I'll just cut loose here and shoot straight from the hip - Shelton Benjamin could quite easily be the most underused star in the last 20 years of the WWE. Things started nicely enough, being thrown into "The World's Greatest Tag Team" with Charlie Haas. But forget Haas for a moment (sorry Charlie), Benjamin was working alongside Kurt Angle. That's when Angle was arguably at the peak of his powers in WWE, so the plan was clear for both Benjamin and Haas - build them up into credible stars. When they eventually split and Benjamin went alone, his career went to even brighter, better heights. Runs as Intercontinental and United States Champion followed, and the sky literally looked like the limit for Benjamin in the WWE. His gimmick as "The Gold Standard" pushed him even higher, and he backed up all the hype with some excellent in-ring performances. PWI recognised him as the ninth best wrestler in the world back in 2005 - that was well deserved. So what went wrong? Well, his draft to the ill-fated ECW roster was where things started to go sour. The roster wasn't exactly blessed with top stars, as perhaps best summed up by his allegiance with Vladimir Kozlov. His performance at WrestleMania 26 (where he competed in perhaps the best Money in the Bank ladder match of all-time) was incredible though, but he was bizarrely released just a few weeks later. You can only assume there were non-wrestling issues that led to the release of Shelton Benjamin - because if you're talking about guys with natural wrestling talent, Shelton Benjamin still ranks as one of the very best. Time for the WWE to make a call, and bring back "The Gold Standard". The quality of wrestling we'll see in a WWE ring will jump up massively if they took the plunge and signed him up again.
