10 Wrestlers Wasting Their Life In WWE
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00:00 Imagine wasting your life, eh?
00:02 You get one go at this cosmic ballet we call existence and some of us spend it slogging
00:06 away, underappreciated, in the same dead-end job hearing the words "creative has nothing
00:11 for you".
00:12 Sure, you're chasing a dream, but when all the decision makers are sleeping on you, what's
00:16 the point?
00:17 Now look, I'm not suggesting that in this day and age/economy anyone should walk away
00:21 from a stable paycheck just because I did a sneering video about it, but also, I'm
00:26 not not saying that.
00:28 My name is Adam Cleary and these are 10 Wrestlers Who Are Wasting Their Lives In WWE.
00:33 10.
00:34 Drew Gulak If you've played WWE 2K22, then you already
00:37 know a thing or two about how much charisma Drew Gulak has.
00:41 His in-game tutorial section is a riot and it shows so much personality that WWE top
00:47 brass never let fans see.
00:49 You have to wonder why that is and why poor Drew is rarely featured when he can talk like
00:54 that.
00:55 It's because when he's allowed on camera for SmackDown, he's hidden away in the background
00:58 as some kind of mute extra.
00:59 It's rubbish, it's pointless, it's a complete waste of his time.
01:02 This guy could wrestle rings around more than half of the workers currently on the roster
01:06 as well.
01:07 He's about as technical as the Warhammer 40k rulebook and that recent video game role
01:11 proves he has way more to offer.
01:13 9.
01:14 Cedric Alexander I'm not telling anyone what to do with their
01:15 lives here, but Cedric Alexander would make one hell of a tag team in AEW with Tony Nese,
01:20 who is, of course, at the time of me recording this, struggling to find his way into Tony
01:24 Khan's company.
01:25 He can wrestle brilliantly in fact, but he's quite bland and lacks an identifiable character
01:29 compared to some other people on that roster.
01:31 And who does that remind you of?
01:33 Calling Cedric and Shelton Benjamin the herd business is not doing enough.
01:38 When most people think about that stable, they think about Bobby Lashley and MVP, and
01:42 for all the good work they did, Alexander and Benjamin were the supporting players.
01:46 Since the group splintered yet again, they've been going absolutely nowhere and it's obvious
01:50 that WWE doesn't have a clue what to do with Cedric.
01:53 He's the younger of the two, so it's more worrying that he's floundering so badly
01:57 during the first few months of this year.
01:59 8.
02:00 Commander Aziz Here's a quick "did you know" moment.
02:02 Zizi here has had just 10 televised matches since signing for WWE around 7 years ago.
02:09 The vast majority of his other bouts have come on non-televised NXT house shows pre-pandemic,
02:14 and yes he's made for the bodyguard role, but 10 matches on television in 7 years.
02:20 Worse still, his importance to Apollo Crews has been massively undermined since WWE lost
02:25 interest in their military characters.
02:27 A move to Raw has been disastrous for him as well, especially when the towering Omos
02:31 is clearly an ongoing concern for company chiefs these days.
02:34 Aziz doesn't even get to stand out as the biggest guy on the brand, and that renders
02:38 him pretty pointless.
02:39 The big bastard is 33 and it doesn't look like he's going to motor past Omos in the
02:43 designated monster role, so he must be wondering what the future holds once creative eventually
02:48 removes him from Crews' side.
02:50 Speaking of which…
02:51 7.
02:52 Apollo Crews WWE couldn't have expected more from Crews
02:56 when they ditched his smiling, high-flying babyface routine and turned him into a royal
03:00 wannabe death spot last year.
03:02 He embraced the whole Nigerian accent, hammed up the cartoonish vibes and went for it.
03:07 There's no doubting that it raised his profile, but that profile has since gone crashing through
03:12 the floor.
03:13 Like the aforementioned Aziz, Apollo has suffered from WWE's non-stop cries of "well we
03:18 need to draft somebody" lately.
03:20 His move to Mondays in the 2021 shakeup has done, and pardon the northern parlance for
03:25 this, bugger all to keep his momentum rolling.
03:28 It's difficult to see what else Crews could do to pique Vince McMahon's interest though.
03:32 He's solid on the mic, adaptable with his characters and quite the worker bell to bell.
03:36 Sadly though, it seems he's always been overlooked in favour of others, no matter
03:40 what he does.
03:41 6.
03:42 Shinsuke Nakamura Nakamura holds the dubious distinction of
03:45 being the worst Intercontinental Champion of the past few years.
03:49 He was rarely on TV and sometimes didn't even have the belt with him when he was.
03:53 It was ridiculous.
03:54 Also, just to further illustrate how garbage this run was, WWE left 140 days between his
04:00 sole successful defence against Crews in September and his loss to Sami Zayn in February.
04:06 Now look, I know the argument about Nakamura is that he has done his wrestling for art
04:10 earlier in his career, he has a backlog of things he is incredibly proud of, and now
04:14 he just wants to wrestle to get his paycheck, but are you telling me that this is better
04:19 than him going back for a run somewhere else?
04:21 If it's all about the bottom line, are you telling me New Japan could not do a few money
04:26 spinning comeback matches for him, or AEW squeeze out a few more critically acclaimed
04:31 contests?
04:32 I think they could.
04:33 5.
04:34 Mustafa Ali Yeah, things don't look good for the relationship
04:38 between WWE and Mustafa Ali.
04:40 The wrestler's release requests were reportedly knocked back by Vince McMahon, and Ali is
04:44 currently on the shelf weighing up his options.
04:46 Should he return to work, then he'll likely get frustrated all over again with another
04:50 stop-start system that he hasn't looked comfortable with for years.
04:53 His last outing for the company was a two-minute loss to Drew McIntyre during the Scott's
04:57 Open Challenge days in October 2021.
04:59 That had followed his woeful tag team alongside Mansoor, which in turn had come after a dreadful
05:05 run as the leader of, excuse me, WRESTLEMANIA.
05:08 And the thing is, he is far too skilled to be sitting around on his couch.
05:11 He's a passionate person, a great humanitarian, and has so much to offer both inside the ring
05:17 and out.
05:18 At 35, he must be thinking about life beyond the maddening whims of his twisted boss, but
05:23 stay, and he's only going to experience more of them.
05:26 4.
05:27 Asuka Is WWE still ready for Asuka?
05:29 Do they even remember she exists?
05:31 Who knows, because the veteran hasn't been seen regularly on your telebox since last
05:36 summer.
05:37 She's apparently medically cleared to return, she's all over social media telling you
05:39 she wants to, but the writers must not have any plans for someone who once, and let's
05:44 not forget my friends, carried the entire women's division on her back during the
05:48 pandemic.
05:49 That is pretty damning considering it's currently WrestleMania season and main card
05:53 spots on the two-night affair are being handed out like free samples.
05:57 And I mean genuinely, go find me 100 fans who are either going to or watching WrestleMania
06:02 and ask how many of them think it would be improved by having her on the card.
06:06 And yet it still doesn't look like it's going to happen, so the question must be asked,
06:10 has she done everything she can in this company?
06:13 She's a multi-time champ, a Royal Rumble winner, and even handled the NXT main roster
06:17 jump pretty much better than anybody.
06:19 And if they've got nothing for her, I'll go set up my own wrestling company just to
06:24 give her something to do.
06:26 3.
06:27 The Viking Raiders
06:28 If you want the very short version of why the Viking Raiders should leave WWE, just
06:31 Google War Machine.
06:32 They absolutely tore the house down in Ring of Honor in New Japan, even with us a couple
06:37 of times, and when they signed on the dotted line with the biggest company going, the future
06:42 looked really bright.
06:43 Their big, mad, hairy Viking gimmick was the exact kind of OTT goodness Vinnie Mack loved,
06:48 but he just… showed his bum all over it, didn't he?
06:52 NXT run was alright, it was fine, but the main roster?
06:55 Oh god.
06:56 They changed their name seemingly every week before settling on the worst one they had
06:59 at any point, and since then, all the writers can think to do with them is have other wrestlers
07:04 say they're smelly.
07:05 Their recent feud with the Usos… sucked, and now the Raiders are also rams in Drew
07:09 McIntyre's ongoing rivalry with Happy Corbin.
07:12 That's yet another fall from grace on the creative pecking order for a team who must
07:16 be sick of those by now.
07:17 And the thing is, it's incredibly simple to use them, because you just stop having
07:21 people call them smelly and let them have really good matches instead.
07:24 Which, as I hope they soon realise, any promotion could do.
07:28 2.
07:29 Elias Who wants to walk immediately out of that
07:33 door with Elias?
07:35 The one-time music man who encouraged fans to turn off phones and shut their mouths hasn't
07:39 been on TV since burning his guitar last summer.
07:41 Unlike Asuka though, he didn't take time off to heal from injuries, he just… isn't
07:46 here.
07:47 Rumours of a gimmick overhaul were spoiled when McMahon pointed out that he's sorta
07:50 kinda maybe looking a bit like Randy Savage in his new trunks.
07:53 And if that's his only reason for keeping him in creative no-man's land for 8 long
07:57 months then, ho-ho, oh dear.
08:00 How long can this drag on for?
08:02 Will WWE give Elias the via treatment on running endless vignettes for his return across a
08:06 number of months?
08:07 Or will an uninjured wrestler who's simply been doing absolutely nothing for three quarters
08:11 of a calendar year simply get sick of it and leave?
08:14 Either way, look forward to it.
08:16 1.
08:17 Shayna Baszler There is a popular theory that Vince McMahon
08:19 occasionally likes to see if wrestlers are willing to make a fool of themselves and "be
08:23 entertaining" before he'll build them back up again.
08:29 Last year, Shayna Baszler had to pretend to be scared of Alexa Bliss' little doll in
08:33 numerous silly skits before finding herself moved sideways to SmackDown in 2021.
08:38 If this was WWE's way of building Shayna up into something special then… well, no,
08:43 it's not is it?
08:44 Because it didn't work.
08:45 Since then she's won two, count number two, singles matches since splitting up from Nia
08:49 Jax and moving to Fridays.
08:50 Plus, she's been chewed up as part of the ongoing Sonya Deville vs Naomi storyline and
08:55 then chucked into a nothing tag team with Natalya.
08:59 And this is, I would like to point out, the same woman who in NXT looked like the most
09:03 dominant female star they had ever had.
09:06 Vince's bid to make her into something she isn't though, which is apparently a heel
09:09 who's afraid of small toys, has totally wrecked any momentum she had when she moved
09:14 across.
09:15 And like most of the other people on this list, all you would need to do to fix her
09:18 is give her a series of hard hitting, lengthy, engaging matches, but it doesn't look like
09:24 she's getting those anytime soon.
09:44 (upbeat music)
09:46 (upbeat music)