Ranking Every Missed Opportunity For Dolph Ziggler on the WWE Main Event Scene

At Extreme Rules: The Horror Show, Dolph Ziggler will challenge Drew McIntyre in an as-yet-unannounced gimmick match for the WWE Championship.

It will be yet another main event opportunity for a Superstar who has long had all the tools to be a top talent in WWE but has repeatedly seen pushes halted, his status in the company diminished and title opportunities pass him by.

Some because of injuries, others because of shinier new toys catching the eye of Vince McMahon and his creative team.

Whatever the case, Ziggler now has another shot at the top, and in preparation for his latest opportunity, relive these five runs that ended in a variety of ways but have one thing in common: The Showoff on the outside looking in at the championship picture.

5. The Cutting Edge of the Main Event Scene (2011)

Ziggler was not ready for his first run at championship gold, not from a character standpoint at least. He discussed as much with Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated in a June 29 interview:

"We had this match, a guy that loses every week in a world title match against Edge, and there was no cool backstory. I didn't cut a 10-minute promo with my life story, nothing like that. But we built this up for a couple weeks and maybe, maybe, I had a 1 percent chance of winning, which I've made a career out of over the past 15 years. I learned so much from Adam on the road during the live events we did together."

Despite not being ready, Ziggler tore the house down, having the best match of the night with Edge at the 2011 Royal Rumble. Though they had worked together at live events and on SmackDown, he was never really pushed as a main event star, nor was he one in any measurable way outside of his placement across the ring from the future Hall of Famer.

The Showoff was simply a young star capitalizing on an opportunity presented to him. He still had some growing left to do, though, and the result was two solid years of midcard work against the likes of Kofi Kingston.

Speaking of whom...

4. Flavor of the Month (2019)

If there is one wrestler who represents Ziggler's greatest opponent, it is probably Kofi Kingston. Dating back to 2012-13 and what felt like a never-ending series of matches between two stars with nothing else going on at the time, their rivalry has engulfed a significant portion of each man's career.

It was only fitting, then, that The Showoff reared his head during Kingston's magical WWE Championship reign in 2019, hellbent on dethroning his rival and turning his dream into a nightmare.

Ziggler worked with Kingston at consecutive events, losing a singles match to The New Day man at Super Showdown in Saudi Arabia and then falling short in a Steel Cage match at Stomping Grounds.

The story was there, the background was plentiful, but there was never really a sense that Ziggler would capture the title and go on a great run as heel champion of SmackDown. Instead, he felt like the flavor of the month, a competitor booked against Kingston to help bide some time until a bigger, meaner and more credible challenger emerged.

It is a shame, because Ziggler and Kingston could have had even more electrifying championship encounters had fans had any reason to believe the title was in jeopardy.

3. Warring with The Shield (2018)

In 2018, Ziggler was in the middle of a Raw Tag Team Championship run with Drew McIntyre when they ran into a reunited Shield. Warring most frequently with Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose, the two men found themselves at their highest position on the card in months.

By the time Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman entered the equation, the trios had a high-profile run atop the Raw brand in a battle for supremacy that produced more than a few entertaining matches.

Ziggler built credibility for himself through some strong matches with Rollins and Ambrose, while the Six-Man Tag Team match at Super Showdown in Australia on October 6 was that night's best.

Everyone involved would go on to remain relatively high on the card, but Ziggler, for whatever reason, fell back into his role as an upper-midcard competitor.

This despite stealing the show on more than one occasion with The Hounds of Justice.

As had proved the case before, there is only so much that being a great wrestler can do for someone before WWE Creative must back it up with credibility.

While The Showoff delivered on a nightly basis, he still wasn't winning many of those matches, and that was reflected in the crowd's willingness to continue accepting him in that position once the writing team turned its focus elsewhere.

2. Battling The Lunatic (2016)

If anyone other than Dean Ambrose had been WWE champion by the time Ziggler returned to the top of the card in the summer of 2016, he may have won the title and enjoyed the push that had eluded him throughout his career.

The Lunatic Fringe, though, had just recently captured the top prize in WWE, and there was no chance of management taking it off of him at a time they imagined him as the face of the newly revamped SmackDown brand.

Ziggler, though, had been on a roll from both an in-ring and character perspective. As the underdog who had finally put it all together to earn himself a shot at the WWE title, he had a groundswell of support behind him entering SummerSlam.

He would go on to lose a hard-fought match and find himself back in the Intercontinental Championship picture. If there was a consolation, it was that the feud with The Miz over that prestigious secondary title resulted in some extraordinary matches and one of the better stories of The Showoff's career.

Still, one cannot help but think what might have been had Ziggler paid off his journey back to the main event scene with a title victory instead of the more predictable booking that ended his run with a whimper, rather than a bang.

1. Cashing in (2013)

By the time April 2013 rolled around, it could well be argued that only CM Punk and Daniel Bryan were better and more consistently great in-ring workers than Dolph Ziggler. A master of the high-energy, high-drama style that would encapsulate WWE over the seven years that followed, he had earned the fans' respect and admiration for his work rate and dedication to his craft.

That is why the audience at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey, erupted with such glee when he defeated Alberto Del Rio to capture the World Heavyweight Championship in what was one of the most dramatic and captivating cash-ins in Money in the Bank history.

Unfortunately, Ziggler would never get to build on the momentum he created on that post-WrestleMania 29 episode of Raw.

Instead, he suffered a serious concussion at the foot of Jack Swagger and missed two months of in-ring time. When he finally returned to action in time for the Payback pay-per-view on June 16, WWE had already decided to move on from him as champion, but not before another extraordinary bit of storytelling from Ziggler and Del Rio in a rare double-turn.

Del Rio won the title, while Ziggler underwent a babyface turn. Rather than hanging around the main event scene a bit longer, though, Ziggler descended into the midcard, where he teamed with Kaitlyn to battle Big E and AJ Lee in a bitter on-screen breakup with the Divas champion.

And with that, any real chance Ziggler ever had at establishing himself at the tippy top of the card disintegrated.

Not because he had not earned it through hard work or dedication, or that he was not good enough to maintain his spot there, but because WWE lost interest the first time he suffered any sort of significant injury.

It is for that reason that Ziggler's story is most disappointing.

While he could have thrown a fit and let the frustration get the best of him, he continues to put in the work, and on July 19 at Extreme Rules, he may well have the match of the night against former tag team partner McIntyre, regardless of what overly complex gimmick idea WWE thinks up to justify the Horror Show theme of the night.