In WWE, when you have babyfaces for friends, you obviously don’t need enemies. Steve Cook explains!

It really shouldn’t surprise me by now.

I’ve watched WWE programming long enough to know that their “good guys” or “babyfaces” or whatever term you’d like to use for the people WWE wants us to cheer aren’t perfect. Nobody is. Things are going to slip through the cracks and bad things will happen. After all, without bad things happening there wouldn’t be much of a reason for most of the matches on any given show.

However, the trend of self-involved WWE fan favorites that really don’t give a damn about anything not directly involving them has to have had an impact on the product. I mean, if our favorite wrestlers don’t care about the atrocities happening on our screen, why should we? This week’s Raw episode had two instances where somebody should have come out and done something, but everybody sat on their ass instead. Let’s take a look.

Dominik has no friends

One of the main stories in WWE lately has involved Dominik, the son of Rey Mysterio, becoming a man and becoming a WWE Superstar. I’m in full support of Dominik following in his father’s footsteps and hope he succeeds. Seth Rollins & his disciple Murphy are not in full support, and they finally got one up on the kid this week on Raw after weeks of getting schooled.

They just tore that poor boy up. I know a lot of you think that’s part of him earning his stripes and becoming a man or whatever the hell, but the question you should be asking is WHY WAS THERE NO HELP? At some point, WWE officials should have come out to break that up. I know WWE officials are folks like Pat Buck that get owned by Nia Jax easily so we shouldn’t expect much from them. But, are you telling me that after all these weeks that Dominik has been at Raw, he hasn’t made any friends? There’s nobody backstage that wants to help the kid out?

If we’re assuming that’s the case, it’s even harder for me to believe there’s nobody backstage that respects Dominik’s father enough to help his kid out. I mean, once you get to a certain age, you tend to help out kids of people you respect, even if they’re assholes. Maybe after a time or two you give up on it, but it’s hard for me to believe that Rey Mysterio’s son has somehow managed to turn everybody backstage at a Raw event against him within a couple of months.

And even if we’re assuming that’s the case…it was Seth Rollins doing the damage! Nobody likes that guy! I even have to call Samoa Joe out on this one. Dude stood up for Tom Phillips getting bullied but he can’t stand up for Dominik after 50 kendo stick shots?

Just a terrible showing from everybody on WWE’s roster people should be able to cheer for. I mean, back in the day you’d see some lower-tier babyfaces try to make the save for Dominik and get shook off by Rollins or Murphy. That would be more acceptable than what we see now, people not even showing up. Are they social distancing? That’s the only possible excuse I’d buy.

We got one more.

We all knew this one was coming. The moment that Ric Flair reappeared to be Randy Orton’s second, we knew Randy would get rid of him the moment it became inconvenient. The guy is a Legend Killer, for heaven’s sake. Why did Ric think that wouldn’t apply to him at some point? Ric talked some junk to Kevin Owens, made Randy beat him, and that was enough of a reason to kill that legend.

I mean, I can understand not trusting Ric Flair. Just a few weeks ago, Flair led Christian to his demise at the hands of Randy Orton. If all the faces decided that was enough reason to cut Flair off and not care about what happened to him, I could understand that. That isn’t what we got. Instead, we got Drew McIntyre running down after Orton took forever and a day to punt Flair, telling Randy he was an evil son of a bitch and promising to destroy him at SummerSlam. I mean, I agree with the sentiment. BUT WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU WHILE RANDY ORTON TOOK FOREVER TO KICK RIC FLAIR’S HEAD OFF UNDER FAULTY LIGHTS?

This felt like Drew grandstanding after evil acts by Randy, not really wanting to do anything about them but capitalizing off of them afterwards. I mean, I don’t even remember Drew & Ric ever interacting positively on-screen. Like, ever. Go ahead and prove me wrong if you can. He just came down after Ric got killed to get some heat. If he really cared, maybe he would have come down before? Just an idea. I mean, I don’t know, if I was the WWE Champion and the leader of my “brand”, whatever that means, I might try to stop my main competition from trying to kill a guy in the argument for Greatest Of All Time. I’m just saying that would have more of an effect than running down after the guy got killed.

Up until this point, Drew was doing well! He tried to interact with other people on his show and act like he cared about them, which was a step up from most of WWE’s recent good guys. This whole thing just showed that Drew only cares about people if it serves a purpose. He would have been better off not running down after. If anybody asked, he left the building before. It’s not like Full Sail has awesome security, they couldn’t have proved him wrong.

I haven’t mentioned SmackDown.

That was quite the display of babyface fire. We saw Alexa Bliss nearly get owned by the Fiend again, then we saw the return of Braun Strowman via video screen to declare “I don’t give a damn about Alexa”. So the one humanizing thing about the Monster Among Men can be thrown out the window now that his enemy tried to use it against him. Seems like a wonderful guy, right?

That’s the problem: WWE babyfaces only care about anybody if it serves a purpose.

They’re not motivated by friendship. There’s no respect involved. They only care if they can benefit off of it somehow. WWE thinks this makes sense. WWE thinks this is how people are wired…and sadly, when I look at what’s going on outside of wrestling these days, maybe they’re right. We can’t convince many Americans to wear a mask in public during a pandemic, and I doubt those people care whether their favorite wrestlers save other people or not.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe WWE babyfaces are relatable to the majority of people. Possibly, most WWE fans identify with people that don’t care about issues that don’t directly involve them. They don’t care about friendship, or respect. If it doesn’t involve them, they don’t care, unless they can use it to further their cause.

Maybe that’s what’s going on here, and I’m in the wrong.

If I’m wrong…I don’t want to be right.