What If WWE Turned Becky Lynch Heel?

by Sam Everett, @readsameverett

Since being called up to WWE's main roster from the NXT minor leagues in 2015, Becky Lynch has been a fan favorite. She debuted the same night as Charlotte Flair, who was introduced as a babyface but eventually gave in to her dominant heel gene, and Sasha Banks, who quickly let it be known which side of the face/heel divide she would be embracing by joining a faction called Team B.A.D. But Lynch has never betrayed the fun-loving yet fiery demeanor and started-from-the-bottom spirit that have made fans loyal to her through losing streaks, pay-per-view omissions, and one Women's Championship reign dwarfed by Flair's six and Banks's four. No, Becky Lynch has never been portrayed as anything but an honorable character, a warrior who may be overlooked but doesn't give up. There has never been an effort to turn her to the dark side.

Never.

Nope.

Just call me Becky Balboa. On the way to #WWEUtica with the eye of the tiger pic.twitter.com/dVlYiu3AfL

— Rebecca Quin (@BeckyLynchWWE) May 20, 2016

There are just some characters who have been wearing the white hat so long it seems impossible to get it off them. If legendary golden boy Ricky Steamboat ever grabbed someone's tights while pinning them, you'd have to blame the tights. Friends knew Tito Santana was really upset after his Strike Force tag team partner Rick Martel abandoned him because he could be heard describing Martel as "a real crummy so-and-so" before quickly apologizing. This past week on SmackDown Live Becky Lynch appeared to be in a sour mood over her fans' hashtags not appearing on her Twitter feed. I'm pretty sure her beef was with Twitter anyway. It almost had to be. At any rate, her fanbase is so rabid, and she is of such a pure and indomitable will that it would seem foolish to ever try to make a villain of her.

Foolish.

To ever try.

But what if WWE did? It seems like a fun exercise to explore how effective various approaches would be, on a scale of one to ten, with a one being utter failure, and ten being a completely successful turn (obviously a ten will be impossible to achieve).

1. Lynch earns a title shot by beating the champ, but Flair pops into the title scene like the Kool-Aid man, Lynch's one-on-one title match becomes a Triple Threat, Flair pins her as she's moments away from making the champ tap out, and an angry Lynch attacks Flair afterward.

This would be stupid. Why wouldn't we recognize Lynch's anger is justified? Aren't she and Flair supposed to be friends? Why couldn't Flair just wait until Lynch wins the title then challenge her to a one-on-one match? 1/10

2. Desperate to win the title, Lynch forms an alliance with Stephanie McMahon and arch-nemesis James Ellsworth. The ChinLass Power Trip quickly acquires the Women's Championship, the men's WWE Championship, and wins the 2019 Mixed Match Challenge, pummeling Byron Saxton and Naomi and the Usos with a chair in consecutive weeks.

As long as Ellsworth doesn't tear both quads and Lynch doesn't join Ronda Rousey's invading version of the Four Horsewomen, even a scaled down version of this might work! Of course, it's just as plausible Lynch's teflon likability would rub off on Ellsworth, who himself was originally propelled to stardom by fan outcry. "Any team with four hands has a fighting chance"? 5/10

3. After a falling out with her best friend Flair, Lynch is confronted by Charlotte's dad and 16-time world champion Ric Flair, who hopes to patch things up between Tea-Generation X. Unconvinced, Lynch physically assaults Ric. He catches a heart attack like Eddie Guerrero's mother, and Lynch shows no remorse. Charlotte goes on the warpath to avenge her father.

Maybe? But why should Lynch show remorse? Flair has a history of heart trouble. He shouldn't be anywhere near a wrestling ring. Plus Flair took all the goodwill earned from one of the most emotional farewell matches in history--his, ahem, retirement match at WrestleMania 24--and flushed it down the toilet. To heck with that guy. Mind your business, Naitch. 3/10

4. Lynch dyes her hair blond and gets breast enhancement surgery.

If an implant ruptures like Charlotte Flair's recently did, it would keep Lynch out of the ring, and for that reason alone fans might resent her makeover. But that's it. 2/10

5. It's revealed Lynch is the cousin of Stone Cold Steve Austin. Not-so-coincidentally, she is soon the subject of nearly every main event program, with a disproportionate amount of television time devoted to her over other qualified performers like, say, Asuka. When fans point this out, she faces Asuka in a match with the sole purpose of defeating her so Asuka can sing her praises, come down with a mystery ailment, retire for two years, un-retire and wrestle on Raw, away from Lynch. Lynch's once compelling persona is overexposed until her inner flame more resembles a smoldering campfire. She refers to herself as "not a Good Lass or a Bad Lass, but THE Lass" (but actually delivers the line as "The LASS" more often than not). She wins the Royal Rumble with the help of Cousin Steve after he Stunners Sasha Banks, then they both look absolutely dumbfounded when they are showered in boos.

Still only good for 9/10. Children will cheer for her because her hair looks cool and they're told to.

Of course, it's all hypothetical. Becky Lynch has been one of the most consistently popular performers of the past several years. WWE must realize changing her orange stripes would be a delicate, highly difficult--if not outright undoable--task. She may be 100% Bad Lass, but she stands firmly on the side of good . . . to this very day.

We'll Miss Missing the Champ

by Sam Everett, @readsameverett

In two reigns and 426 days with the WWE Championship, AJ Styles has defended his title on 15 occasions. Since signing with WWE on a part-time basis, in his two reigns and 728 days as either WWE or Universal Champion, Brock Lesnar defended his title 11 times. Before he claimed the Universal Championship from Goldberg at WrestleMania 33, the title was defended once a month like clockwork; once Lesnar got a hold of it, it wasn’t uncommon for two or three Dwayne Johnson movies to premiere between title defenses. If new champ Roman Reigns, fresh off his victory over Lesnar at SummerSlam, is to be believed, those days are over. He will be, he assures us, a Fighting Champion.

And it’s too bad.

WWE touts itself as sports entertainment, and when it comes to title defenses on its Raw brand, it’s been taking cues from both sports and entertainment. The UFC Heavyweight Championship (the one, incidentally, that has drawn Lesnar away from scripted fighting) was defended by Stipe Miocic four times between late 2016 and July of this year (current champ Daniel Cormier has not yet made a defense); WBC Heavyweight Champion Deontay Wilder has defended his title just seven times since 2015. Meanwhile, in episodic television (and as lead announcer Michael Cole can be heard muttering in his sleep, WWE’s Raw is “the longest running weekly episodic show in television history!”) writers and showrunners typically build up storylines to culminate at their season finales. If WWE can be said to have season finales, pay-per-view events like WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Royal Rumble would qualify, and in his most recent reign Lesnar was coaxed out of his secluded Saskatchewan tannery to defend his title on those cards. A Lesnar title defense has been rightfully treated like an event.

It’s brought to mind the Hulk Hogan Era of WWE, when even with only four pay-per-views on the calendar the Heavyweight Championship still wasn’t defended at every event. When not only the champion but nearly the entire upper-card might appear on television every week in a pre-taped interview segment, but rarely in a match, and certainly never in a match against another top star. We shouldn’t pine for the days of old just for the sake of nostalgia, but it’s undeniable that a Hogan title defense was not to be missed. A Hogan interview segment was not to be missed. And, indeed, thirty years later these matches and segments are still among the most monumental moments in WWE history. This can be attributed to many factors, not the least of which is that it must be difficult to create a memorable segment or match worthy of the world champion every week.

One might counter that the Stone Cold Steve Austin Era saw title defenses more often than in even the current product, and pro wrestling was never more popular than during this time. And it’s true, and these title defenses didn’t even devalue the title--but only because the world championship wasn’t of much value anyway. No championship was. Vince McMahon, a fifty-four year old at the time with no formal wrestling experience, held the WWF Championship. Stephanie McMahon, with even less wrestling experience than her father Vince, was the Women’s Champion. The Hardcore Championship was meant almost specifically to change hands on a nightly basis. It was held together with duct tape. Shane McMahon (guess how much wrestling experience he had) got a run with the European Championship. There was a European Championship. In a time when Jerry Springer was among the most popular figures in America, the spectacle was the thing. Moreover, the at-the-time WWF was embroiled in a weekly ratings war against World Championship Wrestling, and both companies had to pull out all the stops, including main eventing episodes with title defenses. That’s no longer the case.

We understand world championships are more or less props, but each and every character in WWE would tell you he or she eventually wants to win the big belt in his or her division. In the scripted narrative of sports entertainment, the world championship is the most valuable prize imaginable. The scarcity--even the false scarcity--of opportunity surrounding the title is powerful, be it our opportunity to watch a championship match, to imagine what upheaval will come to this fictional world after the count of three, or the wrestlers’ opportunity to compete for the championship.

In just over a year on SmackDown Live, Shinsuke Nakamura has fought for the WWE Championship seven times, as a face and as a heel, and against two different champions. And now it seems the audience and the writers have moved on from him for the time being. In contrast, in four years on Raw Braun Strowman has challenged for the Universal Championship three times, and the audience is starving for him to win it. Prior to defending against Samoa Joe at SummerSlam, AJ Styles put his title on the line against Rusev, seemingly because he was fresh out of heel challengers, having convincingly defeated Nakamura over the course of four months and countless matches that only seemed to decrease in quality as they went on. Styles is one of the best in-ring performers in the world right now, but even LeBron James has middling games, and much like writers can’t realistically create compelling storylines around the title every week, Styles can’t be expected to put on a match worthy of the WWE Championship every month. Even if he could, the Law of Diminishing Returns is a real thing.

(We won’t miss Brock Lesnar himself. He is a naturally compelling personality but that’s just it--it’s natural. He doesn’t have to work to display it. The parts of professional wrestling that do require effort--travel, putting together entertaining matches that last longer than eight minutes--have never seemed to interest him. He does throw around four hundred pound men like bags of sand, but you get the sense that if he never made it big in sports or entertainment, he’d still be in South Dakota charging locals $5 to watch him throw steel beams across the parking lot of the highway bar. There are no more dream matches for him, unless you can’t live without seeing Finn Balor or Daniel Bryan take an admirable beating before succumbing to a sudden F5 in about the time it takes No Way Jose to dance to the ring.)

But in the midst of the inevitable whirlwind of title defenses and title changes coming Raw’s way, as Reigns and Strowman and Owens and Rollins and Ambrose and McIntyre trade the belt around so often I'm considering breaking into the nameplate engraving business, we’ll wish there was some part-timer holding the belt. We’ll wish the champion wasn’t always fighting.