10 Wrestlers WWE Are Currently Dropping The Ball With
Undermined, underpushed, and underappreciated...
WWE's roster depth is absolutely staggering.
Despite a lukewarm 2018, AJ Styles remains a perennial "best in the world" contender. Seth Rollins, Finn Balor, and yes, Roman Reigns, aren't far behind. The Miz is the most complete sports entertainer of his generation. In the women's division, Asuka, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch are capable of work rivalling any of their male counterparts. NXT is overflowing with the likes of Johnny Gargano, Tommaso Ciampa, and Shayna Baszler, while three-dimensional wunderkinds Io Shirai and Keith Lee haven't even debuted yet.
The pyramid's every level is stacked, yet WWE seem incapable of getting the most from more than a handful of their hundreds-strong roster at once. Their star-making machine is broken beyond repair. The reasons for this are legion, but most stem from a colossal team of writers that gets all but the most straightforward characters and storylines wrong, creating a product that's as shallow as it is inconsistent.
Each of the wrestlers within could (and should) be a bigger deal, but WWE are botching their presentation, thus hurting their ability to get over, and diminishing their impact on Raw, SmackDown, and the bigger picture...
10. Bayley
Much has been written about the grand disaster that has been Bayley's main roster career over the past few years, but her problems still aren't getting any better, even after the resurrection of her feud with Sasha Banks.
As they've done with countless NXT call-ups before and after Bayley, WWE's main roster writers fail to grasp what made 'The Hugger' so popular in developmental. She hasn't flopped because she's a niche act who doesn't resonate with mainstream audiences, but because WWE have continually booked her like a doe-eyed, overawed goober, not the spirited underdog of old. This makes her impossible to believe in, and it continues in 2018.
Bayley looks like she's given up. There's no joy to her performances anymore. The spring in her step, warmth in her smile, spark in her eyes: it's all gone, and who can blame her? Rarely has such a strong babyface commodity been squandered.
It remains to be seen whether or not her recent ambush of Sasha Banks will result in a full-on heel turn, but the storyline's stop/start nature and goofy counselling segments have left both Bayley and her feud partner at the bottom of the pile...