10 Great Workers WWE Paid Not To Wrestle

2. Ricardo Rodriguez

Jesus €˜Ricardo€™ Rodriguez had been wrestling for four years on the independent circuit before he got the call to the WWE€ to work as personal ring announcer to their debuting Mexican aristocrat heel, Alberto Del Rio, as he spoke Spanish and was in the right place at the right time. In his time as Del Rio€™s flunky, Rodriguez would be involved in some genuinely brilliant segments, most of which were only made brilliant by his involvement. Whether being asked to take a beatdown from babyfaces or from Del Rio himself, or being humiliated in the ring, Rodriguez would always give it his all, his facial expressions worth money all on their own. But those facial expressions were only gold in WWE€ as Chimaera, he€™d worked a masked luchador gimmick for most of his wrestling career until then. You only have to watch a couple of his matches from the indies on YouTube to realise that Chimaera was an excellent worker. Initially, Rodriguez would wrestle for WWE on the FCW developmental roster while working the main roster as Del Rio€™s ring announcer. This would be the best of both worlds for the former Chimaera. However, as time went on his wrestling began to fall by the wayside, with less than a dozen wrestling matches each in 2012 and 2013, and only six in 2014. Despite this, Rodriguez would discover a new string to his bow on WWE television, and it can convincingly be argued that Del Rio was only ever over as a heel or a babyface when his right hand man, fall guy and occasional best friend would accompany him to ringside. Ricardo was over like clover with the live audience. While it€™s unlikely that, masked or not, Rodriguez would have made a main event wrestler in WWE, he was certainly over enough as a television performer that it made sense to try him in a program. Instead, Rodriguez would request his release in order to pursue wrestling again, and WWE would lose a talented Latin-American babyface.