Dolph Ziggler

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Luchaundead]

I was thinking the other day Ziggler might be the best "job guy" in the history of WWE the problem is that in modern wrestling he's been pushed at time as more than that because you can't have actually enhancement talent anymore they have to all be superstars. Zigglers bumping and selling is amazing and his hope spots make you really believe in him, he's also a guy that is essentially bullet proof as he can lose every match in concert with terrible booking and still be remarkably in basically any market. If you also take in to account his amateur background that is pretty top notch in the few times he gets to show it off in-ring (I.E. vs Swagger or Cesaro) and you've actually got a pretty well rounded worker. The only run he had that could put him in a GWE for me was with "The Family" with AJ and Big E but, that was less than a year so honestly it's not much of a case.

[GOTNW]

He was a great TV worker from 2010-2012 and had great stuff in 2013 before the concussion. The Del Rio Payback match was the best thing he ever did and it's been downhill ever since. Won't consider him but I thought he should at least be brought up because it's possible someone will be looking at this stuff five years from now with a perspective of Ziggler being this amazing worker and wonder how he wasn't even brought up and that his case should at least be debunked.

 

 

I think the biggest problem with Ziggler is who he looked up to and what he was taught was "great wrestling". God knows how many times he carried Randy Orton to very good TV matches but by the time he was being put in high profile feuds against the same opponents the matches weren't even as good as the ones they'd had on TV previously. Ziggler bumped big, came up with a lot of cool spots and counters and always worked hard but he could only go so far without constantly changing his highspots which he eventually stopped doing. A lack of credible offence is another issue obviously. I think he could've been a great wrestler in a different environment but when your favourite wrestler is Shawn Michaels.....eh.

[NotJayTabb]

I find Ziggler's over-top-bumping really annoying and actively takes me out of a match. For example, I once saw him do a full 450 flip from a Zack Ryder monkey flip. I didn't watch that and think "Wow, look how powerful Zack Ryder's monkey flips are", I thought "Oh, that's a ludicrous bump to take for that move". It's not like Zack Ryder has ever been portrayed as having super-powerful monkey flips, so it puts all the attention on Ziggler rather than the guy doing the move. It's that Michaels/Hogan match spread out over an entire career.

[JRGoldman]

Has never been a top 5 worker for any year in WWE, and that includes some years in which the WWE was lean on talent. Incapable of cutting a promo that isn't business exposing garbage. Might have the worst hair in wrestling history. Once wore a ring jacket with a patch that said "Mega-Death".

[Parties]

Would not come close to voting for him. I like Dolph more than some here, but he's coming off an undeniably terrible year - prob. the worst of his post-Spirit Squad career. In ring, on promos, as a commodity: he's in a real slump and his terrible meta-aloof kvetching hasn't helped. All this coming off the 2014 Survivor Series when it seemed like he was almost on the verge of being booked as at least an Orton/Jericho-level guy.

 

His peak was with Big E and AJ, and that's such a short-lived deal (and one with Bryan as a prominent opponent) that it's nothing to get a guy on a top 100 all-time. Dolph wouldn't likely even be top 100 in the world in every year of his career.

 

Calling him the best jobber they've ever had is interesting, but I find it hard to buy that a guy who's main evented PPVs, won Money in the Bank, held the US and tag titles once apiece, and the IC title four times is still a jobber. It's a new world order with seven hours of TV and stop-start pushes, but he's been to the mountaintop. While they’ve never gone all in on him, they’ve come much closer to treating him as a main eventer at times than they have with most of their current roster.

[Luchaundead]

Calling him the best jobber they've ever had is interesting, but I find it hard to buy that a guy who's main evented PPVs, won Money in the Bank, held the US and tag titles once apiece, and the IC title four times is still a jobber. It's a new world order with seven hours of TV and stop-start pushes, but he's been to the mountaintop. While they’ve never gone all in on him, they’ve come much closer to treating him as a main eventer at times than they have with most of their current roster.

 

I may have not explained that exactly how I meant it what I mean to say is he would be the best jobber and in a way is but, he wasn't actually booked as one because in his era they just don't have true job guys especially ones that are under contract. Think of Ziggler in the 80s on prime time getting absolutely destroyed by the Wild Samoans.

[Exposer]

I hate this guy. Once upon a time I loved him then the last two years happened. He's turned into a Shawn Michaels tribute worker with goofy selling and over the top bumps that are even worse than Shawn's. I use to love his bumping style, but then it became his only strength and I realized he has no offense that resonates with me. He sucks. I enjoyed him working matches around sleepers against Kane and Khali in 09 and that great Del Rio match from Payback 2013. Otherwise, he's just a poor man's Shawn Michaels and to me that's no good. Fucking superkicks.

[Jimmy Redman]

The problem with Dolph's Shawn tribute act is the same problem with indy geeks doing 90s AJPW tribute acts: taking the most surface level aspect and running with that, without understanding everything else that went into making the original work.

 

I also feel like with modern/current guys, it's easy to get blinded by how we currently feel about them. I have Dolph fatigue as much as anyone, and it's easy to forget how good he actually was between 2010-13. He's someone who can match up really well with a guy and they're married for life: he's had long feuds or a constant series of matches with guys like Bryan, Kofi, Orton, Sheamus, Cena...and generally any match with any of them will be at least good. The downside is that so many repeated matches can blend together. He's also a good tag worker and I enjoyed his run with Swagger.

 

His match with Sheamus on Smackdown, June 22nd 2012 is one of my favourite TV matches. The best Orton match is also on Smackdown, October 2011 I think. Both are really good examples of what was Dolph's best role: a bumping heel who could make your top guy look like a million bucks, while also showing just enough to push them to the limit. And hell, the double turn match with Alberto at Payback 2013 is one of the best WWE matches of the decade.

 

That said, he's been woeful for a while now and still hasn't learned how to work as a face after two and a half years as one.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm watching a Ziggler match right now and the same thought occurred to me as every other time I've ever seen him: he reminds me of Mr. Perfect. Only not quite as good.

 

Both of them do one of my least favourite moves: the flying mare.

[Jimmy Redman]

I feel like you'd like the Payback match Parv. It's got a neat hook in the double turn, and from memory it's about as violent as a modern WWE match can get without blood or weapons. Dolph's selling really creates this violent feel, and Alberto is a grade A asshole in it.

[Matt D]

Is he better or worse than Morrison?

[Jimmy Redman]

Probably worse, just because Dolph is such a mediocre babyface, while Morrison was a good working face. Dolph is probably better working as a singles heel than Morrison, but it's a much closer call. Morrison is the better tag worker, although Dolph is a good tag worker himself. I'd take Morrison's best match (vs Rey) over Dolph's (probably Payback) but I'd probably take Dolph's 5-10 best singles matches over Morrison's.

 

I'd say Morrison, but not by all that much now that I think about it. To me the key factor is Dolph being so terrible as a babyface in a way that Morrison hasn't been terrible at anything (except cutting promos I guess).

[Loss]

Why aren't his longish week-to-week TV matches in 2015-2016 notably good?

[Jimmy Redman]

I'm not the person to answer this because I haven't kept up with weekly TV enough, but from what I've seen, it seems to be a combination of fatigue/wheel spinning making him impossible to care about, and like I said, that he's not good at working as a babyface.

[Rah]

Ziggler's an annoying case. He's a guy that can be a terrific bumper, if an ineffective long-term seller, but he doesn't layer his style to emphasise the spots he's bumping for. It's fun seeing him ragdoll for a monster powerhouse, but moments like that lose their specialty when he corkscrews his body into odd arrangements off a simple punch from a nobody like R-Truth.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to say he hasn't had a great match in the last decade, but he's never been an integral cog in that machine. I thought he was fine enough in the Payback 2013 match against ADR, but Delberto clearly smoked him in terms of what each member brought to that double turn.

[Ma Stump Puller]

On 1/15/2016 at 11:10 PM, Exposer said:

I hate this guy. Once upon a time I loved him then the last two years happened. He's turned into a Shawn Michaels tribute worker with goofy selling and over the top bumps that are even worse than Shawn's. I use to love his bumping style, but then it became his only strength and I realized he has no offense that resonates with me. He sucks. I enjoyed him working matches around sleepers against Kane and Khali in 09 and that great Del Rio match from Payback 2013. Otherwise, he's just a poor man's Shawn Michaels and to me that's no good. Fucking superkicks.

It's sad when this 6 year old comment still applies to Dolph today. I remember people used to go crazy about the guy because he could do a good flip sell and had some solid enough matches back in the day, but he's mutated into this terrible Shawn Michaels/Hennig clone without any of the charisma, showmanship, or any of the character work that either man had both outside and inside the ring. The fact that people maintain that he wasn't booked strong despite a huge amount of title shots and main event outings is beyond me. He's had plenty of time to improve or innovate, he just doesn't want to do so. 

Perfectly fine as a low-mid card act but he's really bad at doing these fake big epic main event matches that take 30 or so minutes and devolve into finish spamming. He's the kind of guy that seen guys take insane bumps but didn't really get the pacing or the buildup to them, so he just copies it randomly on almost any form of big offence. Those factors end up making you incredibly fatigued after a while because there's NOTHING else apart from that. When Miz + the threat of retiring needs to emotionally carry you to your most engaging match in years, it says too much about how hollow his style really is. Nowhere on the top 200 for me.