History YMMV / DolphZiggler

* EvilIsSexy: Good enough for Wrestling/VickieGuerrero. And then Wrestling/AJLee as well.

* '''EnsembleDarkhorse''': Is he ever. Especially at Survivor Series, where he went from former Intercontinental Champion to becoming the sole survivor and taking 80% of the opposing team.

* DorkAge: 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 Wrestling/BobbyRoode, the entire time between Dolph winning Survivor Series 2014 and forming a tag team with Wrestling/DrewMcIntyre in 2018 managed to kill any popularity Dolph had with the fans so effectively dead that it seemed intentionally planned.

* AwesomeEgo

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* FoeYay:
** Tons of it with AJ, finally transforming into an actual on-screen romance.
** Also, to some degree, with Wrestling/ChrisJericho. The announcers have even discussed it, labeling it "an obsession."

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Ziggler is a ''master'' at this - '''especially''' on his Twitter account. Every third tweet seems to contain some sort of sexual reference or DoubleEntendre. And yet (keep in mind, Superstars' Twitter accounts are used in WWE storylines and as such are monitored by WWE) he's almost never gotten in serious trouble for any of these tweets. One must wonder what sort of things Ziggler would be up to if he'd been wrestling in the TV-14 days.

* BadassDecay: In just a few months, he's gone from the darling of the IWC and arguably the most over performer on the roster to a horrendously misused [[{{Jobber}} 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 isn't helping, either.

** 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- Wrestling/RomanReigns, at what would have been the first real steps of his ensuing [[CreatorsPet never-ending face push]]. 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 RickyMorton in the match.

** 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 at 36 is quickly moving into "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.

* MemeticMutation: 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 post of other wrestlers success or even failures and putting in Ziggler's line on it should've been him.[[/note]]

* MemeticMutation: 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 post of other wrestlers success or even failures and putting in Ziggler's line on it should've been him.[[/note]].

* DorkAge: The entire time between Dolph winning Survivor Series 2014 and forming a tag team with Wrestling/DrewMcIntyre in 2018 managed to kill any popularity Dolph had with the fans so effectively dead that it seemed intentionally planned. From being tossed out of the Rumble like a sack of trash by Big Show and Kane, to the idiotic love triangle, 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.

* DorkAge: The entire time between Dolph winning Survivor Series 2014 and forming a tag team with Wrestling/DrewMcIntyre in 2018 seemed intentionally planned to (and managed to) kill any popularity Dolph had with the fans. From being tossed out of the Rumble like a sack of trash by Big Show and Kane, to the idiotic love triangle, 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.

* DorkAge: The entire time between Dolph winning Survivor Series 2014 and forming a tag team with Drew McIntyre in 2018 seemed intentionally planned to (and managed to) kill any popularity Dolph had with the fans. From being tossed out of the Rumble like a sack of trash by Big Show and Kane, to the idiotic love triangle, 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.

** Many have considered it a [[[[Headscratchers/HomePage 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 ([[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} …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 [[BerserkButton 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.

** Many have considered it a {{headscratcher|s}} 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 ([[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} …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 [[BerserkButton 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.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: As Cageside Seats pointed out in one of their [[http://www.cagesideseats.com/2016/2/5/10883944/historically-significant-disasters-of-wrestling-50-the-dolph-ziggler articles]] cataloguing the misfortunes of Ziggler's career, after becoming the Sole Survivor of ''Wrestling/SurvivorSeries 2014'' and the man who almost ''single-handedly'' defeated Wrestling/TheAuthority, 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 Wrestling/TheBigShow and Wrestling/{{Kane}}) only to find himself receiving backup from grateful faces, and elevated to the status of TheDreaded to The Authority themselves, the man Wrestling/SethRollins 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 Wrestling/{{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.

** After Wrestling/JerryLawler'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.

** 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 at 36 is quickly moving into "overused veteran taking up space and TV time" category, which is not a great place to be in an era where fresh (at least to WWE) faces seem to be debuting on the main roster at the rate of three or four a year.
* DesignatedHero: Aside from contributing to his BadassDecay 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's gone from the resilient hero who took down Wrestling/TheAuthority, defended the Intercontinental Championship in brutal quality matches with Wrestling/LukeHarper, 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 has been 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 [[VillainousBreakdown 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 Wrestling/SummerRae was caught on TV following him into his locker room to sexually harass him and subsequently employed BlatantLies 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. However, he may have 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. His main focus of late has been a storyline with John Cena, Wrestling/TheNewDay, and the United States Championship—however in his open challenge match for Cena's US title he did resort to cheating in one sequence, plus it's been suggested that the situation of him wanting to get back together with [[Wrestling/BellaTwins Nikki Bella]] on ''Series/TotalDivas'' may be used to launch a Dolph-Cena feud in the near future, so the jury's still out on whether he can recover his babyface cred or ends up turning back heel soon. And now, he's currently in a feud with Tyler Breeze that started with Tyler assaulting him, so this may mark his turn back into being sympathetic.

* WrestlingPsychology: Some may question whether his TheatricsOfPain could use a little more subtlety ([[LargeHam good luck getting Dolph Ziggler to be subtle]]), but he's undeniably got a good grasp on how to continue to sell injuries for the duration of a match. Hell, he's basically been selling his head as a weak point in matches ever since he came back from his real-life concussion problems. For anyone that's counting, that's well over a ''year and a half.''
** How good is Ziggler at selling? We [[Pantheon/TheatricConvention deified him for it]].

* WTHCostumingDepartment: For a brief period after his move to RAW, Ziggler went from his bleach-blond slicked hair to a [[http://wrestling-match.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/dolph-ziggler-hair_display_image.jpg 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 Wrestling/EvanBourne 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. [[WordofGod According to Dolph]], it needed to be done because his hair was fried but he HATED it.