WWE: What's Next for Alberto Del Rio Once His Feud with CM Punk Is Over?

Alberto Del Rio skyrocketed to superstardom in the WWE seemingly overnight. 

After debuting in August 2010, he won the Royal Rumble, the Money in the Bank match and the WWE Championship within a year of his debut, feuding with future WWE Hall of Famers like Edge and Rey Mysterio along the way. 

Del Rio even got a second run with the WWE Championship, during which he feuded with arguably the company’s top two stars, John Cena and CM Punk. 

But ADR’s fairytale WWE career now appears to be headed to a reality where title shots and massive pushes aren’t the norm.

At Survivor Series, Del Rio lost his WWE title to Punk in what was the culmination of a feud that extended all the way back to SummerSlam, when Del Rio cashed in his briefcase to beat Punk for his first WWE Championship. Punk then went on to beat Del Rio in their rematch on last week’s Raw, but the Mexican Aristocrat was able to earn his way into a Triple Threat match for the WWE Championship at WWE TLC.

That appears to be a mere formality, though. 

With The Miz rumored to apart of the World title scene for the next couple of months, my belief is that WWE officials added Del Rio to his title match against Punk at WWE TLC in order to postpone the singles match he will almost assuredly get at the Royal Rumble. 

Yeah, Del Rio’s still in the title picture. But he’s nothing more than a pawn in the company’s game of chess.

Make no mistake about it—Del Rio’s five-month long feud with Punk will officially be put to bed at TLC when Punk retains his title and heads into 2012 as WWE Champion. 

Del Rio has been, in many ways, the focal point of the WWE Championship scene since SummerSlam. But for the first time in what seems like forever, he’s headed to the place where he should be: the mid-card. 

According to a report by WrestlingNewsWorld.com (sorry, it’s an insider article so you can’t see it) Del Rio’s push will be “noticeably scaled back on WWE TV.” In other words, he’s saying so long to the main event scene.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing because there are a number of options for Del Rio to feud with in Raw’s mid-card: Zack Ryder, Air Boom (perhaps Kofi Kingston and Evan Bourne vs. Del Rio and Ricardo Rodriguez), a returning baby face R-Truth, etc. Heck, given that the brand split means next to nothing, ADR could even start a rivalry with someone like Daniel Bryan or Booker T over on SmackDown. 

The bottom line, though, is that ADR is in all likelihood destined—see what I did there?—to be in the mid-card for the foreseeable future, and it might be just the thing he needs to get his career back on track. 

Though Del Rio got a huge push right out of the gate, he never really clicked as WWE Champion, and he’s gotten incredibly stale, boring and redundant over the last few months. He needs to reinvent himself and tweak his character, and the mid-card is a much better place to do that than the main event scene. 

Personally, I’d try to keep Del Rio around the upper edge of that mid-card before building toward a WrestleMania match against someone like Triple H. 

But, first and foremost, I would keep Del Rio completely out of the WWE Championship scene until he can prove that he belongs to be there on a consistent basis.

Hello, mid-card. His name is Alberto Del Rio, and you should get used to seeing him there.