Royal Rumble 2012: WWE Royally Botches Dolph Ziggler and Chris Jericho

WWE royally botched perfect opportunities at the 2012 Royal Rumble to ensure Dolph Ziggler and Chris Jericho reign supreme of Raw as the top heels.

Instead, Vince McMahon and the booking team were fixated on creating a face-friendly environment and put over interim Raw general manager John Laurinaitis as quite possibly the top heel in the company.

Talk about being completely backwards-thinking, since Laurinaitis will most likely be fired tonight by chief operating officer Triple H. 

Ziggler rivals anybody in the company today as being the best in the business. His charisma, look, showmanship and in-ring abilities are top-notch and were on full display against CM Punk, who is widely regarded as the best in the business.

Somehow, someway, WWE decided to completely bury Zig-Zag at the end of the match by making sure everybody knew he wasn't an elite performer by allowing Punk to defeat him a whopping four times in one match. It was as if WWE was giving back to Punk for having him "lose" four times to Ziggler in recent weeks.

WWE had a perfect opportunity to have Ziggler win the championship in true heel fashion and let Punk fight his way back to the top to regain the title he was screwed out of. Instead, Punk got the best of Ziggler and Laurinaitis, completely destroying this enticing angle. 

The biggest travesty, though, isn't even how WWE handled Ziggler, who still has time to recover. Instead, it was the epic botchery of Jericho's return to wrestling. The video team put together some of the most memorable promotional videos in the history of the business, yet completely flopped his return.

Jericho came back silent, running around like a moron, crying and then destroyed the angle by speaking six days before the Rumble after three weeks of silence.

If that wasn't pointless enough, Jericho was made to look like a fool by failing to make good on what little words he did say last week on Raw. Instead of "ending the world," Sheamus Brogue-Kicked him off the apron and beat Y2J to go on to WrestleMania.

Wow, that's some way to end the world, Y2J. Great job, buddy, what do you have for an encore? Are you going to retire for good now? Might as well considering how awful this return has been.

All WWE had to do was have Jericho attack Punk to return or at least at the Rumble to cost him the championship to Ziggler. This would have promoted the rivalry between Punk, Ziggler and Laurinaitis, while interjecting Jericho himself into the feud. This could've led to an epic triple threat WWE championship match at WrestleMania XXVIII. 

Now, we're left scratching our heads wondering how WWE could have screwed up this storyline as badly as they did.

Thankfully, WWE has John Cena, Kane and Sheamus to fall back on. Not that they didn't have that going into the Rumble as is... 

Way to go guys, epic way to start the year. For all the good WWE does, their botch-fests truly take the cake and wash away every intelligent thing they do.