The Day The WWE United States Championship Died

That's what really killed it, in truth.

It wasn't Ziggler rendering his Clash Of Champions victory meaningless (and then, in darkly comedic fashion, rendering his super serial walkout speech even more meaningless) by having a go at "each and every one" of us, or even abandoning the belt he'd just won. It was the way in which it was all rendered moot less than a month later.

Ziggler's tragic return at the Royal Rumble would be the stuff of burial legend if WWE weren't subconsciously destroying the careers of half their roster every Monday Night at present. Landing the plum #30 spot in the 2018 edition - the f*cking internet faves edition - of the January battle royal meant nothing when he was eliminated by Finn Bálor 121 seconds later. This took place on January 28th, a week and a half after - you guessed it - Bobby Roode won a tournament to win a prize so cherished that the last guy to have left it to rot for what proved to be no good reason.

Everything just...moved on. In a criminal development, 'The Show Off' fought for the Intercontinental Championship again in the years that passed, as if the whole sordid little secondary title grief vortex hadn't opened up in the first place.

But it did. It swallowed the belt whole, and took the last of poor Dolph's most ardent followers with it. Vince McMahon had injected another lethal dose of poison into the veins of his product. But the nWo logo wasn't on the back of his chair, merely within WWEShop links where Ziggler's shirts used to be.