The Day The WWE United States Championship Died

Time's arrow has raced forward at such an alarming rate in the last few years that the very angle feels like a relic from a bygone era, let alone the multi-year spell where fans believed in Dolph Ziggler more than his own employers. The timelines are thus quite tough to keep track of, but take this with more sincerity than one of Ziggler's promos at the time - that audience belief in 'The Show Off' was long gone by December 2017.

Ziggler had defeated Bobby Roode and United States Champion Baron Corbin at Clash Of Champions just days earlier, but his first appearance with his new prize was fixing to be his final one. It was not a call for celebration but for condemnation. B*llocking the audience because he couldn't do the same to his bosses, Ziggler considered his win a pyrrhic one and anyway, he was finished here. Finished with us. Offski. Finito. Farewell.

It wasn't a bad promo, but it wasn't believable either. His loud-quiet-loud cadence was like Sycho Sid without the sniggers, and mini-protests like this had felt passé since CM Punk's "Pipe Bomb" several years earlier. Going full Wealdstone Raider only feeling about 50 years older, he closed his vexed monologue with a withering anti-flourish. "You're not worthy", he claimed. "YOU'RE NOT WORTHY OF MY PRESENCE! NONE OF YOU ARE! You don't deserve me. You want something? You want something to remember me by...?"

And with that, he dropped the browbeaten belt to the canvas. A stagehand picked it back up before the next match, but the spirit and soul of it had long since departed.

CONT'D...