Till we have faces
We've put so many antiheroes over; have we forgotten what it is to cheer for the good guy?
I had an earlier version of this piece centered around the premise that professional wrestling still has a Steve Austin problem. And it most certainly does.
But with the culmination of many weeks’ worth of rumors that Johnny Gargano was on his way out with NXT, it felt like a good time to revisit the earlier draft. For most of his six-year run with the black and gold brand, he was Johnny Wrestling: a squeaky-clean good guy who got over with real-life buddy Tommaso Ciampa in DIY, then enjoyed a solid singles run during which he won both major solo belts in the promotion.
In keeping with classic wrestling tropes, Ciampa turned on Gargano and became the arch-heel in the promotion, becoming NXT champ and relishing portraying the heel everyone loved to hate. At one point, Ciampa even entered arenas without entrance music, just a shower of boos. It was incredible; in fact, it was the storyline that pulled me back into being a wrestling fan.
Gargano assumed the role of foil, the yin to Ciampa’s yang; one would be hard-pressed to top the storytelling in each of their singles matches or throughout their protracted angle. While Ciampa got over, fans appeared somewhat bored, even annoyed with Gargano’s babyfaced babyface act. What they loved about Johnny Wrestling was what they hated, especially as Ciampa’s run with the belt coincided with the ascendance of Undisputed Era and the undeniably charismatic heel energy brought out by Adam Cole and company.
Moreover, that babyface energy fans couldn’t stomach in Gargano they lapped up with Keith Lee. Wrestling fans are nothing if not consistent.
Gargano finally got his heel turn moment — in a swerve costing Ciampa a chance to regain the NXT championship at Takeover: Portland — and the crowd went wild.
(NXT just isn’t the same without Mauro Ranallo. Vic Joseph isn’t bad, but he doesn’t bring the big-time match feel Mauro did week in and week out.)
Ciampa was in the middle of a push after returning from the neck surgery that forced him to forfeit the belt, and while this particular piece of storytelling — Cole, Ciampa and Gargano all had intersecting storylines at some point in this clip’s recent past — was done well, that swerve didn’t elevate Gargano’s star any beyond a brief second run with the North American belt.
And this returns us to my original point: professional wrestling has a Steve Austin problem.
Austin famously debuted Stone Cold and got over at King of the Ring in 1996, partially lightning in a bottle with the Milwaukee crowd, partially Austin getting the run that Triple H lost out on. And that template served as a paradigm shift for faces: they no longer needed to be good guys, just at odds with bad guys. Vince McMahon prided himself on the Attitude Era being defined by characters in shades of gray. Yet, we’re now 25 years after KotR at the MECCA, two, almost three generations removed from Austin 3:16, and yet creative still feels the need to write faces as slightly-reformed badasses. Where we had Austin, The Rock, DX, et al before, we have/had Ciampa, Gargano, Finn Balor, Pete Dunne, Randy Orton, AJ Styles, et al now.
To wit, you couldn’t have John Cena anywhere near a ring without a ‘CENA SUCKS’ chant. Same with Reigns, who needed a fight with leukemia to get over and then promptly swerved into his ‘Head of the Table’ schtick.
And this isn’t exclusive to WWE: AEW suffers from the same problem, right down to fans being bored with Cody Rhodes, with Jon Moxley and Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega, amongst others, taking turns being some more or less imitation of Austin or Rock. For whatever reason, we don’t suffer babyfaces for long, if at all. And the folks running creative in the business won’t give us reason to. Thus, Gargano’s natural good guy disposition grows tiring, and his heel character doesn’t quite resonate.
Bret Hart was a great heel in the '80s with Jim Neidhart in Hart Foundation, but in my mind, his pro-Canada heel turn in the Attitude Era was weak; after all this was the Excellence of Execution, not the Fabulous Rougeaus. And Hogan had already broken the rules with his swerve a year prior, so it wasn’t like this was groundbreaking creative direction. Hart’s strongest work was as a babyface singles wrestler in the interim between Hogan and Austin.
AJ Styles’ run as a face — particularly his feud with Samoa Joe — was a lot better than whatever it is he’s doing now. Gargano’s fellow Cleveland native The Miz enjoyed a brief run as a face a few years ago and that was refreshing. Kevin Owens appears to have returned to his classic heel character, but his work was better than most expected. Randy Orton is marooned on Raw with Matt Riddle, but RK-Bro is at least amusing and his ability to work as a face after a career as a heel’s heel is plausible, even if we’re all just waiting for him to revert to form.
Johnny Gargano didn’t need a heel run to add a depth dimension to his on-screen character. The post-swerve interview with Ranallo was cringeworthy and most of his run as heel and later as leader of The Way didn’t add up to much, although that angle was cut short for real-life reasons. As mentioned above, the character didn’t seem to resonate, which is almost certainly why they shifted him into being a funnyman bad guy running a stable with a doofus in Austin Theory and an admittedly-clever tag team in Indi Wrestling, with the Dexter Lumis-Indi storyline adjacent to, and then eventually eclipsing, it all.
When Rebel Heart hit at War Games, though. Oh man.
Note: Carmelo Hayes, in the ring, started this past summer(!) as a babyface and is now exactly the type of Attitude Era heel wrestling creative can’t help but write.
It took Gargano leaving the company for everyone to understand and appreciate his work as a face. And when Gargano resurfaces with another promotion, they’ll probably try to fashion his character as a complicated badass like everyone else.
The Austin problem is that that antihero character can and should exist, but that archetype loses its impact when becomes the basis for almost all the roster. With regard to the new crop of NXT talent, what’s the actual difference between Hayes, Grayson Waller, Duke Hudson or Danny Dingaling? They’re all shades of the same gray and thus fail to stand out. This is potentially troublesome for Hayes, who already has the North American championship and is being reduced down to a baseline, which is more or less the character Isaiah ‘Swerve’ Scott had before being promoted up in and then out of the company.
Why do we need every pro wrestling character to be an antiheroic badass? I’m not asking for everyone to be this goofy, Hogan-esque cartoonish good guy, but there’s something to be said for the earnest worker who happens to be supremely talented. Sure, I prefer the babyface, but I also loved to hate Ric Flair, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Randy Savage and Rick Rude, amongst other heels whose names don’t start with R.
If anything, latter day Johnny Gargano taught us two things: if the heel work just makes us miss the character as a babyface, perhaps they should have never been a heel in the first place. And secondly, the business’ reliance and fans’ insistence on antiheroes and bad guys indicates a failure of imagination on the part of both parties. The good guy doesn’t have to be complicated or complex or held to Superman’s standards that tend to make him inaccessible as a character.
We already had the Attitude Era and currently have a sizable contingency of antiheroes, complex faces and a surfeit of bad guys. What we don’t have are a proportional number of compelling faces. And until we do, the storytelling part of the business will continue to paint itself into corners and forced to use deus ex machina and tired old retread storylines, none of which will push the performance art and craft of pro wrestling forward.
A personal note: CPBF went silent for a while, which I know is problematic for a new Substack. Part of what jumpstarted my desire to start it was that I lost my job back in September and wanted to do something in the meanwhile that didn’t include writing and re-writing resumes and cover letters. Having said that, the stress of trying to keep everything on the homefront got to me and I needed to focus on home, family and my own wellbeing.
Thankfully, I’ve landed a new position starting this week and we’ll be OK. As I find my new normal with that, I’ll also be finding a new normal with CBPF and working toward a more regular cadence here. Thank you for reading and for your understanding. I’m looking forward to what’s coming down the line. —b.