How WWE Are Quietly Building Their Next Main Event Megastar
As broken as WWE's star-making machine is, THIS guy is heading for the top.
Dolph Ziggler hasn't always had an easy ride in WWE.
Long considered one of the company's most under-utilised talents, years of stop-start pushes, borderline burials, and awkward presentation have typecast the undeniably talented 'Show-Off' as the ultimate also-ran. He has been a World Champion, but never 'The Guy'. A star, but never the star. A pushable, marketable commodity, but never to the extent that WWE would even consider building their programming around him. The list goes on.
Survivor Series 2014 was the last roll of the dice for him as a potential main eventer. Sting's shocking debut was the bigger story, but disbanding The Authority with consecutive pins on Kane, Luke Harper, and Seth Rollins, after surviving a seemingly hopeless 4-on-1 situation, made Ziggler look like the man. WWE gave him all the momentum in the world, and the perfect springboard to lasting stardom, yet it was immediately undermined.
The Authority came back to TV within weeks. Dolph was given no lasting push, and quickly returned to his career's median card position. Fleeting spurts of excellence have come and gone since then (his 2016 feud with The Miz was a particular highlight), but little more. Even his most ardent supporters have long given up on the notion of him as a headliner.
Now, 14 years removed from the day he first walked into the company, Ziggler isn't even the leading man in his own double-act.
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