Will Penta and These 5 Popular WWE Stars Ever Win a World Title?
Regardless of what WWE might—or might not—have in store for certain Superstars, sometimes the popularity of a performer can be enough to cause plans to pivot.
Jey Uso is perhaps the best recent example of someone who was never expected to get beyond a certain level. He and his brother, Jimmy, dominated the tag team ranks for years, until Jey connected with crowds through his time in The Bloodline and became a breakout star in singles competition.
Raucous crowd reactions eventually led him to winning the 2025 men's Royal Rumble match as well as the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 41, and now his status as a main event player on Raw is undeniable.
Whether other beloved babyfaces in the company can find that same success remains to be seen, though.
Penta has proved to be a huge fan favorite since joining WWE at the onset of the year. But despite getting over with the audience, he's largely been relegated to the midcard so far and has lost whenever it has mattered most.
Will he and these five other Superstars ever be able to capitalize on their popularity and seize world championship glory?
Penta
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Penta spent a majority of his All Elite Wrestling run in the tag team division alongside his brother, Rey Fenix. Together, they were an exceptional pairing with incredible chemistry and plenty of memorable matches to their credit.
Unfortunately, AEW didn't seem to take a chance on Penta on his own unless Fenix was out injured. Thus, it made total sense for the former Lucha Underground and TNA world champion to jump to WWE when his AEW contract expired and bet on himself as a singles star.
The 40-year-old immediately found his footing upon arrival and racked up several wins. WWE was wise to keep him separated from Fenix once he also signed ahead of WrestleMania 41 to ensure both brothers could excel individually.
Penta has had his fair share of main events on Raw as of late, but he's consistently lost to the likes of Seth Rollins, Bron Breakker and Dominik Mysterio, which would indicate WWE doesn't see him as being on the same level as those top-tier names.
Unless his stock starts to soar more than it already has, it appears he'll primarily be relegated to upper-midcard status going forward and not be utilized in the world championship picture.
A reign as either intercontinental or United States champion should be in his future, though.
Jacob Fatu
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There was no questioning how high Jacob Fatu's ceiling in WWE would be from the moment he put pen to paper with the promotion in early 2024. He went on to make an instant impact as a member of The Bloodline and took SmackDown by storm.
Fans gradually took to Fatu, leading to him teasing tension with Solo Sikoa and capturing the United States Championship on his own at WrestleMania 41. He has since branched off from the former Bloodline and is now in the process of exacting revenge on Sikoa's new stable.
Fatu's time with the star-spangled prize was short-lived as he lost it to Sikoa at Night of Champions, but he'll benefit from not being tied to that title in the long run. He's bound for bigger and better things, specifically once his rivalry with Sikoa runs its course.
The 33-year-old's above-average in-ring skills, intense promos and ability to seamlessly connect with the audience make him a shoo-in for a world title run sooner rather than later.
Fatu has held his own against every main event player he's worked with in the last year and is more than ready for the opportunity to show what more he can do.
LA Knight
3 of 6LA Knight has always had what it takes to be a top guy in WWE. All it took was the powers that be realizing what they had with him and allowing The Megastar to live up to his full potential.
WWE has certainly made great strides with Knight since his Max Dupri days, yet it's still not fully utilizing him at the elite level he belongs.
Upon catching fire in the summer of 2023, the 42-year-old was thrust into the main event scene later that year and unsuccessfully challenged Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship on two separate occasions.
He dropped down the card a bit after that but maintained his momentum and eventually clinched the United States title by beating Logan Paul at SummerSlam 2024. For as over as he is, his booking has been questionable over the last year.
Winning the men's Money in the Bank in June should have been what elevated him to the world championship picture, but WWE dropped the ball and went with a multi-time world champ and WrestleMania headliner in Seth Rollins instead.
If WWE was ever going to make Knight a world championship-caliber competitor, it would have happened by now.
Dominik Mysterio
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While not technically a babyface at the moment, Dominik Mysterio is just as popular as everyone else listed, and he has merely scratched the surface of what he can accomplish in WWE.
It was unfathomable only a few short years ago to think the 28-year-old would ever match his father in popularity while both were still active. Evidently, that's become the case as a result of Dominik's outstanding transformation in virtually every respect.
He's improved leaps and bounds in the ring but has also been infinitely more comfortable as a character since turning heel and joining The Judgment Day in 2022.
His rivalry with his father, Rey, played a pivotal role in his growth, but everything he's done since then has made him that much more of a star.
He took that next step toward main event status by winning the Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania 41—to an overwhelmingly positive crowd reaction, no less.
The seeds were then planted for Judgment Day cohort Finn Balor to grow jealous of his success, but WWE has held off on breaking them up with Liv Morgan out of the picture due to injury.
A day will inevitably come when Dominik is wrestling for and winning a world title in WWE. It may not be on the sooner side, but he's destined to follow in the footsteps of his father and Eddie Guerrero before him.
Stephanie Vaquer
5 of 6Even as a newcomer to the WWE main roster, Stephanie Vaquer already has fans wondering when she'll be wearing world championship gold around her waist.
That's likely due to how quickly she ascended the ranks in NXT, winning the NXT Women's Championship from Giulia within five months of making her debut.
Her time with the title was brief, though she did make history by holding that and the NXT Women's North American Championship simultaneously before making her way to the Raw roster.
La Primera's instant connection—along with an emphatic win in Triple Threat action—earned her a spot in the women's Money in the Bank ladder match. She followed up her standout standing there by emerging victorious in the Battle Royal at Evolution to punch her ticket to Clash in Paris, where she'll challenge for a world championship.
It's very possible she could win a world title on August 31 in France, but a case can also be made for it being too soon. Regardless, she has the best chance of anyone listed to be a world champion before long on either Raw or SmackDown, presumably several times over.
Vaquer, 32, has adapted extraordinarily well to life in WWE and will be a cornerstone of its deep women's division for years to come.
Sami Zayn
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Next March will mark a decade since Sami Zayn officially debuted on the WWE main roster. Shockingly, a world championship has somehow eluded him this entire time.
For the first few years of his main roster run, it was clear WWE brass strictly saw him as a good hand toward the top of the card but not at the main event level. He was the ultimate enhancement guy as a heel and made everything he was involved in work to the best of his ability,
It wasn't until his involvement in The Bloodline in 2022 that fans and officials started to see him in a different light as he brought the best out of Roman Reigns and his henchmen.
Zayn, 41, was overdue for a return to his roots as a babyface, and when he finally flipped the switch in early 2023, he was a babyface headliner almost overnight.
His eye-opening outing against Reigns at Elimination Chamber in his hometown of Montréal put him in the upper echelon of WWE Superstars from that point forward.
He and Kevin Owens went on to win the undisputed WWE tag team titles in the main event of WrestleMania 39 Night 1, and he's had two shots at the World Heavyweight Championship since then.
WWE continues to tell the story that Zayn isn't world championship material with heels constantly reminding him of his failures to win the prestigious prize. All roads should and will lead to him bringing home the belt on a grand stage sometime in 2026.
Graham Mirmina, aka Graham "GSM" Matthews, has specialized in sports and entertainment writing since 2010. Visit his website, WrestleRant, and subscribe to his YouTube channel for more wrestling-related content.
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