Dean Ambrose Has A New Look, Or At Least He Should

Let’s talk about Dean Ambrose’s face. It’s a good face, and a lot of people like it. Most of us haven’t seen it in a while, since he hasn’t appeared in WWE since having tricep surgery last December. Even his non-wrestling appearance at WrestleMania Axxess was canceled, for reasons that were never explained. There was a lot of speculation at that time, with some people even saying that he might be changing his look and WWE wants to keep that under wraps.

Last night, he and Renee Young made a public appearance at the Stanley Cup Finals in Las Vegas, leading a lot of fan reaction to a different looking Dean Ambrose.

The beard in particular has been getting a lot of attention, with comparisons to Sami Zayn and general comments about how good it looks on him. What’s funny about that is that Dean already had a beard before he left WWE TV. It’s true that this beard is fuller and grows higher on his cheeks, but I don’t think that’s the thing people are really reacting to, whether they realize it or not. What makes New-Look Dean’s beard seem so much more appealing is that you’re not distracted from it by the wet, stringy, thinning hair hanging all the way down to his eyes from his receding hairline.

Does he still have that hair, pushed back under the baseball cap? There’s no way to tell for certain. But what is certain, in my opinion, is that the beard can stay but the hair has to go. I’m not saying he should return to WWE in the baseball cap. Cena pretty much owns that look for male wrestlers. No, what I’m saying is that it’s time for Dean Ambrose to shave his head. Growing your hair long to conceal how bald you are may be a proud tradition in wrestling, but it’s just not a cool look these days. Meanwhile, Steve Austin, one of the coolest WWE Superstars ever, proved two decades that embracing your baldness can really work. Kurt Angle, while not so much an icon of cool, made a similar shift during his WWE career.

I don’t need everyone to agree with me on this (although I’m confident I’m right), but I don’t want to hear that Dean Ambrose being bald with a beard would be a problem because of Gallows or Anderson or Ricochet or whoever, unless you want to talk about how many men in this company have long, perpetually wet black hair. A bald dean, with the jeans-and-jacket aesthetic he’s already established, wouldn’t look like anyone else. Most importantly, he’ll no longer look like Desaad from Jack Kirby’s New Gods comics, which has to considered an improvement.