While doing the Mic Battle between Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair, something else popped into my head. Let’s get into WWE’s babyface champion booking.
Both were more prominent during the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. As the late 90s came around tweeners and cool heels became the order of the day.
However, before the 90s wrestling boom both promotions were defined by the booking of their champions. Opponents who managed to win the belt were often transitional.
Let’s do a quick breakdown of both and you tell us which booking approach you preferred: WWE’s face World Champion or WCW’s heel World Champion.
The Babyface Approach of WWE
Looking at the title history of the WWE Championship—yes, the Eagle belt—before the Attitude Era, you’ll notice that heels had usually had shorter reigns.
WWE focused more pushing babyfaces. They represented the company and were easy to promote in the north.
The 1960s and early 1970s featured ethnic champions such as Pedro Morales and Bruno Sammartino who pulled Puerto Rican and Italian fans to shows.
Bob Backlund, Hulk Hogan, and—for a portion—Randy Savage ran the 1980s as WWE’s face champions with lengthy runs that ran either over or just shy of a year at the minimum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv2po0qWVww
The heels who snatched the belts between those babyface reigns? Purely transitional. Well, Buddy Rogers couldn’t be considered transitional as he was the first.
Most of the champions of the 70s and 80s held the belt for short period. The only exceptions were Savage’s run as “The Macho King” and Superstar Billy Graham.
Distancing from the Babyface Approach and A Return
WWE ran this approach throughout the 1990s but changed it up with the Attitude Era. Faces who fought for good were old hat and fans were craving that gray champion.
As a result, fighting back against authority and being as violent as the heels was hot. Tweeners and face-leaning tweeners were a counter to cocky and authoritative heels.
Also, title reigns were much shorter in the late 90s, matching the MTV-attention span approach of Attitude Era booking.
I mean, it makes sense that the reigns were brief. The Attitude Era had so much carnage only for enemies to team up as if someone wasn’t burned or tossed off a bridge months ago.
Just…might as well run a train on the WWE Championship. Who cares at this point?
While the babyface champion approach didn’t return, the babyface versus monsters approach was alive and well with the rise of John Cena.
Why Did The Babyface WWE Champion Work?
Heels breezed through WWE turf regularly and a home base face was essential for one thing. Also, you had an abundance of monsters and Canadians in two factions.
One group was run by Heenan while the other was managed by Jimmy Hart. By the 1980s, neither were concrete factions just a group of clients handled by these two.
You also had some roving heels signed to WWE. All of these guys were fodder for Hogan who needed to slay monsters on TV and PPV and anything at house shows.
As for the 60s and 70s, running an Irish, Italian, or Puerto Rican champion in the northeastern U.S was as big and just good business.
A promoter ran the champion for their fanbase. In Watts’ Mid-South, Black champions were big. Latino champions were hot in mid south and southwest.
Of course, no one told the CWA booking powers that than when Memphis was pulling a large Black fanbase in the 1980s and 1990s but whatever.
Depending on the situation in that decade, bookers pretty much ran their champions accordingly. In WWE’s case, babyface heroes that looked like their fans worked.
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