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The 411 Wrestling Top 5: Top 5 Most Underutilized Performers
The 411 Wrestling Top 5: Hello everyone and welcome to 411 Wrestling’s Top 5 List. We take a topic each week and all the writers here on 411 wrestling will have the ability to participate and give us their Top 5 on said topic. So, onto this week’s topic…
Week 308 – The Top 5 Most Underutilized Performers
Who are the most underutilized performers in wrestling today? DISCUSS!
Eric Palmer
5. Luke Harper – Harper is my favorite big guy in wrestling right now and has been for a while. He’s got a ton of agility for a guy his size and plays his character to perfection. His matches are usually pretty entertaining and he can brawl with the best of them. I think he has potential to be a big time heel, and would love for him to replace Kane in The Authority, should Kane complete his 1,000th face turn sometime soon.
4. Ethan Carter III – ECIII is an interesting case to me. This is the guy that should be the face of TNA, and I’m sure he will be very soon. He’s got all the tools to be an absolute star in this business. I think he’s extremely underutilized, not just in TNA, but in wrestling as a whole. He’s the complete package, and really, he needs to take this character (minus the name) back to WWE, where he can actually reach his full potential.
3. Kofi Kingston – This will probably be a controversial pick a bit. I love Kofi. He’s a fantastic athlete, a damn good wrestler and has given us some of the most entertaining moments in recent memory whenever he’s in a battle royal. We learned in 2009 that he can also work a serious character and actually cut a pretty good promo. His program with Orton way back when was something new and fresh for Kofi and it was awesome to see. It’s really unfortunate he hasn’t been close to the main event since then, because he could have been one of the biggest faces today if they had just kept building his momentum from there.
2. Bray Wyatt – Wyatt is my second favorite talker in WWE right now behind only Dean Ambrose. While I’ve seen criticism from people saying he cuts the same promo every single time, if you actually pay attention to them, they’re completely different. People seem to dislike the vague messages he spreads, but I love the mystique it adds to the character. He went from wrestling The Undertaker at Wrestlemania, to falling right back into the mid card against Ryback. Bray Wyatt needs to defeat Ryback and needs to be in the main event. I would love to see him tear it up with Orton when he finishes his feud with Rollins.
1. Dean Ambrose – While 2-5 on this list were a bit of a tough call in terms of order, this one is a no brainer. Dean Ambrose is over as hell despite floundering in the mid-card. He cuts the best promos in WWE, has consistently entertaining matches and is the anti-hero the WWE fans have been missing since Stone Cold retired. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s anything like Austin, they’re two completely different characters, but Dean Ambrose has the abilities to be this generation’s version of the Rattlesnake. His character has been booked very well despite his matches and results being the exact opposite. It seems like WWE brass knows what they have in Dean Ambrose and it’s only a matter of time until they pull the trigger and he flies up the card.
Kevin Pantoja
5. Ethan Carter III – Let me start by saying that I absolutely love Ethan Carter III. He is the single best thing going in TNA right now and has been for a while now. Hell, I’d say he’s the best heel in wrestling, slightly above Seth Rollins. He should be the guy that TNA builds around. Yea, he was in the WWE before, but he is a star that TNA made. He needs to be the guy to dethrone Kurt Angle as the TNA World Champion and be THE MAN there after that. The only reason he isn’t higher is because I think that’s the direction TNA is now headed. #EC3ForChampion
4. Stardust /Cody Rhodes – Is there anything that Cody Rhodes can’t do? They gave him the Dashing gimmick and he made it work. He moved to Undashing and knocked that out of the park. He won the Intercontinental Title and was one of my favorite people to watch. Stick him with a weird mustache as part of Team Rhodes Scholars and he gets the mustache over enough to garner chants and merchandise. Turn him face and put him with his brother and he’s the second most over babyface at the time behind Daniel Bryan. Seriously, while in the Brotherhood, he was Daniel Bryan in Team Hell No levels of great. They stuck him with the Stardust gimmick and all he’s done in live and breathe the role. There were so many missed opportunities with this guy that it’s sad. He could be doing so much more, as Cody or Stardust.
3. Bray Wyatt – Talk about wasted potential. Bray Wyatt is something so different from everything else that we see in wrestling but is doing nothing. It was fine when he first got called up because he had direction. He was then fed to John Cena and booked to lose that feud. What followed was a meaningless feud with Chris Jericho before a disappointing rivalry with Dean Ambrose. Next, he was fed to the Undertaker at WrestleMania. There is so much that could be done with Bray if booked correctly, but instead he’s just another guy. Creative seems to have no idea what to do with him. Why did he target Jericho, Ambrose or Ryback? They have no clue.
2. Luke Harper – The best big man currently employed by the WWE. Well, full time at least. He plays his character to perfection, can flat out go in the ring and can work any match from basic stuff, to a street fight to a ladder match. There is absolutely no reason for his win/loss record to be as atrocious as it is. With competent writers, he could be great. Hell, he should 100% be in the spot of Authority muscle that Big Show unfortunately occupies. The bottom line is that Luke Harper should be doing more than wasting time as a midcard jobber.
1. Dean Ambrose – Seriously, this is one of the easiest top choices I’ve made for one of these lists. After the Shield split, Dean Ambrose became the hottest thing in pro wrestling during his feud with Seth Rollins. Which he lost. Then he feuded with Bray Wyatt for no real reason. And he lost some more. He got involved in the Intercontinental Title picture. And he lost even more. During all of this, he was given dumb things to work with like a promo with a blow up doll, putting slime in Seth’s briefcase, stealing the IC Title, shooting ketchup and mustard at Kane and more. Somehow, throughout all of this, he is still insanely over. The character is, like Bray Wyatt, something different than what we see from the paint by numbers guys in the company. The fact of the matter is, Ambrose has all of the tools to be a mega star if he’s given the chance to do so. Hell, he’s already a major star without being given the chance.
DINO ZEE
5. Kenny King – Sure, he recently won the X Division championship (again), but he has spent the vast majority of his time playing the role of “The Shitty Guy” in the Beat Down Clan. King basically stands in the background, offers “Yeah!” “Tell him!” and “We’re gonna get you!” type of trash talk, and is usually the first guy sent out after a target, usually in a losing battle. Don’t worry though, because Low Ki, Homicide, and MVP can help you out whenever you want. King is a great athletic talent, and could be someone TNA really gets behind, but for some reason, it’s only been lukewarm attempts, with stuff like “King of the Night” that ultimately lead nowhere. Standing around with guys getting pushes is not being utilized, in my opinion.
4. Adam Rose – A personal favorite, I just don’t understand what the hell happened with Adam Rose. The guy can wrestle, he’s shown the ability to connect with fans, and still, for some reason, he just floats around, losing to whatever low card act they have given him as an opponent. Yeah, he picked up a win on Raw against Fandango, but Rose is still doing absolutely nothing. He could be a fun, delusional heel who thinks everyone loves him when they really don’t, but instead, he’s just an idiot who hangs out with the same group of losers each and every week, regardless of whether they cost him matches, or drop him on the trust fall, or anything like that. There is so much that can be done with Adam Rose, and they’re instead choosing to do absolutely nothing with him.
3. Curtis Axel – Yeah, “Axelmania” has gotten him some TV time I guess, but this is a guy that should be doing so much more. When Rybaxel was broken up to give Ryback his face push, I immediately wondered to my friends if perhaps Axel should have been kept with Ryback. My inkling was that he’d make a pretty good face, and could even play a peppy “little dog” to Ryback’s “big dog.” Instead, he was given absolutely nothing to do but count lights until the Royal Rumble. Even with this Axelmania movement, he’s nothing more than jobber fodder. While he was first written off as a guy with no personality to speak of, I think Axelmania has shown he can connect with the audience, and perhaps unleashing him as a full-fledged face wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world.
2. Tigre Uno – He arrived to TNA with some fanfare, but was instantly put in Sanada’s shadow. Since then, TNA’s luchador has done little besides show up in mulitple man matches, where he’s guaranteed to not win anything. Why not? This is an exciting wrestler who could thrive as the standard bearer of TNA’s X Division, and all during a time where Lucha Libre has caught on a bit more with the masses. So of course, he’s nowhere near being a credible title threat because we need more Mandrews on our TV.
1. Jack Swagger – Yeah, yeah, I know. Many of you have given up on him, and don’t want to hear it. Well, tough. Jack Swagger has ridiculous amateur credentials, can go in the ring, and has shown (at times) the ability to display a weird charisma that the fans can rally behind. For years, there are fans (myself included) who have wanted him pushed as a Kurt Angle clone, a wrestling machine that cannot be equaled. No, this doesn’t mean he’s Angle’s equal, it just means that the way you push the man can be mimicked from Angle’s treatment. Swagger’s return in early 2013 basically demonstrated what we were asking for, but it was then derailed in the name of making his feud with Del Rio about immigration, followed by Swagger’s run in with the law. Still, the fact remains that one of the most accomplished amateur wrestlers on the roster is only used when the writing crew doesn’t know who to job out to Rusev for the week.
Wyatt Beougher
5. Ol Blue Pants – To this point, Leva Bates’ WWE career has existed, outside of a single fluke win, as nothing more than enhancement talent. This, in spite of being a better performer (and more over with the Full Sail crowd) than pretty much anyone she’s faced (Sasha Banks is the obvious exception to this rule). Granted, she’s not under an actual developmental contract with WWE at this point, but that’s part of the reason that I think she’s being underutilized. If someone can convince me that Bates isn’t a better fit for NXT than the woman she last lost to, Dana Brooke, I’ll eat my hat. Brooke is the antithesis of the #GiveDivasAChance movement, and Bates should probably be the face of it.
4. Cesaro – Sure, he was one-half of the tag team champions for two months and he and Tyson Kidd were guaranteed to be in one of the best matches (if not the best match) on any show they were on, but I can’t help but feel that the Swiss Superman deserves better than being part of a fun, funny tag team. At one point, he was tearing it up with the likes of John Cena, Sheamus, and Daniel Bryan. Hopefully the reactions that he and Kidd were getting during the WWE’s post-Wrestlemania European tour will translate on this side of the Atlantic and we can finally see Cesaro regain some of the love that he so rightfully deserves.
3. King Cuerno – Compared to some of the other performers on this list, Cuerno isn’t doing badly for himself – he won his first feud, had a pair of memorable matches with one of the most recognizable talents in Lucha Underground in Johnny Mundo, his team made it to the finals of the Trios Tournament, and he’s even had an opportunity to challenge Prince Puma for the Lucha Underground title. So why did he make this list? Cuerno is easily one of the most distinctive members of the LU roster, with his deer hat and cape, his easily recognizable mask, and one of the most beautiful suicide dives in the entire wrestling business today. His hunter gimmick would be the natural foil for Prince Puma, and if there’s anything Lucha Libre loves, it is rudos who are the inverse of their technico rivals. In spite of that, he’s been more or less marginalized since guys like Cage and El Texano Jr have arrived in the Temple – he was the designated Ricky Morton of their team in the Trios tournament, taking the beating for the majority of the match so that his bigger, stronger partners could later come in and clean house, and he was just jobbed out to Hernandez, a vastly inferior character and wrestler in a number one contenders match this past week that also featured Cage. Everything that Cuerno does looks amazing, and he deserves far better than his current Jobber to the Stars status. Speaking of…
2. Bray Wyatt – Look, I’ll go on record here as being the biggest mark for Bray Wyatt on this site and his most vocal supporter, but even if you’re not the biggest fan of “The New Face of Fear”, surely you can admit that he deserves better than what he’s gotten thus far in his WWE career. Honestly, Wyatt could have had it a lot worse (look at almost any other NXT alumni to debut on the main roster since the Wyatt Family’s debut), but in what should have been his two biggest moments, Wyatt was made to look like nothing more than a guy who was lucky to be in the ring with his opponents. The worst part is that both his feud with Cena and his match with the Undertaker could have played out with nearly the same match results, if only the matches themselves had booked better. Imagine if Cena had given in to Wyatt’s machinations at Wrestlemania and blasted him with a chair when Wyatt was begging him for it. Not only does Wyatt pick up the win at Wrestlemania, but he was actually able to gain the mental upper hand on Cena, and they could’ve spent the next two months telling Cena’s redemption story (ideally without that awful, awful cage match at last year’s Extreme Rules). And this year at Wrestlemania was arguably worse, as Wyatt spent months talking about how he wasn’t scared of the Undertaker, only to look terrified when Taker sat up during his spider/crab walk, thereby making him look like an ineffectual goober, who was handily dispatched not long after. Taker should’ve needed everything in his arsenal to put Wyatt away, and he should have been the desperate one in the latter stages of the match, but instead, we got another instance of Wyatt seemingly failing to rise to the occasion, and instead of ascending to the proverbial peaks of the perpetually over, he’ll spend the rest of this year rebuilding his character, just as he did last year.
1. Alex Shelley – If I’m Jeff Jarrett, Shelley is the guy that I put the full-court press on to become the face of Global Force Wrestling, not AJ Styles. For one thing, it’s probably going to be harder to convince Styles to give up his main event status in NJPW to return stateside full-time, and for another, Shelley is six years younger and, in my humble opinion, a better overall package than Styles. Styles has had the more acclaimed, higher profile matches, but Shelley is equally masterful in the ring (and his submission proficiency gives him an added dimension that Styles can’t really boast) and far more charismatic on the microphone. He should be a multiple time world champion at this point in his career, but the highest singles accolade he’s held was the X Division championship, and that was still after the division was the highlight of TNA. Sure, he’s enjoyed tag team success as half of both the Motor City Machine Guns (with Chris Sabin) and the Time Splitters (with KUSHIDA), but I can’t help but feel like he is capable of so much more.
List your Top Five for this week’s topic in the comment section using the following format:
5. CHOICE: Explanation
4. CHOICE: Explanation
3. CHOICE: Explanation
2. CHOICE: Explanation
1. CHOICE: Explanation
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