Just thought of an amazingly obvious one:

Have Faces Actually Act Like Faces And Only Let Heels Do Heel Stuff

Exhibit A: Cena/Rusev build, which basically consisted of "Cena challenges for title, Rusev beats him somewhat dirty..."', and:

• 20 years ago would have concluded with "Cena has to fight a bunch of other people while Rusev ducks him and squashes his friend Zack Ryder, which makes Cena go on a Rocky IV Training Montage in Siberia to take Rusev out"
  
• this year consists of "Cena attacks Rusev outside of a match and physically abuses him until he gets what he wants from his screaming girlfriend/whatever Lana is".

Exhibit B: Brock Lesnar is a heel and Roman Reigns is a face why exactly? Because WWE says so? Because Brock Lesnar has done dastardly stuff like being really good at wrestling?

Exhibit C: Randy Orton is a face because he beats the tar out of Seth Rollins outside a match for longer than it takes an average cricket match to finish, because Seth Rollins is naughty so it's OK. (This one doesn't specifically bother me because of Orton's character, but whatever.)

Exhibit D: Face Sheamus Brogue kicked literally everyone that offended him by, for instance, existing within range of a Brogue kick.


Basically I'd sum it up as "WWE expects their faces and heels to be 'whoever they tell us are faces and heels' without differentiating them in any other meaningful way, and that blows. And it shows up in announcers as well."

Meh, 20, even 30 years ago, Hogan was a complete bitch doing underhanded ****. I think faces occasionally doing heel stuff is fine, though it would be helpful if you had a Jesse Ventura in the booth who would call it out really well and stick the face commentator stammering for a reasonable explanation.

I do agree that the faces being way too heelish on a constant basis is a bit of a problem and hurts storytelling, but I would still be inclined to let faces sometimes do objectionable stuff since that's consistent with how good people act in real life too.

Didn't someone do an article a little while ago that opened by quoting the announcers call of a Hogan/Sheik match except that the names "hogan" and "sheik" were flipped. It actually made perfect sense, as Hogan was being victimized by Sheik doing illegal eye-rakes and the like.

Turns out Hogan just got to do whatever he wanted

Yeah, Hogan, but that's sort of the exception that proves the rule IMO.

Also, I kind of draw the line at stuff that happens during matches, I don't mind the occasional eye-rake or the like. People are competitive and want to win and stuff, fine, whatever.

But like if Hogan/Slaughter were booked today Hogan would be waterboarding Slaughter's children to get information out of them or just because it's fun and topical, and I mean, come on.

Hogan totally turned on Savage in '89. He left Savage out there by himself against 2 monsters because he had lust in his heart for Elizabeth.

Let's face it. In 2015 Ricky Steamboat would get back at Macho Man by throwing Miss Elizabeth onto the Spanish announce table and molesting her.

Well, he did try to help George the Animal Steele kidnap her.

That was true love though. A noble cause.

For the most part in the past though faces did heelish things to heels who had recently done something awful to them. "Fighting fire with fire" and "An eye for an eye" are popular norms, for better or worse. Lately faces have just randomly took the low road.

So Ziggler, Ryback, and Rowan get fired when the Authority regains power, but don't get rehired in time for the Rumble. The Rumble has it's share of a couple of surprises and non-WWE contracted wrestlers as normal, including an unknown masked character who they claim is a big deal down in Mexico who enters somewhere around 18 or 19th.

We get down to the final 6 and he's still in there.

Down to 5 and he's still there with Russev, Big Show, Kane, Reigns.

They all gang up on Reigns and pretty much leave him alone. Reigns goes out but takes Kane and Big Show with him. Everyone thinks Russev is going to win and face Brock at WM, but he's eliminated by this masked Mexican star and the crowd is shocked......until he unmasks to reveal himself as Dolph Ziggler with a new haircut.

Now a non-WWE contracted wrestler is going to WM to fight for the title and the Authority craps their pants.

Juan Ziggler

The surprise partner/challenger/Royal Rumble entrant could still work too.

Of course, it's less surprising when you run six weeks of vignettes reminding everyone that he's coming back.

Actually I was coming in here to suggest something similar. I was thinking for a bit of comic relief, you could have a loser leaves town match and the loser comes back a couple weeks later sporting an obvious mask. Sort of like the Giant Machine or Downtown Charlie Brown

Or when you put on the website the day of the event that the guy will be there.

A top tag team that consists of a one heel and one face. Not the tired "Can they get along?!?!" thing but one where they are very good friends but one is a good guy and the other a not so good guy, like Luger with Sting in 95 or 96. Such a great angle.

Luger smiling and high-fiving fans when he knew Sting was looking and then scowling and ripping his arm away from fans when he knew Sting wasn't looking was pure gold.

Aside from his early work with the horsemen and then against them and Flair, that was probably my favorite Luger stuff. Am I right in remembering that they didn't end up paying that off because NWO happened? I'm guessing the original ending was probably supposed to be Luger eventually feuding with Sting.

The "kiss my feet" gimmick Bret had with Lawler.

You can have Harper vs. any number of faces, Ambrose comes to mind first. It fits both of their characters, one is naturally "dirty" and the other is bat **** crazy and would go way over the top.

You satisfy those who buy into the storylines, and the kids and soccer moms can get a few chuckles. For the rest of us, we could watch those two have damn good pro wrestling matches. Just end it at a lower tier PPV.

Didn't they do this recently?

When Hall debuted the Observer reported Luger was going to be the 3rd man in the NWO with Hall and Nash.

The WWE has the perfect blueprint on how to book Rollins as champ now should they choose to follow it.....

1980's Ric Flair

He was a confident, but not cowardly heel, who wrestled great matches, making his opponents look great. He never really got many pinfall victories and ended up losing a lot of his matches, but never got pinned or submitted. He frequently narrowly escaped by the skin of his teeth with help from the Horsemen.

There's potential for awesomeness in his reign.

I thought of this last night but decided not to post because he can't possibly compare to Flair at this point. His booking can but even then, idk.

To the bold: He said that the only matches he ever won were the ones where he won the belt. An exaggeration but a pretty good one. Totally agree that Seth should be the same way.

Yeah, I have no problem with the champ not winning or needing interference, but still looking strong and being confident. It's the getting pinned in a non-title match every other week that would drive me nuts. Losing by DQ or CO where you think the other guy would have beat him, but aren't completely sure, is fine. I never got the feel that Flair was nearly as weak as they book the IC champ these days.

Back then, Flair wasn't wrestling every week or even seen every week on tv so his losses were very few and far between on tv.

This is rather how all NWA heel champions were booked because they simultaneously wanted to keep the title prestigious and also convince the fans in every territory that their local top guy was in fact better than the world champ and therefore the real world champion/uncrowned world champion. And it worked.