WWE TLC 2011: 5 Reasons Alberto Del Rio Needs to Have a Great Performance

WWE's annual TLC pay-per-view is just four days away and there are plenty of stories that need to be talked about. Chief among them is what will happen with Alberto Del Rio after the triple-threat tables, ladders and chairs match for the WWE championship.

Del Rio has not had the banner year that most wrestling fans were expecting from him all the way back in January.

The biggest problem he had was the way that he was booked. With so much stopping and starting of his character, he never got a chance to show what he could do. 

By the time Del Rio finally won the championship in August, he had been so watered down that no one took him seriously as a main-eventer. 

But Del Rio can close out the year strong with a great performance in the main event of TLC. Here are five reasons that he absolutely must shine, even if he loses, against The Miz and CM Punk on Sunday night. 

Momentum

One of the most underrated parts of professional wrestling is momentum. I mean, it is a sport where the outcomes are fixed, so how do you really establish something like momentum for anyone?

The easiest way to do it is to give wrestlers wins. But since WWE doesn't seem to understand that anymore, it is all on the wrestler to do something each week that the audience is able to connect with, either with a positive reaction or negative one. 

Del Rio has not had any kind of upward momentum since winning the Raw Money In the Bank match back in July. That was the last really big push that he received, and everything has gone downhill ever since. 

If he can find some way to get momentum back at TLC, it will make a world of difference for him heading into 2012.

Confidence

With so many different stops and starts to his push this year, it would be understandable if Del Rio had lost any confidence that he had.

It certainly seems like WWE has lost any confidence it might have had in Del Rio this summer, because he has not gone over strong in months and his two title reigns made him look like a dork. That is a far cry from where he was at in the spring. 

Del Rio still has the potential to be a top star in the WWE, but if he keeps being booked like a second-tier wrestler, eventually the fans will only see him that way. They are close to turning on him completely now, but there is still time to get him back up. 

The first thing to go when a wrestler is in WWE is the confidence because you are constantly beaten down to the point where you wonder why you were hired in the first place. Here's hoping that Del Rio hasn't lost all of his over the last four months. 

WWE Needs Main Event Heels

We can speculate about the identity of the "It Begins" character all we want, but until we are sure who it is and what role he will play, WWE has to find main event heels anywhere that it can. 

Things have gotten so bad for WWE in that department that they actually brought Kane back as a heel to feud with John Cena. I mean I like Kane well enough, but he is not a main-eventer at this stage of his career. 

Del Rio has a strong enough character to be a main event heel, and he is still relatively new that he would be a fresh face that hasn't been recycled 100 times already.

He can be one of the top heels on Raw if he is given the opportunity to do that. It may not happen overnight, but a great showing at TLC could bring him back to the top of the heap as far as main event bad guys in WWE is concerned. 

Can He Work a WWE Gimmick Match?

Del Rio has proven himself to be more than capable in singles matches in WWE. In fact, he has improved by leaps and bounds from the time that he debuted in 2010. But he still has to show what he is capable of in specialty matches. 

While Del Rio did have a great ladder match at Extreme Rules with Christian, he was very conservative and did not try anything too outrageous. Part of that could is just because he is a heel, and you don't want a heel doing something that might get him cheered. 

But it would be nice to see Del Rio take a few more chances in a gimmick match. I am not saying that he has to risk his long-term health for one move, but just pulling something new out would catch the crowd off guard and get them interested in what he is doing. 

WWE loves to use gimmicks, and Del Rio has to figure out if he is going to be able to handle himself in these kinds of matches or not. 

Future

This final part follows along the lines of the first three, but it is the most critical part of the argument that I want to make for Del Rio. 

Vince McMahon is an impatient man. He wants to see results right away, and if he doesn't, he will bury you so deep on the card that you won't know what hit you. He has done it to a number of talented performers in the past, including Shelton Benjamin, John Morrison and MVP among others. 

Del Rio is not at a point where is going to just give up like those guys did, but he hasn't fallen down the card like they did, either. At some point he is going to have to make a move one way or another because Vinny Mac isn't going to keep giving him opportunities. 

Even if Del Rio loses—and for the record, I think CM Punk will retain—one great performance can make him a star. The follow-up to that performance is just as critical, but at least he will have something positive to work towards as we move towards the Royal Rumble.