It all used to be so simple. What worked for the territories would work for the WWF: crown your biggest draw the champ and feed him a succession of supporting players from further down the card. Dont worry if the challenger isnt particularly over; the rub from the champ will make him look like a star for the couple of months he spends above his regular place further down the card. Its a model that made Hulk Hogan the biggest thing the sport had ever seen. But that was back in the day of television squash matches and only a handful of Pay-Per-Views a year. Come the turn of the millennium, an increased production schedule necessitated the building of an extension on the VIP lounge, and it became standard practice to maintain a top-tier line-up of multiple workers, all potential custodians of the big gold belt. The Rock, Triple H, Mick Foley, Big Show, Kane, The Undertaker, Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Brock Lesnar, Booker T Rey Mysteriothey all served their time at the top but, in contrast to years gone by, none could claim to be The Man. The last man with a legitimate claim to that title was Steve Austin, whose first and second run with the WWF Championship represented the swansong of the traditional program schedule and power structure. As the branches of top-tier tree were gradually thinned by retirement, untimely death, prolonged injury, and the lure of Hollywoods easy paydays, Vince must have looked back with nostalgia at the days he didnt have so many slots to fill at the top of the card. Searching around for suitable replacements, McMahon came up short. John Bradshaw Layfield and Mark Henry, never more than lower-mid card performers of extremely limited ability, were both awarded title runs despite more than a decade in the company without a single stand-out match or more than mild disinterest from audiences. The less said about The Great Khali the better. Though infinitely more talented than the barely-mobile Khali, Jack Swagger, The Miz, Dolph Ziggler, Daniel Bryan, and Sheamus were similarly indicative of the on-going dearth of creditable headliners, each precipitously dropped in at the deep end without any storyline build behind their push for the title. Predictably, the surprise starts to their first title runs fizzled into failure in front of audiences given zero reason to invest in these guys or believe that they deserved their place at the top table. The closest thing to the Old School idea of The Man since Steve Austins late-90s run, John Cena is the only member of any WWE roster for more than a decade that can claim to have come anywhere close to reaching the heights of Stonecold and, before him, Hulk Hogan. In fact, in terms of time served as company figurehead, Cena has Austin beat by a good couple of years. Booker T was certainly right when he said in an unintentional on-air acknowledgement of the sentiments shared by critics on both sides of the curtain that Cena has accomplished more than his extremely limited in-ring abilities led anybody to expect. For all his limitations, the reigning WWE Champion is the only member of the fulltime roster to have achieved uber-main event status, that hallowed elevation at which his name alone guarantees butts in seats. Only a performer at this level can be trusted by the company to carry a less-established draw such as Umaga or John Laurinaitis in a PPV main event when necessitated by sheer desperation at the lack of viable alternatives. Anyone else hoping to fill that top spot without Cena has to combine their star power with that of another performer (triple-threat or multi-elimination matches often a sure sign that McMahon feels the need to pump up the drawing power). Eight years after claiming his first World Title, Cena is surrounded by more former-World Champions but a shallower pool of genuine top-liners than ever before. Looking at the current line-up, youve got CM Punk running John Cena a distant second for that much-discussed Face of The Company spot, and beyond him only Randy Orton has a well-established resume as Main Event Material. If The Big Show, Kane, or Mark Henry are in the main event its only to stare at the lights for the champ, and then only if everyone else is either injured or has already done the job. Alberto Del Rio and Sheamus are the most recent recipients of the front offices favour, and while neither of them seems likely to challenge Cenas spot anytime soon, theyll be in or around the title picture for the next few years at least. Daniel Bryan, like CM Punk before him, seems finally to have convinced Vince that hes covered himself in enough WWE convention to disguise the stink of success somewhere other than McMahonland (its accepted wisdom in WWE that if you dont work WWE style you dont know how to work at all, and will be treated accordingly until you learn. Just ask Booker T). Whether Bryans recent all-access pass is permanent or McMahon will soon lose interest as he invariably does Lord Tensai, anyone? is anybodys guess right now, but with Cena on the shelf for a while the time was never better for someone to step up and fill the gap among the painfully thin ranks of main event faces. As contradictory as it may sound, appearing in the main event does not a main-eventer make. Faarooq, Ken Shamrock, and Mabel all main-evented a PPV in singles competition; Savio Vega, R-Truth, and Ahmed Johnson in doubles; and The Shield, The Nexus, and Spirit Squad as stables. The sheer numbers necessitated by the Elimination Chamber and Money In The Bank matches even allowed the hopeless Mike Knox to sneak into a headlining spot. Although at least one of these gimmick matches typically takes place lower down the card, the build-up to the PPV invariably introduces wrestlers with laughable main event credentials into Raw or Smackdowns premier storyline. The likes of Kozlov, Drew McIntyre, Heath Slater, Justin Gabriel, Finlay, Tyson Kidd, and Fandango have all been pushed as (at least in theory) potential winners of these matches, despite being a) incompetent b) not over in the slightest c) played for laughs or d) all of the above. In fact, its so commonplace these days for WWE to pad the main event picture with underprepared mid-carders that six of the ten superstars on this list have already appeared in at least one main event match on Pay-Per-View. Headlining in WWE doesnt quite mean what it used to. Turning our attention to the current crop of bright young things, which of them has the best chance of making a permanent move to the WWE stratosphere (Cena-sphere?) in the not-too-distant future? As company shills like to remind us: anything can happen in WWE, and what holds true today may well be an outdated idea come tomorrow. Despite ceding much of the day-to-day running to his son-in-law, Vince McMahon still has the final word on whos hot and whos not on his roster, and his notoriously capricious favour necessitates a big glowing neon caveat be attached to any attempt at predicting the stars of tomorrow. Remember: in WWE, all the ability in the world and one dollar will get you nothing but a cup of coffee unless Vince McMahon decides otherwise.
10. Dolph Ziggler
The Show-Off is the only wrestler on this list to have worn a World Title, but so forgettable were his first two reigns that they might never have happened (the first not much more than a technicality, as likely to appear in the record books as an asterisk than as an actual title change). The white-hot crowd reaction when he defeated Alberto Del Rio for the second his World Titles would suggest that audiences are as eager to see Ziggler make a more permanent up the ladder as Vince McMahon is unconvinced of his long-term viability as champion. Ironically, it may well prove to be one of Zigglers greatest gifts that ultimately holds him back from permanent residence at the top of the card. Ziggler is most often compared to the late, great Curt Hennig, and like Curtis Axels daddy Ziggler excels at selling, happy to bounce himself around the ring if it will get his opponent and their match over with the audience. Unfortunately for Ziggler, and as Mr. Perfect discovered before him, if your greatest gift is making others look good then it may forever be your lot in life to facilitate the crowning of the king rather than wear the crown yourself. If the former Spirit Squad star is destined for ever the bridesmaid, never the bride purgatory, fans can at least console themselves that the upper-card scene will have an all-too-rare adherent to the essential fundamentals of the art. In todays WWE, with its Super-Cena logic, three-minute matches, and schizophrenic-booking, something as fundamental as simple selling often gets overlooked, and its a depressing indictment of modern ring psychology (or lack thereof) that its an event worthy of note when a wrestler consistently sells injury that informs their storyline in a logical way. Perhaps the best example of this happening in recent memory was Zigglers selling of his concussion during his feud with Alberto Del Rio (and before that, not coincidentally, fellow super-seller Shawn Michaels broken arm from Brock Lesnar). The feud itself serves as a perfect example of the paradox at the heart Zigglers repertoire: even though he was the champ, the storyline concussion and his ability to sell it so effectively cast Del Rio as the star and Ziggler as the plucky underdog. As frustrating as it may be for Ziggler and his many admirers, its a model that WWE might well repeat, a non-negotiable condition of Zigglers spot in the main event club.