Face, Heel, or "Tweener"...does it matter?

There's no doubt that the whole face/heel persona of a wrestler is one of the age old traditions of the business, it doesn't matter what the crowd reaction is your character will always uphold to the traits and standards of the face or heel. In recent years however the usually very thick line drawn between that of a face and that of a heel has become very, very blurred, you could go back as far as the legendary surge in popularity of one of the greatest WWE superstars of all time, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and his rise as the so-called "anti-hero". Austin was undoubtedly one of the meanest, nastiest, sadistic people ever to step inside of a WWE ring, yet after the infamous "Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass" promo, Steve went on to become the single most popular superstar of all time. While still maintaining his heel characteristics Austin always got the loudest cheers, and beat up the guy who got the loudest boos, obviously these are the main practices behind a successful face superstar. Nowadays however that "Austin formula" has started to come back into play, mainly because of one man; John Cena.

All the way back in 2005-2006 John Cena was the most popular and biggest superstar the company had to offer, the crowd loved him, the other superstars would jump at the chance to step into the ring with the champ, but somewhere between Wrestlemania 22 and 23 Cena's fan base started to get smaller and smaller. Myself included, at Wrestlemania 22 when Cena faced Triple H, the majority of the viewers and crowd were behind The Game, and would have loved to see him pin Cena and take the title home, but that never happened, thus begins the "Super-Cena" persona, the unbeatable, unmatched, indestructible machine that we know and hate today. The next year he went and put on possibly the match of the year with Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 23, and came out on top...fair I suppose, a believable result looking at the match, but in the next year (even though he lost at WM XXIV) Cena became the face of the company. Most of the IWC really bitch and get on Cena's back about him being the face of the company, but really (besides CM Punk) who would you have replace Cena as the face of the company? No really, I'm asking you...see, there's no one, and I swear to God if I see one person say Dolph Ziggler I will smack them in the face.

I am a fan of Dolph Ziggler, no doubt, he's a great wrestler and has everything in his locker to be a future major player in the business, and right now he is the real definition of a "tweener"...he's a real asshole heel, somewhere between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Shawn Michaels back in the day. But there is absolutely no way he could just walk in as the face of the company, a superstar has to be built, molded and shaped into the top guy, you can't just have any Tom, Dick or Harry walk in as the face of the company. A lot of people say Cena doesn't deserve his spot...really? Really?....REALLY?! I like Cena, not very much, but I like him, he's a decent guy, and has at least some wrestling talent (a lot more than Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, and Sting put together), sure his "5 moves of doom" are shit but he still going to be the top guy. The bottom line is the guy worked his butt off in developmental, lower card, mid card and even Triple H put him over at Wrestlemania, no one deserves to be in that position more than John Cena...FACT!

So that's my rant for the day, I may write a part II to the this post because there's so many things I have to say about this topic...maybe another day.

Before I leave, if you have twitter, there's a brand new Shoots and Ladders twitter page I've just opened, follow it at @SLWrestling, it'll probably take me a while to start tweeting regularly but it'll be worth a follow if you're interested,

Thanks again,
Andrew.