The Day The WWE United States Championship Died

Here to show the world...that we don't care about this title anymore.

By Michael Hamflett /

WWE

Dolph Ziggler, has at various points in his lengthy career, been a phenomenal and engaging professional wrestler.

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An extraordinary bumper and freakishly skilled athlete who worked tirelessly to forge an earnest and legitimate bond with the audience before it was cruelly eroded, Ziggler was at one point such a vital part of WWE's future that his April 2013 Money In The Bank cash-in was greeted with a throated roar as loud as any iconic pop from the company's past.

It feels important to include these qualifiers now, just in case this reads like a hit piece on a guy who's taken far too many unfair bodyblows in his career as it is. 'The Show Off's a difficult one one to analyse as a character because the semantics are somewhat lost in the post-kayfabe era. In 2021, we're invited to know as much about the real life person as the onscreen persona, and people will make plenty of assumptions about Nick Nemeth. About his wealth, his health and his happiness.

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People can also make judgments on the arc of Dolph Ziggler, and where exactly he places amongst his many, many peers and contemporaries after well over a decade on television. Characters do well to live that long on any show, but this is the story of one that quit living in the pursuit of merely existing. A persona and a prize sharing a life support machine, before the plug was pulled on both.

CONT'D...

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