Report Cards for WWE Superstars and Divas Who Debuted in 2014

If WWE handed out a Rookie of the Year award, Rusev would win convincingly.

Of the Superstars and Divas who first entered the main roster in 2014, Rusev made the most lasting impression. On the other hand, his peers suffered from WWE missing opportunities and making poor choices.

Adam Rose, Emma and, to a lesser extent, Paige have plenty to gripe about in terms of how the company handled their rookie year. 

As 2015 approaches, Rusev's future is bright. Paige knows she showed enough in the ring to maintain a high position in the Divas division. Emma and Rose, meanwhile, have to hope for a far better sophomore year.

Grades for the NXT transplants are decided by the quality of their matches, how memorable their biggest moments and feuds were and their connection with the crowd. 

Rose's report card won't leave him in the mood to party.

Adam Rose

• Matches: F
• Feuds/Moments: D-
• Overall: D-

The Rose experiment failed. His character sputtered early on, quickly becoming one-dimensional and lacking momentum.

A big part of that is how WWE booked him. His in-ring action could hardly be called matches. He often knocked off his opponents in just seconds.

These weren't awe-inspiring squash matches that made him look powerful either. They just came off as cheap filler.

Take his July 28 win over Damien Sandow, for example. The bickering between them lasted longer than their 10-second match.

As a result, Rose's 2014 has no matches (save for his NXT work) that left any kind of impression at all. WWE gave him minimal opportunities, and he was unable to capitalize on them.

He competed at Money in the Bank, Battleground and Survivor Series, but it's hard to remember any of those bouts. It certainly didn't help that he had a total of eight minutes, 31 seconds to work with on those pay-per-views.

Rose had brief encounters with Jack Swagger, Sandow and Kane. None of those developed into an interest-drawing feud, though.

A lack of rival hurt him. It kept him floating around the bottom of the card with no direction.

His most interesting stretch came when his relationship with The Bunny began to splinter. The man in a rabbit suit outshone him, becoming the element of his story that fans began to pay attention to. WWE played up that reality and inserted it into a storyline but has yet to do anything with it.

Credit: WWE.com

Rose is still allied with The Bunny despite abusing him. He is still sliding backward, unable to be anything other than a comedy act that is drawing few laughs.

He has to wonder what his first foray onto the main roster would have looked like had WWE stuck with his previous Leo Kruger persona.

Paige 

• Matches: C+
• Feuds/Moments: C-
• Overall: B-

WWE didn't do nearly enough with its most promising female prospect in years.

From afar, her resume looks good. She twice won the Divas Championship and appeared on seven straight pay-per-views (from Extreme Rules to Survivor Series). A lack of consistent story took away from those accomplishments, though.

Her rivalry with AJ Lee should have been the best thing to happen to the Divas division.

The company failed both women by giving them an unappetizing story about them both being nutty "frenemies" complete with superfluous sexual tension. That held them back.

There were too few big moments for as long as that rivalry played out. WWE didn't allow them to have more compelling collisions like when Paige threw Lee off the entrance ramp and laughed it off.

Still, she and Lee put on a number of solid matches, especially considering WWE often handed them the thinnest slice of the airtime pie.

Their match at SummerSlam was the event's shortest. On the Oct. 6 edition of Raw, their tag match went on for just over two minutes. A week later, they met in tag team action again, this time going just 1:46.

Paige's feud with Alicia Fox fizzled out. WWE didn't provide that narrative with a climax, just having both women slip from the spotlight as The Bella Twins vs. Lee became the Divas division's only featured story.

Still, Paige showed off a charisma and a stage presence that no amount of poor booking can erase.

Credit: WWE.com

She looked like she belonged on the big stage from the moment she and Lee clashed on the night after WrestleMania. She moves incredibly well in the ring, has a skill level that belies her youth and exudes stardom.

Paige attacked her matches with ferocity, even if they were just blink-of-an-eye bouts. The promise she showed in 2014 suggests that if WWE gives her a fully developed rivalry and more ring time to work with, she will thrive.

Emma

• Matches: D+
• Feuds/Moments: D-
• Overall: D

Emma must wish she was back at NXT. The pay is certainly better on the main roster, but she's been underused and undervalued throughout her rookie year.

A promising prospect soon became a comic-relief character. Emma joined forces with Santino Marella early on, adopting his sock-puppet shtick. 

Fans rarely saw the ring skill she showed at WWE developmental. She had a momentary feud with Summer Rae and then went hungry for stories.

At this point, she has to be thankful to just be tossed into a televised match. 

She has only appeared in two pay-per-view bouts, and both were the "shove everybody in there" kind. She was one of the 14 women in the WrestleMania Divas Title Invitational and later found herself packed into an eight-woman tag match at Survivor Series.

Raw hasn't welcomed her often. That has left her to do much of her best work on Main Event and Superstars.

To no one's surprise, Emma has struggled to connect with the crowd. With no foil and few opportunities, Emma has been out of sight, out of mind for a good chunk of her rookie year.

She nets a poor grade in 2014, but it's hard to imagine her doing any better with what she was given.

Rusev

• Matches: B+
• Feuds/Moments: A+
• Overall: A

The one rookie WWE has gotten it right with is Rusev. The company painted him as an unstoppable monster and an anti-American braggart.

He has taken down a long list of fan favorites from Big E to Mark Henry, Big Show to Jack Swagger. As a bonus, he threatened Jim Duggan and kicked a serviceman in the head.

Those tense, compelling moments have spurred on the fans to heartily boo him.

WWE also wisely paired with him the sultry, evil Lana. Her mic prowess has allowed him to lean on her during interviews. She incites the crowd; all he needs to do is fan the flames she has already created.

Rusev has taken full advantage of that heat and his in-ring opportunities. He has shown himself to be a reliable bruiser able to step up in big spots.

His pay-per-view bouts with Big E were solid. He followed those up with hard-hitting clashes with Swagger that sang of old-school "bad guy versus good guy" storytelling. His best effort to date came when he won the United States Championship.

He and Sheamus battled in a WWE Network-exclusive title match that felt like the big fight the company was selling it as.

When WWE decided to take a chance and pair him with The Rock for a contentious segment between rookie and legend, Rusev looked like he belonged. 

Company officials believed in him. He rewarded them for their faith.

Rusev had a tremendous first year. He is still on the rise—clearly a brawler fans have to pay attention to in 2015 and beyond.

All match statistics courtesy of ProFightDB.com.