10 Times Modern WWE Stars FINALLY Felt Like Big Deals

3. Dolph Ziggler

The guy who debuted by...shaking hands with everybody backstage (!) took slightly longer to truly introduce himself to the audience.

Prior to Bragging Rights 2010, we knew Dolph Ziggler was a cut above his indistinct developmental contemporaries. With a sublime athleticism, Ziggler was game to bump like a madman in the ring - but he hadn't yet turned heads, no matter how committed he was to turning himself inside out for our entertainment. He finally did so by keeping up with Daniel Bryan in one of the great midcard battles in WWE's storied history.

We mourned this exact sort of eye-catching match in the introduction, and with good reason, on this specific evidence; there is a sequence in which Bryan showcases his brutal, rapid-fire striking game, and Ziggler doesn't flop theatrically to the mat in default mode. Instead, he crumples to it, howling in agony, as if trapped for real in the fight of his life, and not just a transparent if exciting "match". The whole thing unfolds with such a tremendous flow that Ziggler emerged from the beating both warrior and top-tier worker.

The action was so intense and captivating that Michael Cole even dropped a dreaded insider term to put it over, in spite of himself. "What a sequence!" he roared, becoming, if only in that moment, the actual voice of the WWE Universe. The people and persona non grata were united, cast under the same spectacular spell.

On the subject of Cole...