10 Mistakes WWE Made With Alberto Del Rio

By Elliott Binks / September 6, 2016

Back in October of 2015, Alberto Del Rio made his surprise return to WWE as he answered John Cena’s US Open Challenge at the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view. Now, almost 12 months on, he finds himself with one foot out the door amidst the news that he “will not be returning to WWE after the conclusion of his 30-day suspension”.

Other than the shock value of that initial return, it’s difficult to pinpoint any other highlights since he was brought back into the fold last year. All in all, his second stint with the company has been a fairly forgettable one.

Not that Del Rio should take all of the blame for that, as he was hardly given a great deal to work with by the company’s movers and shakers.

As will hopefully become apparent when reading this article, you will see that the handling of Alberto Del Rio has often left a lot to be desired. Here, I will recount some of the most notable mistakes that were made along the way in his latest WWE run.

10. Brief Match With John Cena

As mentioned in the introduction to this piece, when Del Rio made his return at Hell in a Cell to answer John Cena’s US Open Challenge, it made for a pretty awesome moment. The resultant match, on the other hand, was rather less impactful.

Sure, Del Rio pinned Cena clean in the middle after following up the Backstabber with a Superkick, but the preceding action had lasted less than eight minutes in total.

Eight minutes is a fairly meagre runtime for any title match on PPV, but when we consider some of the other epic contests that we’d seen from Cena’s US Open Challenge - including numerous matches that lasted more than 15-20 minutes on Raw - this just felt even more underwhelming.

If they’d really wanted to put their best foot forward with Del Rio’s return to the company, this match should really have gone twice as long at it did. In the end though, the rather lacklustre contest proved to set the tone for the subsequent reign.