At the Payback PPV last week, Sheamus and Cesaro had a barn-burner of a match, beating the holy hell out of each other for 10-plust minutes straight. It served as a great reminder that Sheamus is a fantastic brawler, capable of putting together hard-hitting matches that make you cringe in a good way every time he hits someone or gets hit. There arent a ton of guys in WWE today like that, who will just stand there and exchange forearm smashes and ask for more. In that respect, Sheamus should be a key player in WWE, one of its top performers. However, Sheamus is a wrestler seemingly perpetually stuck in neutral. A three-time world champion and former Royal Rumble winner, he hasnt the kind of memorable feuds and matches (at least not for the right reasons) that other top-level superstars have had. Daniel Bryan probably has had more standout matches and moments in the first four months of 2014 than Sheamus has had in three years. For many fans, Sheamus is representative of a greater problem in WWE: Superstars who detract from the product far more than they add to it. These are wrestlers who fans feel are undeserving of their spot in the pecking order. In Sheamus case, he is legitimately and greatly disliked by a subsection of WWE fans. For any number of reasons, they cant stand it when hes in the ring. Witness his match against Randy Orton the night after WrestleMania XXIX where fans did the Wave and chanted, End this match. So why is Sheamus hated by some so much? Here are a few possible reasons...
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
