LogFAQs > #909688817

Pus_N_Pecans posted...

EclairReturns posted...

I am unfamiliar with the terminology being used in this topic.

This. I'm surprised everyone else is acting like these are common terms.

They kinda are, since wrestling is or was mainstream.

Face is short for babyface. It's the goody two-shoes that the crowd is supposed to root for. They do things by the book, are honest, brave, etc. They talk about how great it is to be in ___ town and try to get the people on their side.

Heels are dirty rotten scoundrels. They try to get the crowd to boo them, often by insulting the town or audience. (For instance, Scott Steiner will cut promos where he talks about beating up all the men and fucking their women... which he's said in front of children.) They're cowardly, they take cheap shots, and they frequently cheat to win. Heels exist to make faces look good. The heels piss people off and the faces get over with the crowd by kicking the heels' asses.

Then you also have the monster heel. It's basically a non-cowardly heel. The role is generally associated with really large or strong wrestlers. (Andre the Giant (although he started as a face, he did better business as a heel) and the Big Show are good examples, with Brock Lesnar and Braun Strowman being more recent examples.)

Faces and heels were a simple good/bad paradigm. It ensured that crowds wouldn't be divided over who they cheered. Of course, as people started to get smart to the business (because promotions stopped acting like it was real), fans started to cheer cool heels (like Razor Ramon aka Scott Hall) and thus the tweener was born. The tweener is usually a face who does heel stuff, like vandalizing a heel's car or cheating to win. Most tweeners are guys who were heels at one point and kept some of their heel tricks.

Then you have terms like heat, which basically means bad feelings. Heat can be used to mean that an audience hates a particular character -- and heels would cheat the entire match to get the crowd riled out so they would "pop" (ie, cheer) when the face eventually gets his payback -- or it can just mean bad blood between wrestlers (real or fake feuds).
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