolved around both characters' struggles with anger management and finding a mutual appreciation via group therapy that translated into extreme effectiveness in the ring (like I said, a strange storyline, but entertaining nonetheless). During this storyline, Daniel Bryan changed from his crowd-pleasing "YES! YES! YES!" chant and positive demeanor to a more twisted, dark, "NO! NO! NO!" personality.
Whether he was screaming YES or NO, the crowds lapped it up. Just recently, though, Bryan started wearing the YES shirt again and yelling YES as he descends the ramp toward the ring and screaming YES as he lands his trademark kicks on his opponents. And he's playing up his underdog status, a traditional babyface positioning, against Randy Orton. And Bryan and Orton had two great matches on Raw (Bryan demanded a second match after the first one ended in a double disqualification, yet more babyface bona fides).
Overall, I'm a fan of these changes. Orton needs a nasty edge to be at all interesting as a character, Del Rio is fine as a babyface but much more exciting as a heel, and Ziggler and Bryan both deserve strong runs as fan favorites for all their hard work and excellence in the ring.
Interestingly, the one man who's not really changing his demeanor at all is the guy who's most in need of a storyline/character refresh: WWE Champion John Cena. On Monday, Cena cut a poorly received promo, chastising longtime badguy Mark Henry for faking a retirement speech the prior Monday in order to attack him and lay out a championship challenge. The crowd was NOT buying it, often hitting him with the derisive "WHAT" chant as he stood in the ring. Cena's been so good and so dominant for so long that crowds are largely in eye-roll mode when it comes to his character. He still sells the most T-shirts and merch, and he still brings in the PPV buys, so there's not likely to be any tinkering with his good/bad status any time soon. But it's too bad, because as I'm sure has been written a billion times online already, Cena as a complex, bad guy character would probably be a fantastic thing to watch.
That said, I took some time this morning to watch the better part of the Hulu Plus special edition of last night's Raw, which is probably a better way to watch anyway: rather than three hours, it's edited down to the best 90 minutes of the show.
Having not watched in several weeks, though, I almost got whiplash watching this edition of Raw. See, over the last few months, many of the most popular performers on the show have been WRITTEN as bad guys, meaning the crowd's reaction to the big matches is often counter to how the writers probably intended it. It's not uncommon for characters to do switches from bad to good and vice versa, to "swerve" the crowd in an attempt to recalibrate how they're treated by the crowd. What's somewhat more uncommon, however, is when several major stars are going through this recalibration simultaneously.
Current World Heavyweight Champion Alberto Del Rio just spent the last few months as a good guy, a babyface, a proud Mexican wrestler embracing his American success, wearing the Mexican flag on his trunks, smiling and hugging his manager/personal announcer Ricardo Rodriguez rather than grumping around and throwing Ricardo into danger's path as he had several months earlier, when he was the aristocratic, snooty, disdainful heel champion.
For this arc, he was the face because his opponent for the title was the charismatic, athletic, entertaining and extremely popular Dolph Ziggler, who happens to have been written as a heel for the last couple of years. This despite his overwhelmingly positive crowd response (he often gets a more enthusiastic reception than the forever-designated company face John Cena). But now that Ziggler lost the Big Gold Belt to Del Rio, he's being written a bit more favorably and Del Rio is back to sneering at the crowd and being matched against crowd favorites such as Chris Jericho (as he was Monday) to provoke a more negative crowd response.
So in that case we have two opponents in a story arc pivoting simultaneously, trading places in the good/bad continuum. In the case of longtime fan favorite Daniel Bryan and, well, longtime fan favorite Randy Orton, also opponents in an ongoing story arc, you have a somewhat more subtle, but still noticeable double switch happening. Orton, for the last several months a rather bland and ineffectual babyface, is starting to revert to the more nasty, conniving, brutal figure he used to portray as the "Apex Predator," a guy who was willing to maim his opponents in the ring for a win. Honestly, regardless of how Orton acts in the ring, the fans love him, or at least they love his finisher, the RKO, so in his case the repositioning has more to do with how effective he is in the storyline than how the crowd reacts to him.
Similarly, Daniel Bryan has been getting huge (HUGE) cheers from the crowd since the Wrestlemania before last, regardless of how his character acts in and out of the ring. Lately, he's been occupying a strange middle space in the good/bad spectrum, wrestling more or less as a comedic figure with tag team partner Kane, entertaining crowds with a story that revolved around both characters' struggles with anger management and finding a mutual appreciation via group therapy that translated into extreme effectiveness in the ring (like I said, a strange storyline, but entertaining nonetheless). During this storyline, Daniel Bryan changed from his crowd-pleasing "YES! YES! YES!" chant and positive demeanor to a more twisted, dark, "NO! NO! NO!" personality.
Whether he was screaming YES or NO, the crowds lapped it up. Just recently, though, Bryan started wearing the YES shirt again and yelling YES as he descends the ramp toward the ring and screaming YES as he lands his trademark kicks on his opponents. And he's playing up his underdog status, a traditional babyface positioning, against Randy Orton. And Bryan and Orton had two great matches on Raw (Bryan demanded a second match after the first one ended in a double disqualification, yet more babyface bona fides).
Overall, I'm a fan of these changes. Orton needs a nasty edge to be at all interesting as a character, Del Rio is fine as a babyface but much more exciting as a heel, and Ziggler and Bryan both deserve strong runs as fan favorites for all their hard work and excellence in the ring.
Interestingly, the one man who's not really changing his demeanor at all is the guy who's most in need of a storyline/character refresh: WWE Champion John Cena. On Monday, Cena cut a poorly received promo, chastising longtime badguy Mark Henry for faking a retirement speech the prior Monday in order to attack him and lay out a championship challenge. The crowd was NOT buying it, often hitting him with the derisive "WHAT" chant as he stood in the ring. Cena's been so good and so dominant for so long that crowds are largely in eye-roll mode when it comes to his character. He still sells the most T-shirts and merch, and he still brings in the PPV buys, so there's not likely to be any tinkering with his good/bad status any time soon. But it's too bad, because as I'm sure has been written a billion times online already, Cena as a complex, bad guy character would probably be a fantastic thing to watch.
