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Ever since the days of the Attitude Era, it’s become harder and harder to distinguish what a “good guy” is in the world of wrestling.

With the inception of that era, gone were the traditional bubble gum good guys telling you to say your prayers and take your vitamins. There was no black and white, merely different shades of grey in which everyone operated. It was the time of the anti-hero.

All these years later, nothing has changed. The bad guys are often the ones with the fairest points and the most logic while the good guys are the ones making dick jokes and antagonizing the bad guys who either committed marginal wrongs or none at all. They are hypocritical, egotistical and behave like your average bro at a brodown.

With that in mind, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to cheer for someone like Dolph Ziggler.

When Ziggler is playing the heel, it’s perfect for him. He gets to be arrogant, smarmy and dickish because that’s how he’s supposed to be behaving. It’s how an a**hole would behave and that’s what he’s supposed to be.

But when he’s supposed to be a good guy and keeps playing that exact same character? It just doesn’t work. You can’t be snarky and hypocritical and expect regular wrestling fans to cheer for you. Sure, the smarks will get behind you, but the average fan operates on a good vs bad basis and in that scenario, there’s nothing good about the character.

Take for example the bit Ziggler did recently where he came into possession of “leaked” photos of The Miz. Firstly, it was an awful play on the recent celebrity nude photo scandal, but that isn’t so much Ziggler’s fault as WWE being hilariously inept at being topical. No, the bad part came when Ziggler, who is covered in tanner and has no body hair, laughed at the Miz for tanning and shaving his chest. Again, this is a good guy. Why would you cheer for this guy when he’s basically asking you to ignore the logic sitting right in front of you?

More importantly, Dolph Ziggler doesn’t really seem to have a character anymore unless that character is “just be a d*ck to everyone and get cheers for it”. There’s no motivation to his character, no direction. He’s just there to crack bad jokes and point out how gay the bad guy is because “lol he’s gay”, am I right? It’s the dichotomy of the WWE face.

The only thing saving a guy like Ziggler for someone like me is the fact that he’s still aces in the ring. He’s got that momentum to him that Daniel Bryan had where every one of his matches feel bigger and Ziggler is flying around the ring at 100mph like every move means something. Before, he was just there to sell and get in the occasional move. Now, he still bumps his ass off, selling moves like he’s been shot, but he’s starting to make his offense look meaningful and important.

I’m starting to turn on Ziggler and will likely continue doing so until he has some sort of character shift. Unless, of course, he continues his run as Intercontinental Champion and makes that belt worth something again. Then maybe I can forgive his recent character behavior.

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