Down With Hugs: Why Bayley Needs To Turn Heel

When Bayley beat up Sasha Banks after their tag match on Monday, everybody got excited. Finally, after months of ­alternating between slow burn storytelling and just not telling the story at all, the tension between the two best friends and former worst enemies had finally, definitely exploded! This is what their fans were waiting for! Except that Bayley was doing the beating when most fans expected Sasha to turn heel.

Since Raw ended, there have been arguments about whether or not this represented a heel turn for Bayley, or just more of a “toughening up” while keeping her a babyface. Rumors even exist that it was intended as a heel turn, but that the direction might change because as soon as she started beating on Sasha, the crowd started cheering for her. We could argue all day, but what we really have until Monday is a Schrödinger’s Heel Turn. Whether it was actually a turn or not will be retroactively determined by Bayley’s behavior on the next Raw.

It’s worth noting, though, that this morning Sasha tweeted a photo of her Mattel doll holding the severed head of a Bayley doll, which you have to admit seems pretty heelish.

Meanwhile Bayley is obviously going through something, but it’s less clear exactly what.

I’m here, as you’ve put together by now, to offer my opinion as a fan and a writer: Bayley needs to be a heel right now, and being a heel will be better in the long run for her classic babyface character than becoming a tougher face.

First of all, heel Bayley is just exciting. The person who loved everyone and was deeply invested in friendship deciding that actually friendship is meaningless and it’s time for her to look out for No. 1 is a great story that makes sense. Also, Bayley is a fantastic wrestler and a student of wrestling like few others, and I want to see the choices she makes as a heel. I want to see Bayley in less colorful gear, no ponytail, no tube men, grim-faced as she stalks to the ring.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily want to see that forever, but that’s the other cool thing — once Bayley turns heel, eventually she gets to turn face again, even if it takes a couple years or so. The moment when she hugs someone again (maybe Sasha) after it hasn’t happened in ages, perhaps after making a surprise save, will make people cry. And the next show after that, when she comes out with the ponytail and maybe even the tube men again? That’s the moment when Bayley gets over as a babyface on the main roster like she never has before.

On the other hand, if they don’t make Bayley a heel, and instead just make her the kind of babyface who will beat up her sometimes-estranged best friend at great length with no immediate provocation, that’s really messing with the fundamentals of who Bayley is.

It’s frustrating for her NXT fans; I know as well as anyone, because in NXT she was sweet but also tough. You can be both of those things at the same time in NXT — Kairi Sane and Candice LeRae, among others, continue to prove it — but I’m not sure you can be sweet and tough on the main roster, which is run by older, nastier men than the ones who run NXT. Most of the time on Raw, if you’re sweet, friendly, or god forbid nerdy, it means that you’re weak. That’s why at Extreme Rules last year, Main Roster Bayley was hesitant to even hit Alexa Bliss with a kendo stick that was legal in the match. NXT Bayley would have beaten the crap out of Bliss with that stick, given the bloody stick to Izzy as a souvenir on the way up the ramp, and not felt bad about it for a second.

Because of this different in what toughness means on Raw as opposed to NXT, I worry. If Bayley stays a babyface on Raw but “toughens up,” what does she lose? How much of what makes her so special will still be there if she’s just another Main Roster WWE Jerkass Babyface? I’ll take an evil Bayley who renounces friendship and hugs over a nominally good Bayley for whom those things matter less because they seem like signs of weakness. Particularly because anything she loses as part of a heel turn has the potential to come back to greater effect in the future, but I fear anything she loses in an attempt to make her a cooler babyface might end up being gone forever.