10 Most Regressed WWE Wrestlers Of 2017
It's a fickle business.
Represented by a line graph, the career of someone like Brock Lesnar or John Cena would be a completely straight line (except, perhaps, for the couple of occasions they've had to lose to one another).
This, however, is not the WWE norm - most performers experience peaks and troughs the same way that all us do during the course of our careers. One year they might be riding high as the face of the company, and the next consigned to tag team duty, or even jobbing to the stars of tomorrow.
This trend has perhaps been particularly true of recent WWE history, wherein the company has been experimenting with potential main event stars, handing the proverbial ball to just about anyone who can keep their nose clean outside the ring and pass as a heavyweight inside it.
As such, there are several wrestlers who haven't enjoyed the best of times during 2017. Next year may be better for them, of course, but until then their careers are very much on the slide (to the extent that a career in showbiz can be "on the slide" anyway).
10. Finn Bálor
Things were looking up for Finn Bálor as recently as about a month ago, after victory over AJ Styles looked set to catapult him into the Monday Night Raw main event scene and a marquee match with Brock Lesnar at the Royal Rumble.
A mere 24 hours later, however, The Demon King was playing punching bag to a 50-year-old Kane, since which time we have heard that Vince McMahon has gone cold on his world title aspirations, apparently canning plans for a run at the Beast Incarnate in January.
Having spent much of 2016 on the shelf (at least of the part that he was on the main roster, anyway), it seems counter-intuitive to argue that he's in a worse spot now than he was 12 months ago - but at least then it was injury, not a lack of backstage support, that kept him from the top of the show.
The fact is that he is not as over with the crowd now as he was in the month that followed his Monday Night Raw debut in the summer of 2016, and that looks unlikely to change any time soon.