In professional wrestling, the term baby face, or face, refers to the good guy in a match, while the term heel applies to the bad guy. Promoters will usually choose someone who relates to the crowd to take the role of face because the crowd will likely support that individual. The face rarely breaks the rules and listens to the referee, which helps get the crowd on his side over the course of a match or feud.
Origins
Because professional wrestling does not have seasons or home teams, promoters have to come up with a way to get spectators emotionally involved in the matches. During the 1920s, promoters realized that they could accomplish this by giving each wrestler a persona, which the spectators could choose to either love or despise. At the time, promoters would usually choose clean-cut and good-looking men as faces, while making overweight, old or foreign-born wrestlers into heels.
Face Characters
Promoters learned that people related to certain characters better than others, so they began to put faces into these roles. Characters depicting American Indians, cowboys and hillbillies would always become faces, as crowds in rural areas could relate to them. These characters would always follow the rules and attempt to thwart the evil heel, who would break the rules any chance that he got.
Pre-Match
While most fans today will know the difference between a face and a heel when attending a match because of the availability of wrestling on TV, faces had a much more difficult role in earlier days. Before a match, the face would have to attempt to get the crowd on his side. During his entrance, the face would wave to the crowd, give out high-fives and would embrace the cheers from the crowd. This behavior would prove to the crowd that they could trust this individual because he appeared to enjoy their words of encouragement.
During the Match
As a professional wrestling match progresses, the face will generally take a lot of punishment from the heel, which makes the crowd believe that the face has no chance of winning. Eventually, the face will begin a comeback from this punishment, which leads to a dramatic finish. If the face comes back to win this match, the crowd will go home happy. If the heel manages to cheat and win the match in the end, it makes the crowd hate the heel even more and perhaps motivates them to return to see the heel demolished at a future bout.
References
- "Swimming with Piranhas: Surviving the Politics of Professional Wrestling"; Howard Brody; 2009
- "Ringside: A History of Professional Wrestling in America"; Scott M. Beekman; 2006
- "Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle"; Sharon Maze; 1998
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