Clean Wrestler

Latest revision as of 07:21, 27 January 2011

In professional wrestling, a face or babyface (in British Wrestling traditionally referred to as a blue-eye, and in Lucha libre as a technico or técnico) is a character who is portrayed as a heroic relative to the Heel wrestlers, who are analogous to villains. Not everything a face wrestler does must be heroic: faces need only to be cheered by the audience to be effective characters. The vast majority of wrestling storylines place a heel against a face.

Changing Nature

Traditional babyfaces are classic good guy characters who do not break the rules, follow instructions of those in authority such as the referee, are polite and well-mannered towards the fans, and often overcome the rule-breaking actions of their Heel opponents to cleanly win matches. While many modern faces still fit this model, other versions of the face character are now also common.

The portrayal of face wrestlers changed in the 1990s with the birth of Extreme Championship Wrestling, the start of World Championship Wrestling's nWo storyline, and The Attitude Era of the World Wrestling Federation. During this time, wrestlers like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Sting used tactics traditionally associated with heels but remained popular with the fans. Although wrestlers such as Mark Jindrak, Lance Storm and Eddie Guerrero had been babyfaces while using such tactics well before this, the Attitude Era is usually credited with this new kind of face.

Conversely, Kurt Angle was introduced to the World Wrestling Federation with an American hero gimmick based on his gold medal win at the 1996 Summer Olympics. In his promos, Angle presented himself as a role model and stressed the need to work hard to realize one's dreams. Although such a personality appears appropriate for a face wrestler, Angle's character was arrogant, talked down to the audience, and behaved as if he thought he was better than the fans. Angle's character served as a meta-reference to how wrestling had changed. Although his character was intended to be a heel and behaved accordingly, some commentators speculated that if Angle attempted to get over as a babyface using a more heroic version of the same character, he would have failed. Notably, Angle did not use any of these heroic mannerisms when playing a face character, instead acting as somewhat of an antihero with a few elements of the "lovable loser" character archetype. Angle's "well-meaning, but arrogant" type gimmick is also effective with wrestlers like Matt Striker, a retired school teacher who belittled the fans, due to their alleged lack of education, and the Straight Edge Society, who were straight-edge - a generally good lifestyle to have - but were jerks about it, and held themselves to be better than the fans and their opponents.

Fans sometimes boo baby face wrestlers despite the way they are promoted. Some reasons this may occur include repetitive in-ring antics, a limited moveset, a lengthy title reign, lack of selling his/her opponents' moves, or an uninteresting character. This often results in wrestlers who are supposed to be cheered receiving a negative or no reaction from the fans. The Rock, who initially wrestled as Rocky Maivia (November 1996 to August 1997), was depicted as a classic babyface, but the fans despised him. His constant attempts to get the crowd on his side struck them as obsequiousness and made him even less popular. Ironically, The Rock would achieve widespread popularity among fans when he took heel turns, during which his attempts to humorously mock the crowd would often be met with cheers. John Cena has a history of receiving mixed reactions and even full heat from crowds despite being presented as a babyface.

Some face wrestlers would often give high fives or give out their own personal merchandise while entering the ring before their match, such as t shirts, sunglasses, hats, masks, etc. to the fans. Bret Hart made this popular in the modern era as he would drape his signature sunglasses to a young kid in the audience. Other faces who have gave out free merchandise in the past and present have been Finlay and Hornswoggle, DX, John Morrison, Edge, Rey Mysterio, John Cena, Batista, Randy Orton, etc. Heels have also followed this practice, such as Brock Lesnar, who gave out garlands of flowers and "Georgie Pins" to the audience. Some other heels have mocked this, by telling the fans to buy their own merchandise. Mr. Kennedy is a good example for this during his heel run in the WWE.