>Dude is monster in the ring who's phenomenal on the stick.
>
>I find it absolutely bizarre that Vince/Nick Khan would fire
>this guy twice in a year. They might not even have 30 guys to
>put in the Royal Rumble this year, and he gets fired. Shoot,
>with Brock now on RAW, they could have slotted him in to feud
>with Roman until it's time for Wrestlemania.

I get that WWE isn’t going to make every indie darling the top champ, but there are so many cases where you just scratch your head and go “how did they mess this up?” Especially when it’s clear that WWE is struggling to come up with credible challengers.

My biggest example of this is Shinsuke back in 2018. He was SO over and they made him look like a huge deal for months. So why have him turn on AJ Styles AFTER losing his title shot, then have him lose 1,000 rematches in a row? If Shinsuke turned heel during the match to win, held the title for a few months, and then AJ won it back… who would that hurt? No one would think lesser of AJ, and then you have Shinsuke on a level where he can easily challenge for a title once every year or so and look like a credible threat. If you do that with guys like Shinsuke, Joe, or Keith Lee, then you don’t have to throw millions at Goldberg every few months when you’re in a tough spot. Instead, one of them is in the mid-card forever and Vince cut the other two cause they’re not as chiseled as Randy Orton.

That’s why I can’t fully complain about Kofi or Big E’s title runs. Obviously the way their title reigns ended was bullshit, especially Kofi’s, but at least they’ll be one of those guys for the rest of their career. They’ll likely never win the title again, but you can easily plug them into a fun title feud as a credible challenger at any point. WWE has like 12-14 ppvs a year, they NEED credible threats like that desperately, but they throw away most of their chances to make guys like that.