Why WWE's Fan-Favorite Direction Spells the End for Legitimate Heels

Once upon a time, pro wrestling was all about the battle between baby faces and heels. 

The faces were the good guys, the heels were the bad ones, and all it took was one episode of Raw or SmackDown to see who was what. 

But now more than ever, the line between baby faces and heels has become blurred. 

If you tune into Raw on any given night, you better know exactly what’s going on, or you might not be able to tell who’s supposed to be the bad guy and who’s supposed to be the good guy. 

They now both sort of blend together to become one. 

The faces often get booed loudly, which is surprising in itself, but what is perhaps even more shocking is that the heels—the supposed bad guys of pro wrestling—are often getting cheered. 

This is a product of the new fan-favorite direction of the WWE, where the fans cheer who they want to cheer, whether that guy’s a face, heel or neither. 

Daniel Bryan is the WWE’s best heel performer at the moment, but when he makes his entrance, wrestles or cuts a promo, the entire arena erupts in “Yes!” chants. 

Dolph Ziggler is one of the fastest-rising heels in the company, but instead of booing him out of the building, the fans cheer for him because he’s do damn good in the ring. 

Cody Rhodes—who is the most “old-school” heel on the roster—should be getting drowned in boos every time he steps in the ring. Instead, his matches are being edited because he’s generating baby-face pops. 

This is not a short-term trend. It’s becoming an epidemic. 

For the most part, the WWE fans no longer judge a superstar by his actions. They do not get angry with a guy if he does something heinous or disrespectful. 

Instead, they judge a superstar by the quality of those actions. 

If a superstar—whether he’s face or heel—cuts an impressive promo or takes an amazing bump, chances are that he’s going to get cheered for giving us a great performance. 

Perhaps a sign of the way the Internet and the end of kayfabe have ruined pro wrestling, very few fans seems to care about how a wrestler’s actions should be perceived. 

While there are still the younger fans and those older fans who don’t know or don’t want to acknowledge that pro wrestling is scripted, the ones who do know it is scripted are the ones who are causing the end of legitimate heels in the WWE. 

Bryan, Ziggler and Rhodes (just to name a few) have done some absolutely despicable things—as has a guy like Chris Jericho—with little to no consequences. 

Heck, just four or five months ago, Y2J was verbally attacking Punk’s family, smashing a liquor bottle over his head and giving him a beer bath. But the crowd soon forgot about that and is now cheering Jericho, despite the fact that he still hasn’t done anything totally baby face-like. 

Back to a point I made earlier, the “smart” fans don’t seem to care what a heel has done in the recent past or even what he is doing at the current time that might be heelish. 

They like who they want to like, and they cheer who they want to cheer. 

It may seem harmless on the surface, but when you get to the very core of things, it’s clear that the repercussions of this extend well beyond mere cheers and boos. 

They affect the WWE as a whole by drastically influencing what has been the heart of pro wrestling since its inception: The battle of good vs. evil. 

Now, there is no evil. Being bad is considered cool, while in a way, being a good guy is going against the norm. 

The WWE has become a lot like grammar school, where the popular kid is the one who picks on the nerds and talks back to the teacher. 

The popular stars are the ones who have an edge, the ones who often do what’s wrong rather than what’s right, the ones who would punch their own mother just to get what they wanted. 

You can blame this on the Internet, today’s society or any number of other factors. 

But no matter why the fans are gravitating more toward the bad guys, the bottom line is that that’s exactly what they are doing. 

Heels and baby faces no longer exist. 

There are guys who lean more toward one way than the other, but heels are supposed to be booed and baby faces are supposed to be cheered. 

Twenty years ago, that’s exactly what happened. But today? 

The legitimate heel is gone—a direct and unfortunate result of the WWE’s fan-favorite direction.

Drake Oz is a WWE Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions on Formspring.