We’re continuing on with our list of WWE stars who have a rough road ahead of them in 2016, and while part 1 revolved around NXT, part 2 is going to focus on those on the main roster. While stars in developmental have a much higher risk of being released, simply being on the main roster doesn’t make people invincible. Sometimes, this can be even worse, as it means WWE’s gotten to the point where they realize there’s no more advancement coming and it’s time to cut ties.
Also, since there are more people on the main roster, the sample size of lower card talent and wrestlers being ignored is higher than NXT, where pretty much everyone has some sort of a role to play all the time.
Keeping all this in mind, who are the wrestlers who aren’t exactly turning heads in a positive way in 2016? Let’s take a look.
Damien Sandow
Poor Damien Sandow just can’t catch a break. When he was brought back into the fold with this character, he started making headway toward a nice spot in the midcard. Eventually, Sandow would team up with Cody Rhodes in a random makeshift partnership that went better than many probably would have assumed it would go. They never won the titles, but perhaps they shouldn’t have.
Things only got better with a Money in the Bank briefcase win—that is, until he became the second person ever to lose his cash-in opportunity. He was promptly demoted back to midcard status where he would struggle for quite some time.
Eventually, Sandow found a new means to get over with the audience by doing his Damien Mizdow gimmick. This was often the highlight of the night and went over like gangbusters with the crowd. Surely, he would finally get his fair shot, right? Nope. He lost the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal and WWE once again decided to do nothing with him, failing to capitalize on the obvious and super easy built-in feud with The Miz that should have been much better.
Once more, Sandow reinvented himself as Macho Mandow, teaming up with Curtis Axel (aka Axelmania) as the New Mega Powers. Right off the bat, WWE didn’t seem willing to do anything with them, and before long, Hulk Hogan’s racial controversy killed Axelmania, putting an end to that partnership and leaving Sandow with the task to rebuild himself yet again.
It seems he gave up after this, or WWE gave up on him. We didn’t see him for months and we finally did get a return at the Royal Rumble, where he was partnered up with Darren Young (why?) to lose in a tag team match on the pre-show, meaning he couldn’t even quality for the Royal Rumble match itself. Not a whisper since then, unless you watch UpUpDownDown.
When there are so many injuries putting people on the shelf, there’s no excuse not to use someone like Sandow unless WWE specifically doesn’t want to, which doesn’t make me confident that he’ll turn it around this time.
Darren Young
Speaking of Darren Young, he falls victim to the same criticism at the Royal Rumble as his tag team partner we just talked about, but even worse.
How bad is it when you’re one half of a tag team, but your partner gets automatic qualification into the Royal Rumble and you don’t? Instead, you’re put with someone who hasn’t done jack shit for months and you’re going to job out on the pre-show. That’s definitely not a million dollar move.
Titus O’Neil has been getting somewhat of a push as of late while Darren Young has been either injured or just sitting on the sidelines. The Prime Time Players have broken up once before with WWE trying to make O’Neil the Shawn Michaels of the two (Young being the Marty Jannetty, of course) and it’s painfully obvious that nothing has changed since reuniting.
If they continue to team together, Young will continue to be the one that gets pinned as he’s always been. If they split up, O’Neil could potentially find some success, but it’s an uphill battle, while Young is guaranteed to be cast aside instead of prioritized.
It’s looking like Mr. No Days Off might be changing his name to Mr. All Days Off if nothing changes.
Los Matadores
Diego and Fernando turned on El Torito, becoming heels and promising a new attitude. That was in September.
WWE needs as many tag teams as they can have right now and after speculation that they were being repackaged and/or possibly forming a stable with Carlito, they’re still M.I.A.
Simply put, unless WWE brings them back in a huge way and they’ve changed considerably since taking their hiatus, consider them finished.
Erick Rowan
Erick Rowan is the fall guy for The Wyatt Family. If anybody is going to be pinned, it’s him. If anyone will be made to look weak, he’s there to take the punch. WWE’s done nothing to try to remedy this in any way as Bray Wyatt is the top priority, Braun Strowman is the new toy to play with, and Luke Harper is the workhorse who needs to be somewhat protected so his offense is believable.
Rowan could have done something when he split off from The Wyatt Family in 2014, but he didn’t. When he was about to rejoin The Wyatt Family in 2015, he got injured and spent a long while off television, being forgotten about. Eventually, he made his return, but it was with a whimper and not a bang. Since then, he’s reverted back to his position as the whipping boy.
2016 is going to be a year of losses for Erick Rowan just as it was before. There’s been absolutely nothing so far to indicate that he’ll have a better win/loss statistic than his previous track record was.
Fandango
Where’s Fandango? Even if he’s showing up on Main Event or Superstars—which is almost as bad as just sitting at home because it means absolutely nothing—is he a babyface or a heel?
The saddest part about that question is that the answer backstage is probably “Does anybody care?”
Fandango has a lot of talent, but WWE clearly has lost faith in him. When they turned him babyface, it could have rejuvenated his character and gotten him back to a position where fans were singing along with his music and going crazy, but they opted to not go with the flow. Too much time spent looking like you don’t matter ends up convincing the audience that you don’t.
I can’t remember the last time I saw him outside of Screwed, which sums up his career right now.
The Ascension
The worst thing to ever happen to The Ascension was coming to the main roster. In NXT, they were the top of the food chain, destroying people left and right and performing in front of a crowd that they had in the palm of their hands.
From day one on the Raw and SmackDown circuit, they’ve been booked poorly and their credibility has been chipped away at. There’s virtually nothing left. Instead of being tag team champions and a feared duo, they’ve been relegated to the jobbers of the division who appear mostly to put someone else over on Main Event or Superstars. Sometimes, if they’re lucky, they’ll be tossed into a six man tag team match on SmackDown or something of the like, but they’ll inevitably lose that as well.
If we’re going to poke fun at the names like with Screwed and Mr. No Days Off, we can’t ignore how inappropriate a name like “The Ascension” applies to these two, who seem to have been put in a position by WWE where the ceiling they’re allowed to reach is just a few inches from the floor.
Sin Cara
When Sin Cara was partnered up with Kalisto, it was to take a somewhat established star and to use him to build up a newer guy. That worked rather well, which means Sin Cara has now surpassed his usefulness.
Kalisto is the United States champion and Sin Cara is injured. Since The Lucha Dragons weren’t champions on the main roster to begin with, it’s unlikely when he returns to action, WWE will want to pair the two back up again to go for anything noteworthy in that division. If Sin Cara even returns in 2016 at all, he would be looked at as the weak link in that scenario at best. At worst, he would hurt Kalisto’s credibility for being aligned with him.
The pessimist in me thinks that the best thing Sin Cara can hope for is a speedy recovery during the time frame where there’s still a laundry list of injured stars so he can turn heel, feud with Kalisto, lose a few times to him and then move into obscurity. The optimist in me thinks the Kalisto character might be successful enough to justify WWE calling it quits with the Sin Cara mask. Then, perhaps he can return as Hunico and team up with the repackaged Diego and Fernando to form a stable. Don’t hold your breath on either scenario happening, though, as he’s most likely just going to show up to lose singles matches to people like Braun Strowman and the like.
Summer Rae
Summer Rae has been on the main roster for quite some time, but hasn’t found anything remotely close to a firm foundation for her career. When she was first brought into the fold as Fandango’s dancing partner, she was turning heads and seemed to be setting herself up nicely for the future. Obviously, Fandango isn’t in the best spot right now either, and Summer Rae is in a similar position.
Why is she never wrestling? As far as talent goes, she may not be the best, but she’s certainly not the worst. WWE’s had far less talented women out there in the ring on a regular basis time and time again, but Summer Rae appears to be relegated solely to a managerial capacity. Every time something changes with her character, it boils down to her being the valet of someone else and not getting involved in the action.
Since her split from Tyler Breeze, she’s been off television as far as I’m aware, and she hasn’t even been involved in Total Divas for quite some time as well. Considering how much attention has been given to the Divas Revolution concept over the past couple of months, it’s interesting to note the lack of Summer Rae in all that.
Lana
Remember when Lana was poised to be a major player in the company, possibly at AJ Lee levels? In 2014, she was gaining tons of momentum and many people expected to see her take on an authoritative role of some sorts to be a huge character on television.
Then 2015 happened. More specifically, the Dolph Ziggler and Rusev love triangle (quadrangle if you count Summer Rae) happened.
This program was mishandled to such an extreme that it did massive damage to everyone involved. Lana went from getting some of the strongest reactions in the night to someone that was off television for a while with lots of bad publicity from TMZ.
Since then, it seems like every other week there’s another rumor that she has heat on her for doing something else to get under the skin of her superiors. Some sources claim those rumors are unfounded—and naturally, everything should always be taken with a grain of salt as potentially false to begin with—but after the stories start stacking up, it gets harder and harder to not believe in them. Just as it’s possible that the reports are untrue, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the people claiming them to be b.s. are lying to try to sweep it under the rug. People always try to spin things away from them to not suffer the consequences and rarely does someone admit to their faults, especially in the entertainment industry. Countless times, a wrestler has told fans to dismiss the rumor mill only for it to come out later on that it was entirely true and they were just trying to save face.
Don’t trust rumors 100%, but don’t take Rusev’s word that it’s all fake, either. Websites want traffic and will make stuff up and Rusev could easily be lying to protect his fiancée. Either way, having all of this negative energy surrounding Lana is nothing but bad, and if you look at how WWE’s been using her (or, more appropriately, not using her) for a while, it seems like she’s nosedived. Her stock is clearly not as high as it once was and it wouldn’t surprise me if I heard that she was out of the company in 2017.
Tell us your thoughts on this list and any other people you think might struggle this year in the comments below and stay tuned for the next two installments where things are flipped 180 degrees and we examine some stars who are poised for great success in 2016.
