wrestling / Columns

The 8 Ball: Top 8 WWE Wrestlers in Trouble

February 6, 2016 | Posted by Mike Hammerlock

Top 8 WWE Wrestlers in Trouble

Back again for another installment, it’s the 411Mania Wrestling Zone Magic 8-Ball WWE Trouble Index, or the 4MWZ8BWTI (that’s totally going to catch on, rolls off the tongue). For those that need a refresher, what puts a wrestler on the list is not being stuck at the bottom of the roster. You need to have something to lose to be in trouble. Zack Ryder can’t be in trouble because he’s irrelevant. The Trouble Index is for performers whose careers are at or headed for turning points, and they’re not turning for the better.

The WWE itself made the first few installments of the list. The flagging ratings and creative swandive have continued, but no point in kicking that horse. Unless the WWE takes a dramatic turn for the worse, it’s slow downhill slide only counts as more of the same. The Trouble Index craves fresh crises.

You won’t see any of the injured talents on the WWE roster listed here. In fact, getting injured might prove a brilliant stroke of luck for John Cena. With what’s shaping up to be one of the most forgettable cards in WrestleMania history, Cena may be greeted like a savior when he returns. Everybody who’s on the shelf at this moment could get the returning hero treatment with a ticket straight to the main event. Suddenly getting injured has become a career move.

Yet some people are still working for the WWE and some of them are in trouble. Here are the leading candidates.

8. Naomi

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She’s a personal favorite of mine. I maintain she’d be all kinds of over if she had given her booty a name (Sweet Baby Bertha, Rumpzilla, Ms. Bounce). She could have done tag matches with it. Alas, I fear Vince McMahon is not an ass man. Naomi has been all kinds of patient too. She’s been with the company since 2009. She’s been a Funkadactyl, a total diva and a B.A.D. girl. Yet the Boss, Sasha Banks, has eclipsed her former B.A.D. mates and the divas division is being taken over by NXT graduates. Nothing wrong with that, but Naomi seems to drifting aimlessly. She’s the Bad News Barrett of WWE women. Feels like she should have won the top prize at some point, but she never did. Now she probably never will.

7. Tyler Breeze

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I debated whether to include Breeze since he became an instant jobber. Yet that means his call up to the WWE roster has gone so poorly he couldn’t even qualify as a member of the Social Outcasts. Breeze has become the kind of guy who’d lose to a Social Outcast in a squash match. He’s the new Rip Rogers. Seems like he’s got a look and some talent to take him somewhere, but he’s been DOA. When he runs his course as a WWE jobber, they’ll probably send him back to NXT to job there. Honestly, there’s no one who needs to get out of the WWE faster than Breeze. If he falls all the way down the abyss that’s opened up beneath him, he won’t even get taken seriously in the indies. That’s why he’s on this list. He needs to escape the WWE while he’s still got his dignity.

6. Paige

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Paige has been a regular on the Trouble Index. She’s never more than a moment away from another turn. Frankly, she’s exhausting that way. Supposedly she’s a face again. Why? Hell if I know. Don’t worry, it surely won’t last long. Her WWE career to date has been a tragic misuse of a talented young woman, still only age 23. Paige would be fairly easy to fix, some consistent booking that shows off her ring skills would do the trick. Yet she’s now an afterthought to Charlotte, Sasha, Becky and, when/if she returns, Nikki Bella. Welcome to the divas midcard. Consistency, or even passing attention, is a luxury Paige may not be given. Her future may look a lot like Natalya and Alicia Fox’s WWE careers, hanging around to fill out the division. Paige should be better than that, but the path back to the top of the WWE women’s ranks seems blocked for her.

5. Ryback

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He has new ring gear! That’s totally what was holding him back. He needed a speedo and not a singlet. Duh. I have nothing against the Ryback. Seems like a really interesting guy when he’s not pretending to be a roided up speed freak. I wish they let more of his actual personality show. Chanting “Feed me more!” on an endless loop gets tiresome, and that’s why he’s never escaped the midcard. He was a fad back in 2012, like Gangnam Style. The world has moved on and Ryback hasn’t. The E finally gave him a belt in 2015 and it went nowhere. Hard to see an upward trajectory for him from here. A heel turn and possibly a tag team would seem to be in order. He could go all Social Outcast and they could get RybAxel back together. Yet the failure to make Ryback more than a musclehead caricature serves as the perfect example of why, with so much of the roster on the shelf, no viable options seem ready to step up.

4. Undertaker

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What? Heresy! How dare I put Undertaker on this list. I’m punching the inner child of Joe Wrestling Fan square in the nose. Hear me out. Undertaker supposedly will be working WrestleMania 32 in what could be his retirement match. Rumors are his opponent may be, wait for it, Braun Strowman. Nothing against Strowman, but he’s done jack all to date. He’s not even close to ready to face Taker on the industry’s biggest stage. This could rival Taker’s not-the-least-bit-epic Mania battles against Giant Gonzalez and King Kong Bundy. The Sycho Sid dookie match may look good in comparison to what a 51 year-old Taker and Strowman can produce. This is no way for a legend to bow out. What they could do is bring back Shawn Michaels to retire him. That’s how you sell out a stadium in Texas. Undertaker shouldn’t be in a card filler match. Had John Cena been healthy, that clash would have befit the occasion. Strowman needs to be making his bones against Big Show and Kane. Taker is in danger of coming to a tawdry end, facing a relative nobody in a match that feels like a foregone conclusion.

3. The League of Nations

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Originally I had all four LoN members on here separately, but that meant they were hijacking the whole column. Sadly for them, they aren’t interesting enough to warrant that kind of attention. Never has a faction led to such a cataclysmic failure of its otherwise prominent members. A year ago at this time Rusev was the unconquerable brute, an agent of Russian foreign policy sent to dominate the WWE. He intended to prove just how weak our American culture is. Then he got the Cena squash, then he spent his summer in a love rectangle angle that went nowhere, then he became the de facto jobber for the LoN. Bad enough to be on a team that loses all the time. Even worse to be the guy who does most of the losing. It’s only a matter of time until they make him dance.

Bad News Barrett hasn’t been able to stay healthy for a meaningful run during the past two years. Crying shame. He may go down as one of the most wasted talents in WWE history. Alberto Del Rio returned to the WWE as a red hot property, and in what’s got to be the best shape of his life. When he beat John Cena clean for the U.S. title at Hell in a Cell, it seemed like he was ready to hit new heights. Then Zeb Colter, MexAmerica and this LoN horsecrap robbed every bit of heat from him. Here’s a guy who should have been built as one of the main attractions at WrestleMania 32 and now he’ll be lucky to participate in anything more that the leftovers battle royal. Oh, Sheamus is there too. In case you forgot, he won Money in the Bank and the WWE Championship in 2015. Miraculously, that journey left him in a spot of complete irrelevance. I like all four guys in the LoN. It’s dripping with talent. Jamming them together for no purpose other than to have Roman Reigns mow through them has perhaps ended their runs as meaningful players in the WWE.

2. Roman Reigns

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As I just mentioned, the WWE destroyed a good-sized chunk of its roster to put Reigns over … and it didn’t work. Here we are, more than a year after Reigns’ flop victory at the 2015 Royal Rumble and he still draws boos more often than cheers. He deserves better. His big event work during the past year has been very good (though his Raw/Smackdown matches have been lacking). He absolutely should be a major player in the WWE, but trying to make him the next John Cena isn’t going to happen, largely because fans don’t want a next John Cena. One was enough. Yet that’s not why Roman is this high on the list. He’s here because he’s headed into the teeth of new booking disaster. At Fastlane he’s going to battle Dean Ambrose and Brock Lesnar for the chance to face HHH at WrestleMania. Quick question, who’s the heel in that match? That’s right, Roman Reigns. Ambrose is the most organically over guy in the company at the moment. Fans love it when Lesnar lays waste to everyone and everything. Cleveland is going to boo the ever-loving hell out of Reigns. Perhaps this is tipping the heel turn for Reigns. They shouldn’t fully pull that trigger until Mania and obviously they’ll need a third guy in the main event, probably Ambrose. Mind you, they’re going to need a third man at Mania anyway to make sure the audience doesn’t cheer for Trips. Speculation is they might try to book a turn for Ambrose along the way. If they do, then the resistance to Reigns will get even more fervent. Fans will not take kindly to turning their favorite guy in order to push the corporate poster boy. Fans vs. Vince will go nuclear at that point and Reigns will be ground zero.

1. Bray Wyatt

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Is Bray starting Streak 2.0? He’s lost to John Cena and the Undertaker in his first two WrestleMania bouts. Rumor is he’s getting Brock Lesnar in 2016. Hard to believe they let Bray win that one. Maybe they do, but they seem to take Brock seriously, and Bray … not so much. 411’s Wyatt Beougher made a great case prior to this year’s Royal Rumble for why Bray should have finished that night as WWE champion. That would have made Bray vs. Brock feel like megamatch rather than a ritual sacrifice. Maybe Bray interfering at Fast Lane leads to such a dusty finish that we get an Elimination Chamber match at WrestleMania: Trips, Reigns, Bray, Brock, Ambrose and let’s toss in AJ Styles to make it six. Suddenly that’s interesting and Bray’s troubles evaporate for the time being. My confidence is low in them going with something bold like that, which puts us back to Bray tilting at another industry giant with an almost certain expectation (from fans) of failure. Bray vs. Paul Heyman on the mic should be entertaining during the build, but the match probably ends with Bray in the Suplex City Cemetery.