WWE: Why It's Time for Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger to Split

I like Jack Swagger, and I like Dolph Ziggler. But I like steak and ice cream, too, and that doesn’t mean I’m going to start topping my ribeye with chocolate soft serve.

You get the point: While I’m a fan of both Ziggler and Swagger, I just don’t want them together, and it’s not because I think pairing them together as “American Perfection” is a bad idea. In fact, they’d be a welcome addition to the WWE’s struggling tag team division if they were going to stay together for an extended period. 

It’s just that Swagger and Ziggler randomly come together whenever they’re needed, coming and going every other month, it seems. They challenged Air Boom for the WWE Tag Team Championship last October at Hell in a Cell, split for a while and are now are back kinda, sorta working as a team. 

Why? Who knows. But my guess is that there’s nothing better for either of them to do right now, so the creative team decided to throw them back together until something else comes up. 

The only real connection between Ziggler and Swagger, however, is that they’re two heels that happen to be in a “stable” (if you can call it that) with Vickie Guerrero as their manager. Ziggler and Swagger are not really benefiting from each other in any major way—who they’ve really benefited from is Vickie. 

Remember when Ziggler and Swagger were fighting/arguing over who would get Vickie’s managerial services? Yeah, that’s how these two came together. They wanted to be managed by the best (and pretty much only) manager in the WWE. 

That was all fine and dandy at first because Swagger and Ziggler both struggled on the mic, and Vickie was a big help in that department. She used her aggravating promos and “Excuse me!” line to help get both guys over as heels, successfully accomplishing her job. 

But along the way, Ziggler began to perform really well on the mic. He developed his own unique style of talking really slow, mixed in with talking really fast, and it worked for him. He turned what was once a weakness into a strength. 

Yet, the creative team decided to keep Ziggler with Vickie, and though his alignment with her was once a huge help, it became something that stifled him. Despite showing huge strides as a talker, Vickie still did most of Ziggler’s talking for him, and he still found himself paired with both Vickie and Swagger. 

That was great for Swagger because he needed someone there to help cut better promos and improve his overall abilities as a heel. But this was not great for Ziggler. 

When Ziggler should have been breaking out on his own under his new “Showoff” gimmick, he was consistently walking down to the ring with both Vickie and Swagger by his side. And for what? What purpose do they serve for Ziggler? 

Ziggler may not be a full-time main-eventer as of yet, but he’s at the tippy top of the upper midcard and is just hoping and wishing for the right moment to come, to get called up to the main event scene for the long run. I hate to say it, but that’s never going to happen as long as he’s paired with Swagger. 

Duos work well in a number of scenarios: As a tag team, as a manager/wrestler combo or a mentor/protégé combo, etc. But the Swagger/Ziggler duo fits none of these. 

American Perfection is not a tag team. It’s a duo just for the sake of being a duo, a duo that’s not going to do anything as long as they’re together.

Drake Oz is a WWE Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions on Formspring.