Another Star Leaving WWE

[Stanford]

Daniel Bryan too.

[jr lucosa]

Just some more thoughts on Del Rio. One of the more odd things about his character is that when he was a face he started that champion of the latino people saying, but when he turned back heel he kept saying it and would still get pops. I think it came across as confusing often.

I also always thought it was sort of odd how they handled the way he was booked. Any time you have a WWE heel who can beat faces clean consistently you have to think they are high on the guy, especially as they had him doing it as World Heavyweight Champ, but almost never was there enough storyline there to make anyone care. In his time in the WWE I would guess that he's put on as many quality matches as anyone else over that time frame, but how many times did the crowd have a reason to pay attention to these matches? How many times were his PPV matches built up with him squashing some low-mid carder for the 4th time in a month?

The one exception to this, where they really tried to give him a full length feud and gave him segments on the weekly TV shows was when he had that long feud with Sheamus in 2012, and while they did have some nice segments building that feud up I think it was ultimately a mistake spending that much time on it for a couple of reasons. For one, Sheamus was coming out of a feud with Daniel Bryan where Bryan was the "heel" but Sheamus got full on heat everytime they wrestled because of how over Bryan was even back then and how angry fans were that he was getting jerked around, even back then. So coming out of that feud Sheamus wasn't extremely favorable with the crowd, which made it tough to get the full crowd against Del Rio and behind Sheamus. I think the WWE thought a long feud with Sheamus could help cement him as a top heel and it just did not play out that way. The other issue is that despite the many months these two were working together, he and Sheamus just did not have the in ring chemistry that he had with almost all the other guys he wrestled WHC PPV matches against.

I said that I think ultimately the WWE universe won't really care that he's gone, and I think for the most part that's true, but I'll sure the high quality matches, if he really does leave.

[Thunder Muscle]

I thought his initial run was solid and then everything tapered off. His face run was poor too. He's a pretty good wrestler though.