In Wrestling, a face is typically the one that people want to win the game of wrestling. They play the role of the hero, or as in film and literature, the protagonist. You want these individuals to win because these are the superstars that actually care about your support; they feed off your feelings toward them. They are the one's out there shaking your hands, signing your autographs, taking photos and putting in the effort to really popularize the sport.
The Face needs you to like them; so faces do not typically resort to cheating tactics to win matches, or cock up attitudes for losing them. They try to keep a good sportsmanship like demeanor because they are, in some ways, supposed to represent the best of us. They never back down from a challenge and they never give up when they are losing. They fight for the right thing even when the right thing is the hardest thing.
Faces, however, usually have a life cycle and they go on a particular journey which either sends them off to retirement or turns them to dark side, in wrestling terms, turn them heel.
Often when wrestlers are green, new and excited about getting to achieve their dream, many have face-like demeanors as they begin to get warmed up to arenas. However, being a face is not easy. Sometimes it means not being able to travel with your friends, having more obligations outside of the ring but not moving up in the card and not being able to really speak your mind due to public perception
We have seen this happen to Seth Rollins on Twitter, the Kilq experienced traveling issues and we can see this by Titus O'Neil's career trajectory.
So why be a face, when you get just cut corners to get to the top? Just do some politicking backstage and join a stable that will get your more TV time, start fights with other competitors for petty nonsense just to get a boost in your ratings, and taunt the fans to draw more heat because heat is still better than silence.
You could say about half of the newly born faces will go heel at some point to take a quicker path to the top. Shawn Michaels did this to his partner Marty Jannetty. Seth Rollins did this to his stablemates in the Shield right after the shield turned face and The most popular is when the Rock turned heel on the people.
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| Shawn Michaels turning heel kicking his partner Jannetty |
If a superstar doesn't turn heel in this early part of their career, depending on how things go, there is still a good chance that they will turn heel either after they have fallen from the top or if they are tired of being on the bottom or in mid-card for too long.
Frustration about their position in the company is often one the key triggers of causing a face to turn heel. But the journey of a face has a lot of emotional obstacles that they most overcome, from frustration, greed, impatience, to disloyalty, pride, jealousy and hatred. These are the same characteristics, in many ways, that are in every single person of the wwe universe.
The Story of the Face is the story of us. It is how we are trying to overcome our personality flaws as get to the top of our lives.
So far, John Cena is the only character who has not turned heel after their initial baby face run. John Cena has overcome all of the negative emotions that can typically cause a hero to fall to the dark side. And so far, Cena has shown us why is the Ultimate face. He is super Cena.
John Cena is the Face of the Faces.
