WWE: The ‘Reintroduction’ of Dolph Ziggler

At the very end of a four-day, four-event stretch and on the night when Shelton Benjamin returned and Bobby Roode made his main roster debut, the WWE Universe was “reintroduced” to Dolph Ziggler.

Blink and you may have missed him on WWE SmackDown.

For weeks now, fans have noticed former world champion Dolph Ziggler’s absence from WWE television. They also may not have noticed it, as Ziggler wasn’t really up to much before he disappeared; on the Independence Day episode of SmackDown Live, he was the first man eliminated from the United States Championship Battle Royal.

After being away for so long, it would be logical to expect Ziggler to return to TV in a big way, possibly with an alternate gimmick and a new purpose. Instead what we got was a quick backstage segment of him complaining about what it seemingly takes to prosper in WWE:

It’s hard not to look back on Ziggler’s career and wonder where everything went south. His post-WrestleMania 29 cash-in for the World Heavyweight Championship is considered to be one of the greatest crowd reactions in recent memory, and at the time it seemed as though Ziggler was a made star, ready to take the next step towards superstardom.

Since then, he’s mostly been living on the “great in-ring, but a little bland” spectrum, hovering around the upper-midcard and mostly putting over the company’s true upper-echelon talent. Without a doubt, Ziggler falls into a category of wrestlers with characters that could use a little freshening up, so his recent hiatus seemed like a perfect opportunity for a reboot.

On Tuesday, Dolph looked about the same as always, clad in a t-shirt and sports coat, and delivered his interview with the same hand gestures and intonation we’ve come to know from The Showoff. According to Ziggler, he was being “reintroduced” instead of being “rebooted” and went on to run down part of the roster.

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Fans could infer that Ziggler was making references to RAW competitors Elias (“I’m gonna start singing, playing guitar”), R-Truth (“maybe rap a little bit, dance around like an idiot”) and possibly The Miz (“I’ll have a beautiful woman escort me to the ring”), whereas fellow blue-branders Aiden English (“one big spotlight on me”), Naomi (“a woman that glows in the dark”) and the aforementioned Roode (“I’ll get a big, fancy robe”) also felt the brunt of his criticism.

An educated guess would say it isn’t a coincidence that Roode had his first appearance on SmackDown the same night as Ziggler returned. A possible feud between the two could produce insanely entertaining matches, but it would likely end with the newcomer coming out on top, which wouldn’t do much for the “new” Dolph.

It’s obviously a matter of opinion, but it seems to be widely agreed upon that Dolph Ziggler’s issues don’t necessarily exist between the ropes, as his “show-stealing” moniker clearly comes from somewhere. So it goes without saying that a whiny, disgruntled Ziggler is not a far enough departure from his former persona to get fans to buy back into his story.

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Something will have to drastically change in order to get him back to (and possibly push him beyond) where he once was.