Does AEW Have A Babyface Problem? 

I agree with you on the Babyface side, but NOT on the Heel side. The reason people cheer for Swerve is not because he's cool, afterall, fiction is FULL of villains who are cool, but you still want to see lose (Frieza, Emperor Palpatine, The Joker, Thanos, The Reapers, ect), and his presence makes him work BETTER as a villain since he feels like a serious threat. The reason people cheer Swerve is because of the real life factor. That this is a hot act, Tony has a habit of not striking when the iron is hot, and so fans become worried that this act might get wasted, and in sympathy to the performer, become desperate to see him acknowledged for his talent. Essentially, the RL concerns are getting in the way of their ability to enjoy him as a Heel. If they had made Swerve the devil, had him take out MJF to become champion, and then put Swerve against OTHER sympathetic rising babyfaces that the fans want to see win, you could easily have Swerve still doing the cool stuff, but now instead of the real man being effectively an underdog, HE'S the oppresive force standing against the babyfaces the fans want to win. Sure, Swerve is cool, but in this scenario, you want to see his opponent win MORE.

Wrestling doesn't need to be complicated. People cheer heroes and boo villains. Sometimes a villain has enough personality and charisma that they get fans on their side, and can become a hero, but that's still a shift from one alignment to the other that needs to occur. That's how it happened for both Steve Austin and The Rock, who both went on to be among the biggest, most successful babyface wrestlers in history. Both were booked and acted as heels, but were so damn good at it that they became beloved and WWE knew to flip the switch on them both at the right time. The Undertaker was meant to be a heel and became a huge face for most of the 90's. Shawn Michaels went from Rockers traitor to Boyhood Dream in a matter of about 3-4 years. Current Wrestling needs more defined characters that fans can easily understand and follow on their story path. When everyone's a tweener, the fans don't have anyone they can solidly cheer or boo... except for Orange Cassidy, largely the most over face in AEW.

I wish more wrestlers pulled a MJF during the Punk feud. Show that you could be a babyface and make people get behind you for a week or two, only to do your most despicable act and cement that you will never be a face. Want more moment that genuinely make fans upset like that

12:12 rn, 3 months later i think the best choice to be the new hangman is Swerve, but the booking must be impeccable so Swerve would be the Cody of Will’s Roman

Osprey, MJF, Moxley, Okada, or Cassidy I think could all be the face of AEW going forward.

Heel Mercedes against Babyface Hayter, Billie, Athena will be peak af. All three of these match ups, if booked well, can main event ppvs. As for the new ace of aew, it's will ospreay for sure.

I mean when everyone is online and smart to the business Babyface and heel no longer matters. I mean as in you have to go by fans reactions because it's not 1990 anymore where we cheer and boo who were told to.

Absolutely agree! It feels like a lot of wrestlers in AEW is just "kind of good" or "kind of bad" and it makes it hard to truly invest in anyone's rivalries. I miss the days of genuinely disliking a heel and wanting to see them get their comeuppance. Im glad the bucks are going full heel.

BCC suck. They never even went for the trios or tag belts. They should just disband they are just bringing down Mox and Bryan at this point

Man I just agree totally with everything you said. The BBC really needs to be more defined. Toni should take the character into a pure face. As for Swerve, yeah people just love him man and he deserves every chant, I personally think that no change is needed to his character, he doesn't necessarily need to be a booed heel, he can be a beloved one so what? we've seen personas like that and it's not weird after all.

Brayn Danielson should be the face, but he will be retiring soon Adam cole could be , but with the current storyline that won't happen. Probably swerve Strickland will be

Your take is reminiscent of the idea that American wrestling is a morality play. I feel like, yeah, there aren't "Pure" heroes and villains, but that is seldom the case with people, right? Like, even shitty people do sympathetic things, and awesome people can do shitty things. WWE is more of the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" Morality, where the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and there's no gray or nuance. Having characters that can pivot form heel to face, dependent on the situation, seems like it'd be a great benefit for the company, especially when you have situations like Kenny going down for injury, where entire storylines have to pivot. Understandably, injuries happen, but having a way to keep wrestlers engaged (There is a lot of issue with that, admittedly, but that's a different conversation) serves as a benefit. This isn't to dismiss your thoughts outright, of course, just provide one strangers view in a sea of thoughts.

Great vid, it put into words an issue I’ve had with AEW that’s less noticeable than “x booking was bad”. They’re in a position to gain insane momentum if people like Okada and Mercedes are slotted in the right roles like Ospreay is, so here’s hoping they do that and keep the excellent characters they already have in proper roles.

Sammy guevara

i see it in another way, AEW let the wrestlers be more free, no one is 100% babyface and no one is 100% heel, they're "gray" characters like in Game of Thrones, and thats good because we don't know what to wait for... even Riho for instance kinda of turned heel on Yuka Sakazaki when AEW started, Shida besides never turning heel has this "edge" of trespassing her "babyface limits" depending on the match, the only one that didn't go with that was Cody, soo... the fans made a heel turn on him, and thats the beauty of AEW, being unpredictable

good video bro

Well said.

I completely disagree with you about the idea of portraying someone as a heel or babyface specifically. Swerve, for example, got over by being a complete dickhead heel. However, it got him truly over. He’s turned babyface and that’s cool, but if he changes his character now, it could kill the support for him because he’s not the same character anymore. He’s gotta stay a tweener, stay a heel who now just fights other heels with the occasional babyface moment. Toni Storm on the other hand isn’t a character I personally enjoy, but she comes across as a character that wouldn’t work as a face, because her whole presentation and character is just a complete heel character.

I really like this dynamic of not having a full heel/full face bc the world is not black and white. This makes the characters more human and shows that everybody is in shades of gray. I think your problem is the lack of storyline development outside the ring. The best example was the Hangman descent into madness bc of what Swerve did, and yeah, we don't have much of this in AEW.