10 Wrestlers Who Got Over By Losing
1. Dustin Rhodes
Where Sammy Guevara got over as the young but inexperienced stud, Dustin Rhodes was his inverse.
AEW recognised his value where WWE did not - in an horrendous alternate universe too close to our own, Goldust is gnashing his teeth on Legend's Night - and literally bled that value all over the ring at Double Or Nothing 2019. Dustin lost, in an emotional bloodbath, but in doing so, he crystallised his legacy as a great. But AEW arrived and he arrived at it too late for him to become a lasting main event star. Everybody recognised that.
But he's still so great that he builds on that legend most weeks, and uses it to transfer his aura to the younger set. It's OK for Dustin Rhodes to lose - especially because he sells on the contrary so well - because nobody will ever think less of him. He's Dustin Rhodes. He's as good once as he ever was, and AEW have never lost sight of that by beating him too often.
This is why you form stables with a clear pecking order. This is why a promotion should embrace the young and the old, whether they're not deemed "ready" for TV or whether they have been judged to have outlived their "telegenic" usefulness. This variety drives storylines. If a faction needs heat, if a giant needs to look like a killer, there's no better arm to break nor forehead to slash.
Between affection and aura, Rhodes is the perfect man to beat.