YMMV / Dolph Ziggler

• Audience-Alienating Era: From being tossed out of the Rumble like a sack of trash by Big Show and Kane, to the idiotic love square that completely derailed his character, to having Miz win a feud with him and then spend about 5 minutes on PPV air calling him a loser, to a gimmick where he spent 10 minutes every week mocking everyone else's entrances to get heel heat until he lost another feud to Bobby Roode, the entire time between Dolph winning Survivor Series 2014 and forming a tag team with Drew McIntyre in 2018 managed to kill any popularity Dolph had with the fans so effectively dead that it seemed intentionally planned.
• Awesome Ego: Has a very large ego, even as a face, but his inability to give up no matter the odds endeared him to the fans.
• Badass Decay: In just a few months, 2015 saw him go from the darling of the IWC and arguably the most over performer on the roster to a horrendously misused jobber to the stars stuck in weak angle after weak angle losing to whichever heels management decides to push. People sensed WWE didn't care about him and eventually started to tune out his SCRATCH AND CRAWL rants. His forced, chemistry-less romance with Lana didn't help, either.
  • This was reversed a bit during his 2016 feud with The Miz over the IC Title. The two had a natural chemistry on the mic and in the ring, and it actually resulted in several of the better matches for both guys.
• Base-Breaking Character: He's still very popular, but recent frustrations with his booking and, in some cases, his divisive in-ring ability and mic skills have inspired a growing number of detractors.
  • It's really not so much about his skills as his overexposure. Through nothing necessarily as a fault of his own, he had been victimized by a rut of 'bridesmaid booking' by WWE Creative - or in other words, he hangs out in the upper midcard and gets a lot of TV time, yet never actually wins. It's also been noted in an uncomplimentary fashion how much time in the spotlight and how many title feuds he gets despite not being booked to win a lot. His promos have also become increasingly trite and tired. So, in other words, he's Cena without the win-loss record — and once he turned 36 he quickly moved into the "overused veteran taking up space and TV time" category, which is not a great place to be in an era where the main roster "WWE Universe" seems to be debuting three or four major talents a year.
• Designated Hero: Aside from contributing to his Badass Decay as seen above, Ziggler's storyline romance with Lana and feud with Alexander Rusev has also effectively neutered years of babyface credibility that Ziggler's career had built up for him even going back to before he'd ever actually turned face (see "Draco in Leather Pants" below for more details on that). He went from the resilient hero who took down The Authority, defended the Intercontinental Championship in brutal quality matches with Luke Harper, believes himself to be the best performer in the company and works his ass off not to be outshined, to a borderline playboy jerkass protagonist whose main joy in 2015 was taking advantage of Rusev's romantic woes to completely fuck the man over in the ring. Though Rusev's character was blatantly misogynistic in his treatment of Lana and Summer and therefore not blameless, it doesn't excuse the fact that Dolph spent weeks taunting Rusev about stealing his girlfriend and denigrating the former undefeated juggernaut's already increasingly fragile manhood, this despite the fact he knew full well Lana was just using him to get back at Rusev at first although they did apparently come to care for each other on some level in time. Then, when Summer Rae was caught on TV following him into his locker room to sexually harass him and subsequently employed Blatant Lies that he'd tried to seduce her, he first dutifully tried to explain his side of the story to Lana… only to turn around and further tease Summer with an extravagant "peace offering" as soon as Lana found herself out with a wrist injury just to continue screwing with Rusev. Even when admitting that Rusev's beef with him was not without reason, he justified all of this by citing Rusev's Anti-American rhetoric… all the while dating the woman who was the main driving force behind said rhetoric, a fact that never gets brought up through the entirety of this storyline because maintaining suspension of disbelief about any of this required that it be ignored altogether. Between Dolph and Summer's antics and Lana's wrist injury, the reconciliation of Rusev and Lana makes total sense in kayfabe despite being thrown in after their real life engagement got put all over TMZ. Then in his next match with Rusev following that turn of events Dolph would have no qualms about taking advantage of Summer's blatant bias on his side as the referee. Though he thankfully ended his role in this character-derailing angle by telling Summer in no uncertain terms after the match that he was not down with letting her continue to use him on Rusev like Lana did before her, then challenging for John Cena's United States Championship and beating back the debuting Tyler Breeze when Summer sent Breeze after him, it would take a fall 2016 SmackDown-brand IC title feud with The Miz at his absolute best for Ziggler to recover steam again…and then quickly lose it and turn back heel in a "gatekeeper" role with almost zero credibility.
• Designated Villain: Before his 2013 Heel–Face Turn. He works his ass off whenever he's in the ring, routinely putting on some of the best performances on any given night. He's even done double duty a couple of times without complaining when defending one title and trying to go after another. He's repeatedly stood up for any girlfriend he's had when others have tried to get under said girlfriend's skin for kicks and giggles. He's called out the disingenuous behavior of the Designated Hero with the biggest Broken Base in WWE pro wrestling history as well as said "hero's" would-be girlfriend, who despite her initial outrage appreciated his honesty enough to turn against the "hero" and come to his side. His path to his World Heavyweight Championship run was mainly a 4½-year-long level grind where "Always Someone Better" seemed to be the word of the day. The crowds have clearly gravitated to him positively as a performer and are very hard-pressed to hate him as a character. And after all that, an injury of all things changed this, finally establishing him as a crowd-favored face.
• Draco in Leather Pants: As a heel in 2012, Ziggler's pops were getting bigger than some of the faces he wrestled from week to week. Even in matches against guys like Sheamus and CM Punk, "LET'S GO ZIGGLER!" chants from the audience (yes, a lot of guys, too) became something of a regular occurrence. And when he feuded with John Cena, damn near everybody was on his side.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Is he ever. Especially at Survivor Series, where he went from former Intercontinental Champion to becoming the sole survivor and taking 60% of the opposing team.
  • This was especially prevalent after his shocking release, where several big names from The Rock, to John Cena, to Ric Flair all praised Ziggler on the way out, and were all shocked at his firing.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Many have considered it a Headscratcher as to why AJ Lee would turn against John Cena and then hook up with Dolph after the way he told her off on November 19, 2012. But here's where it all makes sense. Ziggler telling her off about her clingy tendencies over the smallest bit of attention given to her, likely sprinkled that seed of doubt in AJ's mind as to what her worth is to Cena, which may have caused Cena's hot-and-cold approach to dealing with her to gradually backfire. Furthermore, if she turned on Cena for toying with her heart, it only makes sense (…okay, about as much as anything that AJ does even can) that on some subconscious level she would gravitate emotionally to someone like Dolph, who told her the brutal truth she didn't want to hear and without using her favorite buzzword to boot. Ziggler basically stole Cena's would-be girlfriend away from him in one night, arguably without even trying, just by being honest with her about how erratic she was. And ironically enough, their relationship helped her get back on the road to relative stability, and though she fell off the wagon again for awhile after he dumped her for costing him a match, it eventually stuck when she became self-reliant again.
  • Ziggler started using the alternate version of the Zig Zag (the one where he doesn't land on his head) a lot more after Payback, where landing on his head while concussed allowed Del Rio the time to recover and win the World title off of him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The lyrics to "Here to Show the World" are oddly fitting for Ziggler being the one to rid the WWE of The Authority at Survivor Series 2014 & their estimation of him.
• Informed Wrongness: His refuses to participate in the 2013 Elimination Chamber match because he has the Money In The Bank contract. Booker T just labels it as cowardice.
• Like You Would Really Do It: While the fact that Ziggler's contract was about to expire and he'd been on something of a losing streak in the lead-up to his career-threatening match against The Miz at No Mercy 2016 may have convinced some people that this really might be the end for him, the way the feud was built actually made his victory practically a Foregone Conclusion. All through the build-up of the feud, Miz had been mocking Ziggler as a total loser who'd never really accomplished anything, highlighting his time as Kerwin White's caddy and his membership in the Spirit Squad in a video called "The Success of a Failure", mocking him for being a disappointment to his parents, and even bringing out Kenny and Mikey from the Squad to complete the humiliation (and interfere in their matches). No matter how heroically he fought or how blatantly Miz cheated to beat him, if Ziggler had lost the decisive match, the entire angle would have ended up playing out as "Miz calls Ziggler a worthless loser and then proves himself right". If that's all WWE had planned for Ziggler (considering it would be the END of his career) he'd be more likely to just walk out than do it, so it was pretty obvious he was going to win. Not that it made the match any less awesome, mind.
• Memetic Mutation: It should've been me.^note His promo base around Kofi Kingston's success leaning to his WWE Championship win and how that should've been him to done that. People have been making posts of other wrestlers' success or even failures and putting in Ziggler's line on it should've been him.
• Never Live It Down:
  • A notable aversion as most fans try very hard to forget that he was ever a member of the Spirit Squad as Nicky, or the caddy to Kerwin White (Chavo Guerrero). However, despite being the only member of the Spirit Squad still employed by the WWE, almost nobody brings it up — probably because of his popularity and the fact that his gimmick has no allusions to it. Kenny's the one who takes the brunt of the jokes, mainly because he was the leader and the one the WWE wanted to push in the first place.
  • After Jerry Lawler's near fatal heart attack, Lawler has joked on-air about Dolph's multiple elbow drop move being lethal. In WWE 2K15, said multiple elbow drop is called the Heartstopper. This even got a Call-Back when Lawler brought back his "King's Court" talk segment and featured Ziggler as a guest, who rebuffed Lawler's questions about his recent heel turn by pointing out how Lawler "blamed" him for the heart attack and was right to do so, threatened to finish the job if he asked another question, and tried to follow through on that with a swift kick to the chest.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: As Cageside Seats pointed out in one of their articles cataloguing the misfortunes of Ziggler's career, after becoming the Sole Survivor of Survivor Series 2014 and the man who almost single-handedly defeated The Authority, Ziggler should have received the biggest push of his life. He should have been treated like a hero, stalked by heels (especially those who'd been aligned with The Authority like The Big Show and Kane) only to find himself receiving backup from grateful faces, and elevated to the status of The Dreaded to The Authority themselves, the man Seth Rollins would go out of his way to avoid at all costs. Instead, he was sacked a month after his dynamite performance when Cena was forced to bring The Authority back and only rehired again 2 weeks later thanks to John Cena (and Sting), demoting him from "the hero of Survivor Series" to "the guy who owes John Cena his job". As a result of this negligent booking, the greatest moment in Ziggler's career added up to... basically nothing, and some have even argued that his career has never recovered from this squandered opportunity.
  • This makes a horrible sort of sense if you believe the speculation that Dolph was never meant to have this position on Cena's team (or at least wasn't supposed to be in the sole survivor role) and was only there to replace the man WWE had wanted to give this massive push to before he was taken out by an incarcerated hernia before the event- Roman Reigns, at what would have been the first real steps of his ensuing never-ending face push.^note Given that the match saw Ziggler kicking out of countless finishers to "overcome the odds", culminating in an extended 1v1 against Seth Rollins, who Roman had personal beef with, it does seem like the match was being booked around Roman instead of Ziggler. If it's true that Ziggler was just standing in for Roman, then it would seem that WWE simply never intended to push him in the first place, and only let him have this moment because he was the best babyface available to play Ricky Morton in the match.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: For a brief period after his move to RAW, Ziggler went from his bleach-blond slicked hair to a well-combed dark brown.◊ Apparently, this was an effort to make him look more serious. It backfired so horribly (it didn't do him any favors as well that he looked like a bigger version of Evan Bourne with it), in fact, that Ziggler's hair was back to blond (although they couldn't undo cutting it) within the month. Eventually, his hair grew back. According to Dolph, it needed to be done because his hair was fried but he HATED it. (Worth noting, he eventually stopped dyeing his hair altogether.)