10 WWE Wrestlers Who Grossly Under-Achieved In 2017

Whatever the height of our January ambition, the inescapable reality is that, nearly 12 months later, some of us haven't had the 2017 that we would have liked.

For the elite group of professional wrestlers who make a living working for the world's leading company, failing to keep to one's new year's resolutions probably isn't going to be cause for too many sleepless nights.

And unlike James Ellsworth, for example, they have made it the entire year (so far, anyway) without being served up their future endeavours. Given how ruthless Vince McMahon can be, perhaps that's an achievement in and of itself.

Still, even the very best of their respective fields are subject to end-of-term reviews, and for one or two of that elite group, there is probably some room for improvement as we head into next year.

For whatever reason, they either simply didn't manage to catch fire at all during 2017, or just faced a comparatively testing year compared to the dizzy heights of 2016.

Whatever the case, it's time for them to reflect on what went wrong and think about how they can get back in Vince's good books over Christmas.

If, at the beginning of the year, you had offered Baron Corbin fans (who are a real thing) a WrestleMania match with Dean Ambrose and a reign as United States Champion, they probably would have taken it.

With hindsight, however, the Lone Wolf's year appears somehow incomplete, a consequence of his failure to capitalise on June's Money in the Bank triumph after falling foul of WWE's rigid backstage etiquette.

As a result, anything he achieved thereafter - and winning the US Title is a significant achievement when you consider that it spent most of they year on the shoulders of Kevin Owens, AJ Styles and Chris Jericho, all former world champs - was always going to feel like mere consolation.

The fact is that he entered the year in his employers' good books, and appears to be ending it, if not exactly in the dog house (he is, after all, currently wearing gold), then at least with fewer people batting his corner.