Hello Scott
I was wondering when the worst face/heel imbalance was. I remember in '95 you
had Diesel, Bret Hart, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon and British
Bulldog as faces, and the heel side was Owen Hart, Bob Backlund and Yokozuna.
In fact, Owen and Backlund had both been faces who had fairly recently been
turned heel. The only way they had to get strong heels was to turn Diesel and
Bulldog heel, as well as midcarder Mabel.
Which brings me to today. Guys like Swagger, Miz, Del Rio are basically the
top level of heels. Yet they get beaten by the faces over and over. The only
heels with any chance of winning a big match are Big Show and CM Punk. And
again, Punk was a face until they turned him heel as the heel side was so
pathetic. For someone trying to get away from "rasslin"'s past, Vince sure
loves the idea that heels are essentially losers who can only beat jobbers,
and need to be "rulebreakers" to have any chance against the top faces. Your
thoughts?
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I guess it depends on what the need is at the time. A lot of times they're wanting to build up a big babyface, so they line up a string of heels for him to plow through, or vice-versa. The problem now is that they're unwilling to let anyone get over enough to be taken seriously as a threat, so you get "Bertie" jobbing to the same brogue kick three PPVs in a row or Ziggler losing and losing and losing and losing and losing and losing and then one day he'll win the World title and they'll be like "How come he's not over anymore? We gave him the World title!" Mark Henry was the last guy they really let get over on his own merits, and that worked out awesome until he was too hurt to kill people anymore. I guess it's just the WWE mentality where they don't like having a dominant heel champion for the babyfaces to chase. They like Hulk Hogan and John Cena and Bret Hart as virtuous champions fending off the big bad heels. It's just that now the heels aren't particularly big or bad any longer.