There were plenty of "heel territories" where the top guys forever were heels, like Georgia with the Andersons. WCW was mostly a heel dominated company; Flair/Horsemen to Luger to Vader to NWO on top, with some short interludes.

But Vince has never shown he can successfully build a company around a heel. The company treads water at best when they don't have that one gigantic face at the top.

the thing is you're comparing them against some of the all-time greatest performers.

And there have definitely been megaover heels but they were still either not the draw (slaughter during the gulf war for instance) or were so so so over they just got moved to faces (rock, punk, Bork, etc)

The wwe business model doesn't revolve around the top heel being the star of the show. Punk made that pretty clear in that cabana interview basically saying everyone wanted to be a face because they'd make more in merch sales as a face. To that end this isn't rollins' failure. This is the wwe's for believing they made cena instead of cena being where he is on his own talent. Cena is an all time great performer who could take any character model and make the absolute most out of it. Instead of realizing that it's cena's talent that got him super over vince thinks there's the cookie cutter face template that anyone could fit in and become THE guy.

It's the wwe's inflexibility both with who they want to push and what they want those performers to be that's caused them to not have a single bankable face besides cena and bork. Seth is bombing in terms of ratings because they're not pairing him with a single believable main eventer to serve as a potential foil. Remember when hardcore holly once main evented a PPV for the wwe championship against Bork? That's what every single feud seth has been in that wasn't bork or cena has been: a jobber feud nobody gives a **** about cuz they have no interest in the opponent and/or don't buy the opponent as having a chance of winning

I mean think about it: the kane/rollins feud has lasted a ****ing year and has been a slow burn of will he or won't he culminating in this. The longest feud the wwe has stuck to has been with a guy 18k ppl were chanting 'PLEASE RETIRE!' and 'SAME OLD ****!' at the night after wrestlemania

To be a heel that draws long term you have to be willing and able to work in a way that makes your opponent look better than you. Classic example is Flair in the 80s. Put your effort into selling and using timing and psychology to make the opponents look like a million bucks. Not doing a bunch of cool moves.

And as said, in WWE they make more as faces, so the heels aren't willing to work like that. Rollins always looks better than his opponents. But his character is a jerk and he always loses, so he isn't getting face over right now either. The ratings are certainly more on the company than Rollins, but his working style clashes with his character.

And Vince told Flair "80s heels don't draw anymore". Well, if Flair's style of being a heel doesn't draw, nobody is going to be able to draw as a heel without being turned face for it.

To be clear, in no way do I put some huge majority of the current failures on Rollins, though I don't think that he's very interesting at anything besides actual ringwork.

I would still have expected Vince to, for instance, go back to the Reigns thing that the fans vetoed previously, because it's unlikely to do worse business than this, and if nothing else you would get a spike in interest just for having a title change. It's contrary to most of what Vince does to ever really play the long game like he seemingly is with Seth.

I think the issue is that vince clearly wants Reigns to be the next guy and as such wants his first title to be a win on a huge stage (why he was going over Brock at WM until the backlash) and so Reigns winning the title in a random September/October PPV that nobody really cares about just doesn't work.

I would guess pretty confidently that barring injury Reigns is beating Seth at WM (after Seth beats HHH at the Royal Rumble).

+1

I have no idea how they save this sinking ship at this point

I'm genuinely amazed any of you still watch live

Crazy thought, but maybe some of these "random PPVs that nobody really cares about" shouldn't really exist.

It's incredibly stupid to watch live.

I tune in live a lot of the time for the same reason that I log in to Facebook...because it was something that used to be fun, and now I just do it as a weird compulsion.

I feel this way watching the ppvs since I don't watch RAW. More often than not, I catch myself hating it and hating myself for watching it but I have this hope that it'll get better.

I can't envision Reigns winning the title at Wrestlemania being a success. Judging by the past couple weeks they have no idea how to get him over still. He either has to be heel, or be booked like he was in the Shield, but as a singles (basically Goldberg 2.0; never talks for very long, never loses) for it to have even a remote chance.

He's more Tatanka than Goldburg

It would be soooo easy to save if they wanted to. Like they could make it interesting again within a fortnight.

Make a top 10 line NWA/WCW had in the late 80's/early 90's. Have people trying to get to the top. US champ was always #1 so everybody was also gunning for him. Make the IC belt something by having people care about it. Have more personal feuds. What I think the most important thing is: Stop having all the faces be the same smiling, pandering, oblivious nitwits and instead, let them have personalities. Of course, book the world champion like he deserves to be a champion.

Even Daniel Bryan was so watered down when he left last year. It was going to be a matter of time until the majority turned on him for being Cena-lite.

Things could be done that would turn things around. But the company doesn't seem especially likely to do those things. I suppose people would have said the same thing in 1996, but now they are trying really hard to spread to other global markets. It may very well end up like an empire ignoring the domestic situation while they infiltrate abroad.

You really can't compare the territory days to modern day. Back in the 80s and before, the champ was usually someone who could work heel or face equally well because they are going from territory to territory, working in face in some territories to do programs against heels and working heel in some territories to do programs against faces, because, as stated above, some territories had heels at the top and some had faces.

Yuuuuuuup

Nobody's there to see the heel wrestle, they're there to see the heel hopefully get his ass kicked, or to alternatively be pissed off when the heel avoids getting his ass kicked in some devious way.

Having Seth Rollins lose a random non-title match to whoever because of the Fruit Roll-Ups Roll-Up Distraction Pin Of The Week (seriously, how have they not sponsored these yet, do they still make Fruit Roll-Ups?) isn't that.

You still need a face ppl even somewhat want to see for heel-gets-his-comeuppance to be effective

Ambrose was never more over than during his blood feud with rollins and I think wanting rollins to get his had a lot to do with that

NOBODY wants to see kane

I want to see Kane beat Rollins.

Noob question: why isn't HHH wrestling these last few months (years?)? Is he injured or they just decided do give him some "administrative" duties?

He's 46 years old and doesn't "need" to wrestle any more because he has a cushy backstage job (he's an Executive VP and on the Board of Directors) and is married to Vince's heir. Why abuse your body when you don't have to? Plus, he seems to have a real passion for running a wrestling company (both NXT and WWE) and he'd rather do that than wrestle full time.

Ok I see.

Then I guess it wouldn't make sense story-wise for him to come back for a possible fight against Rollins.

Not that I would want to watch that, I'd rather not in fact.

Paddy Power already has lines up for the following matches (some of the odds in spoilers):

Royal Rumble 2015



Mania 32: Rollins v. Ambrose v. Reigns



Mania 32: Undertaker v. Sting



Mania 32: "Who will compete for WWE World Heavyweight Championship"

I am salivating at the idea of what a promo package for a WM title match between Rollins/Ambrose/Reigns would look like

He still wrestles, just not very often. He wrestled 6 times in 2013, 4 times in 2014, and once in 2015. He's still probably going to wrestle again, possibly at WM. And he's almost certainly going to have a program against Seth Rollins (they've been teasing one on and off for 3-4 months), though the program may involve a new HHH protege instead of HHH/Rollins.