Bray Wyatt, The Shield blurring the lines between wrestling babyface, heel

Jim Ross can’t understand why WWE heel Bray Wyatt had the audience singing along with him at the end of Monday Night Raw after the Wyatt Family’s handicap match against john cena.

“Nonetheless, I’m interested in where the Wyatts are traveling,” said Ross, a former executive vice president of talent relations in WWE.

Aren’t we all interested in where the Wyatts are traveling? That Wyatt can get thousands of fans to buy into his character to the point where they sing along with his rambling “whole world in his hands” finish with Cena, feigning unconsciousness, in his lap, is a testament to how over he is.

Which is why the talk is that WWE is eventually going to turn the Wyatt Family face, with eventually maybe coming sooner rather than later, given what we saw Monday night. Just as the plan has been all along to turn Roman Reigns of The Shield face to make him a top singles draw, but in the meantime, we have the entire Shield as faces (as a result of their rivalry with the Wyatts, first, and now the newly-reformed Evolution).

The Shield started out as heels, and punk heels at that, drawing heat with their patented three-on-one attacks on jobbers and superstars alike. As with top heels from the Attitude Era like Stone Cold Steve Austin and DX, they started drawing cheers while at the height of their heel run, and may be even more over with fans as heels even as creative tries to make them faces.

The same may be the case with the Wyatts, with Bray Wyatt’s ascent to the top of the heel class as a singles wrestler not being hurt in the slightest by his clean fall loss at WrestleMania 30 to Cena. If anything, the loss to Cena only made him more over with fans, because of the way creative wrote around the loss that we all knew was coming. Wyatt didn’t seem to want to win, instead focusing his efforts on getting inside Cena’s head, efforts that are ongoing post-WrestleMania.

It might not be the best move for WWE to follow through with the plan to turn Wyatt face. He’s infinitely hotter as a heel, and WWE is going to need someone to serve as a sort of hub and spoke for the heel faction once the Evolution angle runs its course, which we have to hope is soon.

(Randy Orton, Batista and Triple H are not over, no matter how hard Triple H and Vince McMahon want us to buy into them being over.)

Reigns, on the flip side, is destined to be a top face, and the inevitable split with Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins will push him in that direction, and also elevate Ambrose and Rollins toward the top of the heel faction, which is their rightful place. The sneering Ambrose and Rollins as the muscle, along with whoever creative places with them as the replacement for Reigns in their faction down the road, will define the likes of Reigns, Cena and Daniel Bryan by serving as the ultimate foils.

Here’s to seeing Wyatt take his rightful place in that mix. Remember, he owns a pay-per-view victory over Bryan, the new WWE and World champ, in calendar year 2014. How about a nice psychologically draining feud with Bryan to take us into SummerSlam in August?

– Column by Chris Graham