WWE: When Dolph Ziggler Has Help, He Becomes A Vital Part Of The Show

The current Intercontinental Champion in WWE, Dolph Ziggler can owe most of his on-screen success this summer to Drew McIntyre, who is quietly making his case as a future Universal Champion. McIntyre’s presence is confirmation that all Ziggler needed was for someone to watch his back again.

Every time Dolph Ziggler ascended to the top of the WWE, he had a manager helping him out. Corrupt GM Vickie Guerrero helped Dolph reach incredible heights at the beginning of his career, even awarding him the World Heavyweight Championship at Edge’s expense, though that decision was overturned in mere minutes.

When Ziggler cashed in the Money in the Bank contract to win his first world title “for real”, he was flanked by AJ Lee and Big E, two incredibly gifted performers. Today, Lee is doing something far more important than professional wrestling after being a ground-breaking woman in WWE, while Big E is the powerhouse of the iconic New Day faction.

In short, Ziggler is a man familiar with how important it is to have support, because there’s nothing like knowing that somebody has your back.

These days, there are very few wrestlers who have managers. Paul Heyman likes to distance himself from that term, for example, referring to himself as an “Advocate” of Brock Lesnar. The Authors of Pain dropped Paul Ellering immediately when they joined the Raw roster. Right now, Zelina Vega and Lana – who manage Andrade “Cien” Almas and Rusev, respectively – are WWE’s only high-profile managers.

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But even though Ziggler is a singles competitor as the Intercontinental Champion and doesn’t have a manager on his side, he does have one of WWE’s most menacing individuals watching his back. That “Guardian Psycho” is Drew McIntyre, who essentially gifted an IC Championship victory to Ziggler against Seth Rollins in an Iron Man match at Extreme Rules.

Is there anyone a superstar would rather have in their corner than McIntyre? The man is 6’5″, 265 pounds, world traveled, insanely strong, and athletic enough to perform a tope con hilo.

McIntyre can talk almost as well as he can wrestle, and he’s gone above and beyond to make sure Ziggler is an important part of Raw. Furthermore, McIntyre has been a champion all across the world, including in NXT, and would love nothing more than to angle for a title.

Everyone is speculating how the McIntyre and Ziggler story will end, with most people believing that it won’t exactly end well for Ziggler. The two will tear their heads – and the roof – off at a Pay Per View match, and then McIntyre will move on to bigger and better things, leaving Ziggler grasping for what’s left of an impressive run in Raw‘s upper mid-card.

Though the break-up between McIntyre and Ziggler seems inevitable, it’s important not to lose sight of what we’ve seen to this point. Ziggler dropped the United States Championship (for no reason, evidently) and was immediately eliminated in the Royal Rumble as the No. 30 entrant amidst speculation that he might leave WWE. He didn’t even have a real match at WrestleMania for another year running.

But now, Ziggler is one of the kings of Raw. Winning the Intercontinental Championship is an honor, and it’s one that Ziggler has been granted six times in his career. Today, that title feels even more special on Raw with Lesnar essentially holding the Universal Title hostage, and beating the best night-in-night-out performer in WWE, Seth Rollins, in a straight-up wrestling match is just as big of an honor.

Of course, Ziggler never out-wrestled Rollins in that match, and he would have been blown out if it weren’t for McIntyre changing the entire complexion of the match by interfering.

Fans often wonder why Ziggler isn’t positioned like this on his own, and sometimes I wonder if it has to do with Vince McMahon and the creative team worrying about the believability of him consistently winning on his own in a sea of younger, bigger performers. Because when Ziggler is on his own, he’s “solid” but often loses more than he wins, just barely getting pinned after a valiant effort.

Yet when Ziggler has a manager pulling distractions or someone like McIntyre beating the hell out of his opponents, he becomes one of the strongest wrestlers on the brand. Look, he’s the IC Champion on a show with only one available singles title for the men, and few heels are in his position with the babyface main eventers largely focused on Brock Lesnar.

Ziggler has always been good, so all he needed to become a relevant, vital piece of WWE’s weekly programming was to get a partner who has his back. It’s amazing what a non-tag team pairing can do for a wrestler, and I wonder if WWE tries to experiment with this in the future to help elevate other wrestlers from “stealing the show” to “becoming the show”.