10 WWE Champions Who Weren't Ready For The Belt
4. Alberto Del Rio
Examining Alberto Del Rio's legacy poses a challenge. Why is he so loathed, and what led to the apathy that came to define him?
His ugly attitude and peddling of tiresome post-WWE run cliché promos doesn't help now, nor did his unwanted role in the derailed 2011 Summer of Punk help then - but maybe there is a layer of betrayal here, too, if that's the right word.
Fairly or otherwise, many people projected a star power onto Del Rio that Del Rio didn't reflect back. The shift into this decade saw a barren star landscape. WWE and Del Rio promised but did not deliver an elusive megastar we were also told, by online tastemakers, was some kind of super-worker. Del Rio was very believable, at his fleeting best. He laid in his strikes and tore apart limbs with credible submission work, but did not possess the intangible charisma to package it into something captivating. His underwhelming main event matches were stung also with dreaded disappointment, accelerating his bust stigma.
The Del Rio character was a beneficiary of obscene family wealth, and the performer underneath benefitted from a relative lack of main event competition.