Will Dolph Ziggler Ever Be Able to Be Taken Seriously by Vince McMahon and WWE?

Dolph Ziggler is someone whose WWE career has had more ups and downs than a five-star roller coaster.

Since his initial debut back in 2005, he has gone through a few gimmicks as a caddy and a cheerleader, been sent back to developmental twice and used as a jobber.

He has also been having some of the best matches in all of WWE and has held the World, United States, Intercontinental and World Tag Team titles during his run. The only title he has yet to hold in WWE is the actual WWE title.

Ziggler will most likely never challenge for the Divas title, but if Andy Kaufman taught us anything, it's that you can make people laugh with an inter-gender match.

For someone who received title shots at two consecutive Royal Rumbles, you would think Ziggler would be a main-event star by now.

Not so, it would seem.

His in-ring work is among the top five in all of WWE, in terms of rarely missing spots and having the most exciting matches, but his push seems to have more delays than the pizza I ordered over an hour ago.

When Ziggler faced CM Punk for the WWE title, a lot of people assumed it was his chance to jump into the main event scene more permanently, but almost immediately after Elimination Chamber, he fell out of the WWE title picture.

Now, Punk is in a feud with Chris Jericho and Ziggler is stuck with nothing to do.

He is teaming with Jack Swagger here and there, but without a real run as a tag team there isn't much point to the pairing.

There are two sides to the coin, though.

WWE is probably looking at this as a business and not the same way we are as fans.

Could Ziggler sell PPVs?

Would he be able to push millions every year in merchandise?

Does he represent the WWE's future both in and out of the ring?

Will people pay to see him live?

These are tough questions to answer, since anything we say is conjecture and speculation.

Ziggler has never been among the top merchandised stars, but WWE has never had more than a shirt and cap for Ziggler for fans to buy.

His few main events have been in PPVs where the buyrates were somewhat low, so looking at him as a hot ticket may be something Vince isn't even considering at this point.

If I were running a billion-dollar organization, I would consider these things, but I would also know that you can't expect everyone to push merchandise like John Cena and you certainly can't put the buyrate of a PPV solely on one person's shoulders.

Ziggler and Daniel Bryan have proven time and time again that when they step in the ring together the crowd will get wild, because they put on an amazing wrestling spectacle that outshines their last outing. Talent can take you a long way.

Recognizing the talent Ziggler has is easy, but knowing what to do with it is the hard part.

Having him be a cocky heel seems to have worked so far, but the true judge of a future legend is whether or not they can play both roles.

We have yet to see Ziggler as a full-on babyface and WWE might not feel comfortable putting him in the position of "top guy" unless they know he can transition into a new role easily.

I would love to see Ziggler dump Swagger and Vickie Guerrero and go full babyface, because that is how we will truly know if he is capable of being one of the go-to guys in WWE.

Cena went from face to heel and back before he ever held his first world title and the same can be said for guys like The Rock, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart and Triple H.

Having the ability to be the person WWE needs you to be at any given time is probably just as important as selling merchandise.

If someone is not believable then they won't push coffee mugs and pizza prints out the door too fast.

(To answer your question, yes, WWE Pizza Prints exist, and apparently they are out of stock.)

I know this is yet another in what seems like 10,000 articles about Dolph Ziggler, but I wanted to look at it from a different view than I have in the past—from the point of view of Vince McMahon.

What do you think Ziggler needs to do to reach that next level?