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EditorialWWE Naughty or Nice List 2016: 3-Count of Best Faces & Heels...

WWE Naughty or Nice List 2016: 3-Count of Best Faces & Heels of the Year

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It’s Christmastime and December is winding down, so with the 2016 Smark Out Moment Awards coming up, I’ve been in the spirit of recapping what has transpired over the past year in WWE. As such, for the second year in a row, I wanted to tie this into the festive spirit by presenting the final 3-Count of 2016: the Naughty and Nice list of the best babyfaces and heels of the year.

As far as how I went about picking these names, I went with a mixture of accomplishments, longevity, intensity and character work. You won’t find someone like Brock Lesnar here under heels because he was missing most of the time and was humiliated at Survivor Series. Just the same, you won’t find Finn Balor under babyfaces because he lost his NXT Championship and was about to bounce back with the Universal title, but had to immediately relinquish it and vanish. People like Cesaro and Sheamus really showcase the difference between face and heel, but they don’t get the same crowd reaction as others do in their field.

Keeping all that in mind, which men and women made my list? Let’s take a look…

BEST BABYFACES

The New Day

This tag team was able to be utterly ridiculous the entire year and never drop in popularity. Would you imagine a few years ago that the most over tag team in WWE since The Shield would have the crowd’s support based on a platform of socks, cereal, unicorns, Big E gyrating his hips, asking “who?” and a couple of trombones?

For God’s sake, we’re talking about a comedic tag team which does more ludicrous things than The Golden Truth and still somehow outshines the popularity of Enzo and Cass, the in-ring credibility of every other team on the roster and has managed to surpass Demolition’s title reign record!

You can’t get much better when it comes to the best babyfaces on the roster than The New Day. Men and women, adults and children, all different races and all backgrounds have pretty much universally backed this silly team for an extremely ended amount of time when other acts have grown stale much sooner or had the audience split on cheers and boos.

Bayley

No woman in the entire company gets a reaction like Bayley, especially not on such a consistent basis. While you can try to make an argument that Sasha Banks should be on this list instead because of her title wins and having much more of the spotlight, that actually works against her favor in my mind as far as my own credentials for this list. The fact that Sasha has had that much more to work with and still isn’t connecting with the crowd at the same level Bayley is doing with such ease means if you applied the same title matches to Bayley, she’d eclipse Sasha by an even greater margin.

Both of them are great in the ring, which balances them out, but while Sasha has more accolades, Bayley has a stronger babyface foundation to build upon. There’s no “boss section” is there? Plus, if you remember the promo leading into Survivor Series where Charlotte was trying to introduce Sasha Banks, the crowd was much more interested in singing about Bayley. That speaks volumes in more ways than one.

Watch out for 2017 to be the year where Bayley truly shoots for the stars.

Dean Ambrose

The Lunatic Fringe may do things from time to time which seem like they’re more up a heel’s alley, but through and through, Dean Ambrose has remained a babyface for the entirety of 2016. He’s made the save for different people despite having no allegiance to them and his feuds have revolved around heels save for a few babyfaces who got in his way when it came to triple threats (which is natural and happens to everyone, so that excuses the John Cena interactions, for instance). He’s the top babyface on SmackDown, particularly with Cena’s long-standing absence.

As far as accomplishments go, Ambrose started the year off with the Intercontinental Championship and eventually found a way to become Mr. Money in the Bank, cashing in that title opportunity later on that night to win the WWE Championship, which turned him into the figurehead of the blue brand. Few characters get the reaction Ambrose gets, positive or negative, but while WWE loves to cover up Reigns and Cena’s mixed response as “there’s no such thing as bad news”, they don’t need to dance around Ambrose as he’s simply cheered.

BEST HEELS

The Miz

How many people can say they’ve feuded with Daniel Bryan since he retired from in-ring competition? The Miz can, as he’s done just that ever since the brand split. While I’ve always been a supporter of his and thought the past few years have not been as kind to him as they should have been, 2016 saw a shift where many others started drinking from his fountain once more, realizing that he’s one of the best heel characters the company has had over the past few years.

Almost singlehandedly, The Miz put Talking Smack on the map with one promo against Daniel Bryan and the amount of momentum he’s been able to squeeze out of that is impressive. Dolph Ziggler has benefited drastically by feuding with him, Maryse has accomplished more just by being ringside with him than folks like Naomi have done by busting their ass all year, and the Intercontinental Championship is in better shape than it’s been in a long while, similar to how the United States Championship had a boost while John Cena was holding it.

The Miz could have easily faded into obscurity with the brand split as someone who had already had his share of the limelight and could be used as a stepping stone to push younger talent, but instead of falling victim to that, he’s remained the second-in-line heel on the SmackDown brand and far surpassed anything Rusev did with the United States title on Raw even though both were set up to be on even playing field when the draft originally happened. The Miz succeeded to new heights while Rusev is currently feuding with Enzo Amore and Big Cass.

Samoa Joe / The Revival

This one is a tie because when I was debating which of the two to go with and listing my reasons, they pretty much lined up perfectly with each other. Samoa Joe and The Revival have been booked in extremely similar situations all throughout the year.

For instance, The Revival went into 2016 as champions, dropping their titles to the babyface fan favorite team of American Alpha, only to win it back soon after. They lost it again to #DIY in Toronto. Samoa Joe defeated the babyface fan favorite Finn Balor in the beginning of the year to win the NXT Championship, had a long reign before dropping it to Shinsuke Nakamura, only to win it back relatively soon after in Toronto.

Neither The Revival nor Samoa Joe are champions right now, but both had two title reigns for a good portion of the year, ran roughshod through the roster, perpetually backed up their claims of supremacy with wins, and never had character shifts that could allow for them to be cheered throughout the entire thing. From start to finish, they were just the bad guys when compared to everybody they were up against.

Charlotte Flair

I’ll fully admit that she doesn’t resonate with me the way she does many other people, nor does she have anywhere near the clout in my mind as WWE has painted her to be. Clearly, they value her a lot more than I do, and if this were a list of my “favorite” heels, she would be toward the bottom as I can’t stand her promos and I’ve been sick of her being the focal point of the division since the beginning of the year.

That being said, look at the sentence that I just wrote: she’s been the focal point of the division not just since the beginning of the year, but carrying over from 2015, even. WWE has gone through every measure possible to ensure Charlotte is the absolute peak when it comes to not just heels in the women’s division, but women in general. She’s gone undefeated at pay-per-views, defeated Sasha Banks all three times in her rematches to regain her title, was booked to lay out Bayley after winning at Survivor Series, has twice renounced her own father, and continues to yack on about the same old nonsense about being the queen like a typical heel would do.

Her execution of it is painfully annoying and not in a good way, and I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t watch her segments, but that’s my own personal preferences for entertainment rather than a ranking for credibility. If I remove myself from the equation, I can’t deny Charlotte is the be-all and end-all top heel as far as women in WWE in 2016. Alexa Bliss has done a much better job in her position, but it’s been extremely short in comparison, so the two situations just don’t have the same weight. I have no doubt 2017 will help balance those scales a bit where Alexa can possibly usurp that spot, but for these past 12 months, it’s been Charlotte all the way.

THE TWEENERS

Sometimes, things aren’t so black and white, so you don’t simply fall into either the good or the evil category. WWE is a weird animal where you can be a bad guy who gets cheered or a good guy who gets booed. Someone like Roman Reigns may be booked as a top babyface but the crowd never gets behind him, which means he shouldn’t be eligible for either best heel or face. Then, there’s someone like Seth Rollins who is very popular, but spent most of the year lingering in the void as a heel supported by the crowd, then switched over to a babyface who definitely gets cheered but doesn’t have a lot of experience in that regard, splitting the difference. Whether they’re a good guy who acts bad or they’re someone who was a heel half the year and a babyface the other half, these are three names that you can place in the gray area of best “tweener” for 2016:

JeriKO

Undoubtedly, Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens have been heels this year. They’ve feuded almost exclusively with the heroes and when their paths have crossed with other villains, it wasn’t out of any kind of honor, but a clash of egos. However, all throughout their partnership, the crowd has firmly embraced them.

The List of Jericho gets a bigger pop from the crowd in one night than if you combined the noise level of all cheers people like Darren Young, Curtis Axel, Mojo Rawley and other lesser folk had throughout the entire year. Kevin Owens can frequently insult fans in his promos before matches but will still have at least half the fans in attendance rooting for him no matter who he’s up against.

At any point in time, if WWE chose to have them turn babyface, it could be done at the drop of a hat just by putting them up against other heels and the crowd would have eaten it up with no protest, even though it’s hard to argue that they aren’t in better positions as they currently are.

AJ Styles

It would be weird not to give AJ Styles credit for all he’s done this year, but he’s an example of someone whose strengths are the sum of his parts rather than the separate categories. For the first half of the year, he was a babyface, switching over to a heel later on. He’s succeeded in both, but others have surpassed him in terms of longevity and having more time to tweak their characters.

Still, he’s been one of the best performers throughout the year, having quite a bit of responsibility placed on his shoulders despite making his debut at the end of January. To rise to that level is incredibly impressive while trying to learn the ins and outs of the company he’s never been part of before. The more time he spends in WWE, the more comfortable he gets, which means 2017 should be an even better year for him. Whether he goes through the majority of next year as a heel or babyface is still yet to be seen, but he’ll assuredly be in the top class for whichever one.

Heath Slater

Things have petered out a bit since he fully turned babyface, but there was a point in time this year around the draft where Heath Slater was smack dab in the middle of heel/face as a tweener who had audiences in the palm of his hands while he was being destroyed on both Raw and SmackDown, hoping to get a job somewhere on either of those two brands.

This was one of the best storylines to come out of the brand split, which is odd considering how inconsequential Slater was beforehand. Instead of being pushed to the moon, he was able to become a more substantial member of the roster by losing over and over again as a free agent.

Eventually, this led to a tag team title reign—the first belt he held since April 19, 2011 when he was partnered up with Justin Gabriel as members of The Corre. Over five years had to go by, but he finally gained enough notoriety as a cheered heel / booed babyface jobber to become a fan favorite champion.

Those are my picks, but who do you think should be considered the best babyfaces and heels of 2016? Who do you think will take these spots in 2017? Tell us what you’re thinking in the comments below, and happy holidays, everyone!

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