What happened to all the bad guys?

Throughout history we?ve had these polar opposites from Hogan and the Iron Sheik all the way to the present with Cena and his battles with Edge. Two clearly defined sides, one heel, one face, with some occasional gray areas such as Degeneration X, Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Dirtiest Player in the Game ? the Nature Boy Ric (Woooooo!) Flair.

With that said, something odd is happening in the WWE as we head toward Wrestlemania. The business is becoming babyface heavy with only a handful of Main Event worthy bad guys left to feud with the good guys.

Just look at the planned main events for WM23. Barring a face change by these guys at the last minute, you?ve got Undertaker and Batista, both good guys, squaring off for SmackDown, and then you?ve got John Cena and the Heart Break Kid Shawn Michaels, both good guys (although Cena still gets booed at various arenas) going at it from RAW. And, if things shake out the way I think, you?ll have two heels, Randy Orton and Edge, also squaring off in a match at WM23.

While these may be good matches in the ring, the fact these opponents are on the same side of the fence, so to speak,, may make it hard to build heat against one or the other leading up to their match. It?s the heat against the bad guy that gets us wrestling fans upset when the good guy gets screwed over. It goes back to the age-old good defeats evil in the end adage, even if it takes a while for good to triumph. If there?s no evil, then many wrestling fans don?t really have a stake in the outcome and thereby aren?t drawn into a match as much. Colts versus Bears, good Super Bowl, but I didn?t really care for either team so the game was pretty much a bore for me. It?s the same way with wrestling.

So, what?s happened to the heels? Well, first off, the change of Triple H to a face with the reuniting of dX pretty well lost RAW its top heel. Meanwhile, Angle, also a top heel for the company, left for TNA while the Big Show, top heel for ECW, left to recover from nagging injuries. We also had Chris Jericho leave to tour with his rock band Fozzie and we also had the loss of Eddie Guerreo who, at the time of his death, was a heel on SmackDown. John Bradshaw Layfield, who carried SmackDown for a year, is now at the announce table recovering from injuries. We also have no more heel stables like Evolution, the Dungeon of Doom, Nation of Domination, the Four Horsemen or the NWO.

As Chris Jericho said in a recent interview, being a heel is a difficult thing in that you?ve got to make the audience hate you on a nightly basis. A heel who is cheered is a failure at his role, Jericho noted, adding he went into his current semi-retirement as a heel to the end by being pulled kicking and screaming from the building after a Lose and You?re Fired match with Cena last year. Jericho is still teasing when, and if, he will return to wrestling.

While losing these heels the WWE failed to build up adequate replacements aside from maybe Kennedy on SmackDown. What we?re left with as far as top card heels now are Orton, Edge and Umaga on RAW, Booker T and Kennedy on SmackDown and just a bunch of midcarders like Test and Hardcore Holly on ECW.

What to do? Well, we have a ready-made return to the Dungeon of Doom in Umaga, the Bogeyman, and the Great Kahli. Wouldn?t a feud between that stable, maybe headed by Alejandro Estrada or even Kevin Sullivan, and the Brothers of Destruction, Kane and Undertaker, be great? And what about a heel stable kind of like Evolution with Edge, Orton, Kennedy, and the most underused star in the business, Shelton Benjamin.

Either way, we need to do something soon or it?ll be a bunch of Mother Teresas out there slap fighting on Monday nights under the banner RAW is LOVE. Bring back the heels.