PWP’s Zak Fellows talks about the balance of power (or lack there of) between the babyfaces and heels in the WWE Women’s Division.
I admit to being indifferent when it comes to the WWE Women’s division as a whole: Not to say that I’m immediately expecting their matches, promos and feuds to be terrible but rather I remain uninvested and un-immersed that when it does end up being good I can enjoy it for what it is to the same degree that a casual fan would.
With that said, and partially as a trigger of the whole ‘Divas Revolution’ and attempt to revitalize the division in the past year, I have been attempting to become invested in what is being shown and yet my attention is drawn to one lingering problem that became apparent to me, and other members of the Pro Wrestling Powerhouse Community, last April: babyface and heel Balance.
Generally speaking, a wrestling roster has to have a decent balance of wrestlers of both alignments to ensure a steady stream of fresh match ups. This way, booking and character development can occur on both sides of the fence and create strong heroes and strong villains. Not always a guarantee but it is what you would imagine to be the intended goal.
That’s not to say that WWE has always been able to maintain a balance between their alignments, since crowd reactions are unable to determine the motive behind a response in most parts, but the Women’s division of late has, unfortunately, been reflective of a severe problem in balance.
On the surface, there appears to be only two babyfaces among the WWE Women: Becky Lynch and Natalya; an issue that is worsened when the current champion Charlotte is a heel and thus deprived of a pool of challengers to her reign.
It should be mentioned, since it may be a contributing factor to the current status of alignments that during the early days of Total Divas there were apparent speculations that WWE was seeking to phase out absolute alignments in the women’s division in exchange for more situational matches.
For the benefit of those who may not understand, a situational match is one where alignments of two wrestlers are decided within the match itself and is to be their roles for that match in a bubble with a degree of influence from the fans. This is also known to be rife with the few neutral characters in wrestling.
My issue with this, alongside the whole concept of Tweeners, is that it creates a lack of consistency. Wrestling products need to sustain a level of consistency in order to maintain and attract audiences through quality control. If a fan were to see one week a babyface acting like a heel, then the next week he isn’t and then the week after he is a full blown heel and so on then it will confuse fans on how they are intended to react to something.
This isn’t to say that the women’s alignments of WWE’s women are that bad, in fact time has passed where their heels have been positioned to be heels as opposed to turning on a dime for no reason whatsoever. Nonetheless it, in my opinion, speaks volumes to poor management when the babyface drought is becoming very notable and women are STILL turning heel.
Don’t get me wrong: I do like heels hell I love being so invested in a heel’s feud with a babyface to the point that I find myself playing along with the product and reacting as to how the promotion wants me to: it’s a sign of immersion.
So what can be done to restore the balance of alignments you may be wondering: Well, that’s where reactions, naturally, come in. While many fans enjoy cheering for heels because they are, for lack of a better word, free to be more loose with their approach and content filter, some fans do not want to see a change to reflect the reaction since it may result in the depriving of what they cheer (if you would like to see a more specific example Randy Orton in 2004).
Thus, if a wrestler is being cheered because people are into their heel act turn them babyface while keeping them as close to their previous character as possible (like WWE got right with Orton in 2010). And if that can’t be achieved because the heel women don’t have enough to make them into credible and likeable babyfaces it is up to the booking team to give them cheerable qualities.
In closing, I would like to say that the Women’s division lack of alignment balance could be as a direct reflection of a number of things: Lack of real long term planning in favor of artificial shock value through frequent turns, lack of real investment in the roster as a whole causing an oversight or an audience that flavors one alignment over the other.
As with many other parts of a wrestling product, be it alignment, angles or specific people when an overabundance is notable it generally becomes a major hindrance and over-reliance prevents investment to those who don’t like something to begin with. I am not invested in the WWE Women’s Division because there are too many heels and too little heels I care for as a fan and I would like to see a balance that will make it more viewable, easier to follow.
But hey, at least when we do get a babyface champion we won’t be short on challengers.
[Zak Fellows challenges you to make an even babyface/heel list for the WWE Women… go on, I dare you.]
Happy New Year, by the way!
