Recently, former WWE wrestler Jack Swagger said in an interview that his favorite wrestler was (Antonio) Cesaro and that he should be the world champion.
“He’s the strongest guy there, he can go with anybody and he is a guy that a company can invest in.”
Naturally, I agree with that statement, and it led me to write this week’s column on the most underutilized wrestler in WWE.
Now, there is a big different between underrated and underutilized. Underrated deals with recognition and underutilized is the degree of how much use a company gets out of an asset. However, these can and will probably overlap a bit.
I wanted to settle on one underutilized wrestler, but instead I chose to go with two.
Cesaro
Now, Cesaro is being utilized pretty well right now as part of the tag team The Bar with Sheamus. They’ve won the tag team championships twice and are on TV every week. My issue stems from the fact that he could be used so for much more.
Cesaro is a beast. He can clean lift 300 pounds and is one of the strongest guys in WWE. He can tell a story in the ring like no one else and always gets the crowd into his matches as they go on. His list of moves is incredible. The apron superplex, the swing, the neutralizer and his wide variety of uppercuts make any match of his worth watching.
His one true weakness is he can’t talk. He is only passable on the mic, and for a face of the company figure you have to be able to talk. However, one night in 2014 really shows that Cesaro can overcome that problem.
Think back to Wrestlemania 30. That night Cesaro threw Big Show over his head and out of the ring to win the inaugural Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal. That moment was amazing and the crowd loved it. In the months prior, Cesaro had been churning out star making performances facing the likes of John Cena and Randy Orton, and this was the culmination of his rise.
But, WWE being WWE didn’t capitalize on this moment. They had Cesaro turn into a bad guy and gave him Paul Heyman as a mouthpiece. That’d be ok, except for the fact that all Heyman did was speak about Brock Lesnar and said nothing about Cesaro.
So he floundered for the rest of 2014 until he teamed up with Tyson Kidd and had a series of excellent US title matches against John Cena in summer 2015.
Now Cesaro is still loved by fans and is a known commodity to the midcard. You can always expect a fantastic match when Cesaro is involved. Yet when I think back to how over he was at Wrestlemania 30, he could have been utilized so much more.
Luke Harper
Along with Cesaro, another underrated and underutilized talent in the WWE is Luke Harper. The former Wyatt Family member has been a standout from day one. For a 300 pound man, the way he does suicide dives and moves around the ring is incredible, and is a sight to behold.
Every chance he’s been given a chance to shine on his own he’s knocked it out of the park. His Intercontinental Championship ladder match against Dolph Ziggler was fantastic as was his match against Randy Orton at Elimination Chamber this year. During that match the crowd was into everything Harper was doing, and not making the match between Orton and Bray Wyatt at Wrestlemania 33 a triple threat including Harper was a big mistake.
He’s also a fairly decent promo. He can talk well and didn’t look out of place cutting promos next to his partner Wyatt. After the match with Orton where did he go? He shows up on every third Smackdown and I can’t recall the last time he’s been on a pay-per view.
All that would need to be done is to repackage the man, maybe cut his hair and give him a new character that he can work with, and we’ve got someone to be in the US title scene for a long time. So here’s hoping WWE finds use for him, and uses him on TV more.
That’s it for this edition of Wolski’s Wrestling Ramblings, and I’ll be back next week with a review of the Hell in a Cell pay-per view.
Thanks for reading. Until then, keep coming back to The Clarion to read news from all of our talented reporters.
Henry Wolski
Executive Editor