Credit: WWE.com
I can't think about modern day wrestling without thinking about how dumb wrestling fans are. Not you, reader YOU are the smartest of marks and please keep reading my gimmicks! I'm talking about the marks who believe that every two wrestlers should get a push without being mindful that then another pushed talent has to take those Ls. My personal fave: people who believe that Vince McMahon intentionally buries people because he doesn't want them to get over. Even though an argument can be made that Vince doesn't want Roman Reigns or Bobby Lashley to ever get over. The real reason marks believe this is because the Mr. McMahon CHARACTER is one of... if not THE greatest heels ever. And most marks aren't smart enough to delineate work from shoot. The entire McMahon family needs to turn babyface.
Recently I was thinking about how rumors from the set of Suicide Squad had Jared Leto being an insufferable prick. I think that a lot of times, when you get into a mindset of playing a bad person on screen, the lines get blurred. You start to lose yourself in the character. Back in the day when wrestlers cared about keeping kayfabe, they'd do interviews in character and even stay in character whenever they were in public. Al Snow claims in a shoot interview that he'd go out to dinner with Head, buy it dinner and talk to it. He wanted marks to see him and believe he was insane. People could go to a show and buy that he was this madman who talked to, and won matches with a mannequin head. Wrestling fans have seen the McMahon family as the heels for over 20 years. When they do all the B A Star stuff, people say that they are hypocrites because they are bullies who thrive on the workplace being a bully friendly environment. Marks still believe that WWE didn't want Daniel Bryan in main events... even though Daniel Bryan was in main events. Then, Roman Reigns became the lightning rod for all of the fans displeasure with booking decisions. I want you to, for a shoot, take a break between this paragraph and the next one. Think. Would fans feel so strongly that WWE holds their faves back and forces Cena and Reigns on them if the company itself was babyface?
Right now I look at Rusev and I think he's someone who hasn't been used as well as he could be. I like the direction of Nakamura v Styles in the main event (unless Roman is workin'.) I feel that maybe the best use for Rusev might be to let him have another long run as US champion. Let's say Rusev never gets to work on top and he leaves WWE and becomes a top guy in Japan or on the indies. He will be another guy fans point to as someone who grasped the elusive brass ring and bumped his head on that glass ceiling. WWE is at a point where they have way too much talent, man. Imagine marks at their current level of knowledge of the business back when they signed WCW and ECW talent. Imagine those marks have modern tech and media to complain that every 2 WCW and ECW guys should have been a 5 time world champion 3 months after debuting. Then imagine if the same thing was going on back when WWF went national and signed many of the top territory stars! I remind you... Rusev getting pushed means you push down Shinsuke, AJ, and whoever else may be in front of him. I saw marks complain that he beat Daniel Bryan, who doesn't need to win Money In The Bank again, to qualify for said MITB. I wonder: would marks be as insufferable with complaining like this if WWE was babyface?
In my ideal world, there would be no GM. No commissioner. No tv authority figures at all. I think that in the 1990s the on screen authority figure wasn't new, it just was super over both in WWF and WCW. The reason that in the territories, the booker/top guy/owner of the territory was a babyface, was because you wanted the fans to like the territory itself. Fans weren't as smart then. NOW a DQ finish is lame, but THEN you could start a literal riot with the heat on the heels. In 2018, when heels do things to get heat, and fans actually know what a booker is, and fans know the McMahons run things... the heat is on how out of touch Vince is. WHAT. IF. Vince, and therefore the territory were babyfaces, would fans be more likely to put the heat on heels and not the booking? Maybe that toothpaste is out of the tube, and is never going back in. I think that if only heels cheated and broke rules you could go back to getting heat. I also think that if WWE was babyface, the public perception of the company, and who they push, would be more favorable.