Every 'Next Big Thing' In Wrestling History: Where Are They Now?
8. Alberto Del Rio
Christ, how to get 180 or so words out of “Alberto Del Rio was boring”?
Alberto Del Rio was boring. The only person who must have enjoyed his act was the creative writer tasked with scripting his promos. What an easy Monday afternoon that must have been for them, writing endless pages in which “destiny” is every other word. Somebody was being paid, and handsomely, to be a primitive form of AI.
Del Rio - because he was handsome and could half-go during a time in which WWE was teeming with identikit developmental greenhorns - was presented as nothing short of WWE’s next big top heel. He won the WWE Championship in under a year, which incidentally still didn’t stop him droning on about destiny, which he had obviously fulfilled.
In the ring, his work was either blandly competent and entirely soulless, or off-puttingly contrived. His opponents looked like morons when he set up his double foot stomp.
He returned to WWE after his first controversial exit and did f*ck all again the second time, and now, after being exposed as a vile dirtbag, tends to only get work in AAA or the far reaches of the border scene.
Hey, maybe that “destiny” talk wasn’t so far-fetched after all.