In 2019, Bayley -- multi-time NXT and WWE Women’s champion one of the company’s most enduring babyfaces -- turned heel for the first time in her WWE career, adopting a new look, attitude, and even entrance music, all while aligning herself with her on-again-off-again best friend, tag team partner, and rival, Sasha Banks.

Related: 5 Ways Sasha Banks & Bayley Are Better As Partners (& 5 Ways They're Better As Rivals)

For some fans, Bayley’s heel turn is a controversial decision, as they’ve known and loved her as a babyface for so long. For others, the heel turn is an exciting new direction for the character to take. So which is better: Heel Bayley or Face Bayley? There are compelling arguments for both sides, so let’s investigate.

10 Heel: It’s Fresh

Bayley has been a babyface since the moment she set foot in NXT in 2013. That’s a long time to be a good guy if you’re not a Cena or a Hogan, and lackluster booking and over-familiarity have maybe caused fans to cool off on Bayley as a character. A heel turn is something new to refresh interest in the performer, and maybe reinvigorate their enthusiasm for the classic version of Bayley when she eventually has a face turn.

9 Face: Better Hair

Bayley: 10 Of Her Best Instagram Posts

Aesthetics play a huge part in how fans identify babyfaces and heels, and babyface Bayley had an adorkable top-knot hairdo that told fans that she was goofy and dorky and maybe a bit of an underdog. It was a great look for a babyface. As a heel, Bayley sports a mom bob that certainly does not make her look like a good guy, but also doesn’t really sell the evil streak. Maybe it’s because she’s still goofball Bayley deep down inside, but it’s not a good look regardless.

8 Heel: Payoff to Good Guy Behavior

What good is a hero that isn’t tempted by the dark side? Vanilla babyfaces are all well and good, but a flirtation with doing things the wrong way adds some much-needed depth to these characters.

Related: Bayley: 10 Of Her Best Instagram Posts

One could argue that Bayley turning heel is too far in that direction, but it also creates the potential to a tremendous return to form. It’s going to be very satisfying when Bayley has a climactic face turn and does the right thing.

7 Face: One of the Best

Bayley could go down as one of the best babyfaces in WWE history based on her NXT run alone, where she went from excited fangirl to scrappy underdog to, finally, a champion who overcame all obstacles on her quest for greatness. Her time on the main roster has had its ups and downs, but it’s entirely possible that fans looking back on this heel period will regard it as a weird fluke that didn’t quite work out.

6 Heel: She Killed the Balloon Men

Bayley destroys buddies

Since her NXT days, Bayley’s ring entrance involved several wacky waving inflatable tube men, later known as Bayley Buddies. They’re fun and all, but a wrestler having a prop is essentially a countdown to someone destroying said prop. You’d think Sasha Banks would do that like a month into Bayley’s main roster run, but WWE decided to hold off until Bayley’s heel turn, where she destroyed them herself. Which is great character work -- it’s like Bayley is trying to be a bad guy -- and a huge payoff to those things.

5 Face: Role Model

It feels wrong for Bayley to turn heel. She’s such a pure, easy-to-root-for babyface that her descent into darkness feels like a misstep. Bayley’s one of the more popular characters with kids in a wrestling promotion full of violent maniacs who don’t value friendship. There aren’t many good guys to fill in those shoes in the same way she did, so WWE feels a little bleaker without babyface Bayley.

4 Heel: Role Reversal with Sasha

One of the defining elements of Bayley’s history as a character is her friendship/rivalry with Sasha Banks. Their feud in NXT was one of the major turning points in establishing women’s wrestling as a thing WWE considered maybe caring about, and that relationship has continued into their main roster careers.

Related: Bayley's 5 Greatest Championship Victories (& Sasha Banks' 5 Best)

With Bayley as the heel champ and Sasha Banks as the second banana, Banks get to see how the other half lives as her best friend get more of an ego and take her friend for granted. It’s going to be really interesting when Banks turns on Bayley and they find themselves on unexpected sides of the heel/face alignment.

3 Face: An Amazing Underdog

Bayley’s inherent sweetness as a character means she’s spent her entire babyface run as an underdog, which she’s amazing at. She repeatedly got betrayed by her friends on NXT and even when she finally won the Women’s Title, the odds that she was going to successfully retain the belt seemed stacked against her every single time. That’s a great achievement, considering how often babyfaces like that quickly lose their hard-fought championships.

2 Heel: More of an Edge

Bayley was a beloved babyface, but she never necessarily had an edge, even when it seemed like she needed one, like when she was feuding with Alexa Bliss on the main roster. As a heel, Bayley can develop some skills she never had to use as a babyface and evolve as a performer. While her initial heel turn is surprising -- and even jarring -- she’s been able to better fit into the role as time goes on.

1 Face: Better Matches

In WWE, most heels are the cowardly, cheating type regardless of what their skill set was before they turned heel. As the scrappy underdog hero, Bayley had some of the best matches in WWE, especially on NXT as she got great matches out of controversial performers like Nia Jax and Eva Marie. You can’t have an underdog heel, so she has to resort to underhanded tactics like relying on Sasha Banks, which is great for kayfabe purposes but not fun for fans who want to watch a straight-up good match.

Next: Every Year Of Bayley's WWE Career, Ranked