WWE and AEW Stars Who Need to Turn Babyface or Heel in 2023

One of the best ways to freshen up a wrestler who has grown stale is to turn them heel or babyface.

This can pull them out of a rut or be what finally clicks in their performance for them to hit their stride, like Roman Reigns becoming The Tribal Chief. In other cases, it can just switch up their potential dance partners.

Many AEW and WWE Superstars are exactly where they should be, but there are a handful who are in need of a shift in attitude in 2023.

The Undisputed Era had a great thing going in NXT but arguably made a mistake by going to AEW, where they've been misused and run into more problems than successes.

Currently, it is still up in the air if and when Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly will return, while Bobby Fish is gone entirely from the company, meaning all those trios matches are off the table.

Without doing those three against The Elite, there is less of a reason for Cole and O'Reilly to stay heel and continue fighting against the crowd that loves to support them.

WWE eventually realized this and turned The Undisputed Era babyface. Since audiences aren't going to stop chanting "Adam Cole bay bay!" any time soon, AEW should do the same.

Cole and O'Reilly can then feud with heels like MJF, The Jericho Appreciation Society and House of Black and likely put on banger matches with all of them.

AJ Styles goes through heel and face turn cycles seemingly every other year in WWE, and now that he's with Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows, it might be time for The O.C. to become villains again.

Their feud with The Judgment Day has to end, and eventually there won't be too many other heel factions worth seeing them battle against.

Once they check off The Bloodline, Imperium and Legado del Fantasma, they'll have likely run out of steam and will need to turn heel for more options like The Brawling Brutes and The Street Profits.

Styles also has babyface singles competitors he'd pair well against, like Johnny Gargano and Cody Rhodes.

Meanwhile, Mia Yim would make for a tough challenge to Bianca Belair or Becky Lynch—whoever ends up as the top babyface in the women's division—but wouldn't justifiably dethrone a heel Ronda Rousey any time soon and has already now feuded with Damage CTRL and Rhea Ripley.

The Bullet Club was a heel faction, which is what The O.C. spawned from. Sooner or later, they'll go back to their roots and start winning by any means necessary.

Alba Fyre's babyface run in NXT doesn't come close to what she was able to achieve as a heel Kay Lee Ray in NXT UK.

Granted, she was a bigger fish in a smaller pond, and the pandemic certainly helped pad out the length of her title reign, but she still managed to command more presence as a heel than she does now, even with a baseball bat and some fire sprinkled in.

As a face, she's mostly just a good wrestler. That's not enough to quickly generate significant buzz if she were to move up to the main roster.

A good portion of the Raw and SmackDown viewers don't watch NXT. They won't be familiar with her background to instantly want to cheer her.

It is harder to get fans to back a babyface than a heel, who can get over easily by just attacking a beloved Superstar. If Fyre truly has a ruthless side to her, it will never come out as much as a babyface compared to the freedom she'd have as a heel.

Tommaso Ciampa can be a brutal heel at times, having earned nicknames like The Psycho Killer, The Sicilian Psychopath and The Blackheart. But it's past time for #DIY to do their thing on the main roster as the in-ring workhorse duo that made the Black and Gold Era of NXT so much fun to watch.

Technically, Johnny Gargano could turn heel with Ciampa, but Johnny Wrestling is at his best when he's wrestling as the underdog to root for.

On top of that, Ciampa's had enough time as The Miz's underling heel that it would be good for him to break away, have a feud with The Miz and move on to something different.

A babyface Ciampa teaming with Gargano against The Usos has the potential for a Match of the Year. There are also potentially great singles matches against the likes of Austin Theory, Baron Corbin, Damian Priest and Santos Escobar, just to name a few.

Daniel Garcia was once teasing a face turn to join Blackpool Combat Club and ditch Jericho Appreciation Society.

After deciding not to turn on Chris Jericho, Garcia's momentum slowed down. Since then, he's lost the ROH Pure Championship and is in a less meaningful position than he was when he was the focal point of that faction's story.

The fans supported this potential face turn so fervently that Tony Khan might already have second thoughts on his decision not to go through with it. At least, he should.

It won't mean the same if it happens in 2023, but Garcia should break off from Jericho's sports entertainment approach.

In-ring skills are Garcia's bread and butter. As part of Jericho Appreciation Society, he mostly stands next to Jericho and gets overshadowed.

Sami Zayn is a definitive heel right now and is still arguably the most over babyface on the roster.

While The Honorary Uce was eventually embraced as a bigger part of the family, it is inevitable he will be excommunicated from the faction sooner or later—likely before WrestleMania.

Reigns beating down Zayn will be one of the most effective ways to stop fans from cheering him and reestablish how much of a ruthless heel The Head of the Table truly is.

Likewise, when the turn happens, Zayn will have overwhelming fan support behind him to dethrone Roman Reigns.

If they're feuding come Elimination Chamber in Montreal, of all places, the roof might blow off the Bell Centre, and there may be riots when Reigns retains. But that could lead to Zayn reforming his partnership with Kevin Owens to take the tag team titles away from The Usos at WrestleMania.

The seeds have already been planted for Alexa Bliss to turn heel in what seems to be a rehash of her Fiendess character, but it is her teammate Asuka who needs to revert back to her previous persona even more.

The Empress of Tomorrow hasn't been the same on the main roster after losing her undefeated streak. There's no way to fully recapture that magic from NXT, but at least if she were to turn heel, she might be booked as a more viable threat again.

WWE tends to have two types of heels: weasels who can't win anything without cheating, or unstoppable monsters. Asuka is more of the latter.

Bianca Belair and Becky Lynch have a stranglehold over the top two babyface spots on the roster. It is hard to believe Asuka stands much of a chance to become champion when she's more often fighting alongside them and booked to keep those two from taking a pin.

Lately, vignettes about Lacey Evans have focused on her military experience and positioned her as a fan favorite character. But the last time that happened, WWE completely botched it.

Either WWE had a terrible idea to set her up as a babyface only to pull the rug out and play "gotcha" with the crowd by keeping her a heel, or was too tone-deaf to realize demanding audiences to cheer for her would backfire.

In any fashion, weeks of build for her to come back as a face turned into a handful of heel appearances and more time away than on screen.

Now, WWE has to learn from that mistake and actually follow through with a full-on babyface turn for Evans, who has yet to even try to tap into this character's potential.

It could be exactly the groove she's been waiting to slide into, as nothing else has quite worked.

Doudrop as a character hasn't been great, but the heel version is considerably worse.

At least as a babyface, she still had some of the leftover good will from her time as Piper Niven in NXT UK to draw from. As a heel, she ultimately maxed out as Nikki A.S.H.'s teammate, never won anything and didn't even have put on a superhero outfit to match her.

By no means should Doudrop go back to lip syncing and dancing her boppy theme music. That was just shy of having an arrow pointing to her that said "cheer for this babyface, kids."

But now that she's fallen victim to Belair's KOD numerous times and put over all the babyfaces, let's see what she can do up against Ripley, Bayley, Rousey and the other heels.

Many fans probably think Darby Allin should be in Rey Mysterio territory of never turning heel since he's a smaller wrestler who puts his body on the line in flippy matches and has a cool aesthetic.

That's exactly why it would be interesting to turn him.

Since joining AEW, Allin's been nothing but the moody daredevil who snarls and broods but clearly abides by a moral code. Let's see what happens when he ditches that and starts becoming more vile.

It would be easier to turn Allin heel to feud with Sting than the reverse, and those two have been together longer than necessary. Allin has to get out from Sting's shadow, and a turn would be better than for them to simply go their separate ways amicably.

AEW should milk the babyface Allin gimmick for just one match against MJF. Maybe coming up short in that could even be the trigger of the turn as he realizes he can't get to the top of the company doing what he's been doing.

Otherwise, Allin has hit his ceiling and will remain spinning his wheels in the midcard watching others pass him by.

If the experiment fails, he can always turn face again, but there's no telling if he'll be better as a villain unless AEW tries it out.

Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, Spotify and everywhere you find podcasts. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.