WWE Fastlane 2018: Sami Zayn and the Most Likely Heel and Face Turns
Every WWE show opens up the potential for twists and turns in the current storylines. Sometimes, the best way to accomplish that is for someone to flip the script and change their tone, whether they're a hero or a villain.
Often the best thing about a particular event is seeing someone succumb to the dark side and slip into a heel role or to watch the redemption of a bad guy to see the light and start fighting for his principles.
Fastlane 2018 will be the last major chance for the SmackDown brand to pull any of these tricks on the audience while setting up WrestleMania 34, as the television shows just don't receive the same attention. It wouldn't be anywhere near as effective for a turn to take place there.
With that in mind, there is never a guarantee to see someone turn heel or face, but now is as good a time as any to shake things up, which means the lineup for Sunday's card is open to speculation.
If anybody turns, who are the most likely candidates, and how will those turns go down?
Let's take a look at some of the potential options for Superstars who could course-correct at Fastlane 2018.
A John Cena Heel Turn
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This is by far the biggest gamble, but if it were to happen, it would easily be the most monumental thing on the entire card.
For that matter, this would transcend just Fastlane, as John Cena is a free agent. His status as the company's figurehead in many ways would make this the absolute grandest switch in the dynamic seen in years.
Normally, this wouldn't even be up for discussion, but Cena has been playing the role of a desperate man hoping to hold on to his glory while it starts to slip away.
He's panicking that he might not have a spot on the card for WrestleMania this year, which would just be an impossibility to fathom, considering his importance to WWE for over a decade.
The eleventh hour is approaching, and Cena was just barely able to sneak his way into the Six-Pack Challenge as he did. He should be hungrily frantic in trying to win at all costs to ensure that he heads into WrestleMania with the WWE Championship and the reassurance that his main event spot hasn't passed him by.
In doing so, we could see him let go of his moral code and start to navigate the tricky waters of cheating to survive and win, all the while feeling justified that he's The Franchise Player and has never been in this dire of a situation.
If he were to take a loss here, too, it could be the thing that sends him over the edge and causes him to lash out afterward, ending the pay-per-view with a change of character some fans have clamored for and hoped to see for years.
A Dolph Ziggler Face Turn
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Admittedly, the situation surrounding Dolph Ziggler is somewhat confusing, and he may not still be a heel to begin with.
In a sense, Ziggler is straddling the line between remaining the heel he was before and steering away from that mindset, but it's a clunky transition WWE doesn't seem to want to fully commit to, one way or another.
When he returned at the Royal Rumble, he was pretty much booked as a babyface but retained his lack of an entrance.
He seemed much more sympathetic in comparison to Baron Corbin when the two were trying to fight for a spot in this WWE Championship match, which appeared to tilt the scale toward a face turn.
This was almost cemented when Ziggler came to the aid of John Cena and AJ Styles after Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn and Corbin attacked them on SmackDown, but The Showoff followed it up with a cheap shot to The Phenomenal One.
This week, Ziggler had what felt like a heart-to-heart with Styles where he was essentially giving the champion pointers on how to win the match by keeping his head in the game, all the while hinting that his feelings are hurt that the fans don't love him as much anymore.
It's a strange situation. He has a chip on his shoulder that is stopping him from being the good guy again, even though he's starting to lean more toward someone the crowd can sympathize with.
There may be a point in this match where Ziggler is presented the opportunity to take the easy way out or not and will choose to go with the more honorable option, pushing him further away from his status as a heel.
A Randy Orton Heel Turn
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It's only a matter of time before Randy Orton turns heel. It's as easy to expect as the sun rising tomorrow.
The Viper has made a career mostly on being a villain so much so that even when he's a babyface, his character is still a total jerk who really has no friends and can turn on anybody at any point.
The only way to distinguish what his alignment is tends to be who he is currently feuding with and who WWE books him alongside in tag team matches. When he was with Bray Wyatt, he was a heel, but when he's fighting with Shinsuke Nakamura, everybody should cheer him.
At the moment, he's playing somewhat of a middle man to Bobby Roode and Jinder Mahal, who are more solidified in their roles.
Somehow, this feud has become about the heel Mahal trying to garner sympathy for Orton as if they were friends, despite how they feuded for a large chunk of 2017.
Orton has expressed his desire to win the United States Championship—a belt he's never held before and would love to add to his already impressive list of accolades—and since he's always one bad day away from a breakdown that ends in him punting someone, this could send him over the edge.
If a heel turn doesn't happen and this feud between the three continues into WrestleMania, Orton will at least be filling the tweener spot of someone who isn't the worst of the bunch but definitely doesn't have the highest sense of morale out of the three, either.
A Bobby Roode Heel Turn
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Having just mentioned the possibility of Orton turning heel, it's important not to lose track of how that could be viewed as predictable, whereas a Roode heel turn would be more surprising.
Ignoring how this feud started with a discussion about a list that nobody seems to care about and that means nothing as it hasn't been followed up on in any way since its original announcement, this storyline turned into a debate about respect.
Jinder Mahal is adamant that Roode doesn't respect Orton, but since Mahal is not involved in the title hunt, why does he care to drive a wedge between the two? He doesn't really stand to gain anything out of it.
However, what if that was all brought up to pay off with proof that while the audience wrote it all off with a dismissal that Roode obviously respects Orton, as he's a babyface, Mahal was actually right all along?
This could come about with Roode cheating to win against Orton, valuing retaining his championship over the honor of a match with no shenanigans.
Just as Orton has many of his attributes magnified when he's a heel, Roode excels best when he's the smug, arrogant jerk he was in NXT.
His face run has been OK, but it hasn't been absolutely stellar to the point where it is unimaginable that he may revert back to his previous ways of touting how he's genuinely more glorious than anybody else on the roster.
It may not happen, but it isn't as much of a long shot as it might seem to the casual viewer who doesn't have a bit of cynicism and skepticism peeking in from time to time.
Once a heel, always a heel—potentially, at least.
A Sami Zayn Babyface Turn
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Out of all the possible heel and face turns, the one that stands out as the most likely to happen is easily Sami Zayn, who has had his issues with best friend Kevin Owens for a while.
The card for WrestleMania is going to be stacked with potential matches. It would be odd to have both a match between Zayn and Owens over their dissolved friendship—something that Owens had last year with Chris Jericho—as well as a similar feud between Bayley and Sasha Banks, but WWE has copied and pasted storylines in the past, so it's possible.
Clearly, Zayn and Owens are not on the same page as previously suggested, as the game plan went from Zayn willingly sacrificing himself so Owens could win, to Zayn actively nailing Owens with a Helluva Kick to score the win in this week's Fatal 5-Way.
This proves that Zayn isn't blindly loyal, and he does have at least some resistance to Owens.
The more distance between the two, the closer things get to the old relationship where Zayn was the one to cheer for and Owens was the clear villain.
The return to a babyface role for Zayn could take a few weeks to solidify, but Fastlane could be the impetus for him to break off from Owens for real and send the two down a path where they end up fighting each other at WrestleMania.
In some parallel universe, Owens would be the one to turn, but he's just so good as a heel that it would seem unnatural for him to suddenly be chumming it up with the babyfaces in WWE. If either of the two is going to change their character, the safer bet is definitely Zayn.
Do you think anybody will turn heel or face at Fastlane? Keep the discussion going by dropping your predictions in the comments section below!
Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.
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