“We’ve got to make sure we’re working on ourselves and that we’re making ourselves the best, and let all of the other things be damned. Because it doesn’t matter. We’re all people at the end of the day.”
Creating a sudden heel turn is easy: all you need is a steel chair. Or a kendo stick. Or a window.
In a pinch, in fact, you need nothing but two treacherous hands and a darkened heart.
Admittedly, for a heel turn based on betrayal it helps to have a friendship to betray, and those are harder to come by. Those take time to build: months or years of effort, dozens or hundreds of happy moments strung like beads to create something valuable that people care about. There are things besides friendship you can destroy: some heel turns are a rejection of the love of the fans, a figurative steel chair to the relationship built over time between wrestler and audience. But once you’ve got either a friendship or the fans’ love to work with, the most powerful heel turns have an elegant simplicity at their base.
A sudden face turn? That’s a lot trickier to pull off. Audiences are ready to be shocked, to be horrified, to be shattered in an instant. They’re slower to trust, to love, to open their bruised hearts one more time. That’s why most face turns are more gradual, giving the audience time to get used to their growing affection. Wrestling fans are like skittish cats, distrustful of sudden apologies, quick changes of heart. We look sidewise at the coaxing open hand and remember being kicked before and sidle away nervously, waiting for more certain proof. Face turns require careful timing and structure and a decent amount of sheer luck. Pulling one off over the course of a single match is a real challenge.
This is the story of one of my favorite sudden face turns: Mustafa Ali, the Heart of 205 Live.
Charlotte, an emotional moment just now with your long-time friend turned bitter rival Becky Lynch choosing you to replace her in the match against Ronda Rousey. Can you put this moment into words?
kelofthesea 