Quote:
Originally Posted by Destor
But where does that heat even come from? You try to get heat and they pop. No one has heat, and no one has had head for atleast 10 years. Maybe longer. In 2018 what does heat look like?
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Well, that's sort of my question. I mean, silly as this sounds, and unsustainable as I think it might be, Ciampa got heat in NXT by attacking Gargano. He was a good enough and nurtured babyface that people responded as they should, almost like they got the cue not to ruin the moment by popping for random violence.
I think you can get heat through manipulation of expectation. There are certain words that people don't want to hear. I was going to post about this in the 100,001 thread, but on his latest popcast, Cornette was going through a year's worth of booking for Ronda. I was actually feeling it, haha. What worked about it, without going into specifics, was the building of her as a babyface, then pulling an angle with her down the line (not doing one for months), getting screwed in the blow-off there, and then having her attack Stephanie, making Triple H lose his shit and run down with his headset still on and Ronda jumping on his back when he pulls her off and checks on Steph, leading to her taking her first bump when Triple H flips her instinctively.
I think infrequency, timing, building and using unique moments and visuals can get you babyfaces people care about and heels that are dastardly. I think being a true face or heel is harder than it has ever been, because you need to get in front of people, but I think there is an art to it today that could become en vogue if enough people stand out properly doing it.
And I think you only need a few things that are truly over to be carrying your shows and conditioning that audience to respond to things throughout the rest of your show. If you have a handful of babyfaces that are truly over, and a handful of heels that people genuinely want to see lose, and people get the vibe "oh, we're actually booing the shit-cunts and cheering the heroes," it can become its own trend, so that when Johnny Applecorn debuts and jaw-jacks the crowd, they boo him, because they don't feel as stupid doing it, because they really hate that dick in that other segment.
If all else fails, you can cheat and turn Roman Reigns to turn him babyface. Or do the same with Cena. Either one (probably not both) is going to cause a stir and get people thinking they're "cool." People will act like they are heels, but if you know what you are doing, you can even get kids to buy the Roman Reigns t-shirts and have idiots proudly flogging it thinking that they are going against the program. Reverse engineering the end-product you want, I guess. We want to get you cheering this guy, how do we do it? We act like we want you to boo him. There are ways to work even ironic fans, I think. And, in some ways, that's kind of what they did with the Attitude era. More than the lower-card stuff, it was Austin and Rock being dicks that got over and eventually it became an unironic thing to cheer them and the face and heel dynamics feel as genuine as they ever have. I think the smartest thing they could probably do is turn their "Face of the Company" (hate how this phrase has become part of smark vernacular recently) face by having them not give a fuck about which bland babyfaces they kill. Kind of like what they sort of did with Strowman, except he's not the guy, in my opinion.