Agreed that Alex Jaffe is about as face as one could possibly get. If podcasting had kayfabe gimmicks, Alex Jaffe’s gimmick is like a Bruno Sammartino type, just an earnest and likeable guy who goes in and gets the job done, and there isn’t a whole lot of intricate detail or background story to it (I mean, in a fictionalizing sense). It’s just, the gimmick is that he’s that guy, because, that’s who he is.
Tangent: Bruno Sammartino was a holdover from a bygone era from before it was ever openly acknowledged that wrestling operated according to a pre-determined storyline, and was alive and at least around for some time before that changed, and he held out longer than almost anyone else from that era in terms of acknowledging the existence of kayfabe, or “shooting,” as it’s called when a pro wrestler or someone involved with pro wrestling speaks about the manufactured/fictionalized nature of pro wrestling, or acts in such a way as to imply or even explicitly reveal that. Actually he was so invested in this that he may have only chosen to do so in a significant way in an autobio which was written shortly before he died and not published until after his death. So while he had chosen to do so, he technically went to his grave before significantly breaking kayfabe. Fascinating guy who had a fascinating life, as detailed in this earlier video format autobio that’s on youtube for some reason.
Anyway. While conventionally every feud will have someone who is clearly identifiable as the face (or at least more face than the other wrestler) and someone who is clearly identifiable as the heel (or at least more heel than the other wrestler), the Alex Jaffe and Frank Cifaldi feud is pretty tepid by pro wrestling standards. However, if I had to book this feud in the Parasocial Wrestling League fiction, at most I would say that Frank is the badboy tweener (as in, “betweener,” someone who is not face enough to be straightforwardly a face but not straightforwardly heelish enough to be a heel) in the Insert Credit stable (association of wrestlers who aren’t necessarily considered a formal tag team or are more than like 3 wrestlers, but as such aren’t numerous enough to be considered a faction), which is an overall face aligned stable. They might butt heads or have a scrap or two but there is nothing to suggest a feud will or even could break out.
