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They tried really hard to get him over but did so very poorly. For example:

1.) He wins the largest Royal Rumble ever (within 6 months of his debut, mind you) but throws out Santino lastly to win. I'm confident that everyone groaned something fierce when they saw the final two.

1a.) He wins the Royal Rumble, loses the title match in the Wrestlemania opener (the first time the Rumble winner fought in the opener, "Headlining Wrestlemania" as the largest Rumble winner ever my ass), and within a month is off the brand and out of the title picture. If you want to establish a heel star you have him the thorn on the side of the champion until he wins the belt, and spend a good while with the heel playing keep-away until the face finally regains it. Orton didn't need the reigns, Christian didn't need to turn heel. Del Rio/Christian with a couple other key faces + heels could've been the SmackDown story for the summer.

2.) In the months leading up to the big MiTB win, he's feuding with Big Show (a wrestler who, during this time period was leaps and bounds more boring than Del Rio), a storyline that, at Capitol Punishment, was revealed to just be a way to bring about the Mark Henry/Big Show feud. WWE basically had their "star child" playing placeholder for the briefest of feuds (Big Show got taken out by Henry like 3 weeks later, right?), not to mention he's not fighting competition that makes people wanna care.

3.) He wins MiTB with what I think was absolutely no steam (he's basically getting a Lesnar push, but without the credibility Lesnar established along the way) and within an hour of winning the briefcase he's looking like a bumbling buffoon, getting laid out with one CM Punk kick in a failed cash-in. Sadly, this was the only activity he had with the briefcase.

4.) He's WWE Champion by the time Summerslam 2011 is off the air, suddenly tainting the purity that John Cena/CM Punk had. He was in a throwaway 6-man tag opener and all of a sudden complicates (and, in my mind, ruins) what the WWE Title picture was then by throwing Nash, Trips and Del Rio into the picture. I've tossed this idea around before but I'd have Mysterio keep the belt, and Del Rio eventually cash-in on him, meanwhile Cena feuds with Punk over the "other" title, and once we boil it down to Del Rio and Punk we unify the "true" and "phony" WWE Titles and Punk's year-long reign kicks off.

5.) He's put into a 5-month feud with Sheamus over the World Heavyweight Title, with him in some capacity fighting Sheamus on PPV in May, July, August and September, and would've fought him in June barring a concussion. Both of them are good-to-great workers but their matches just never seemed to click. WWE shoulda pulled the plug on their feud after June or July if they saw that instead of giving us more and more of it. It droned on.

6.) Established himself as a credible face champion and beat Big Show (again, still kinda boring, at this point was racist, and has been beaten by everyone and their mothers so Del Rio hasn't been elevated too too much). Gets a Wrestlemania match in a xenophobic-filled story with a guy who hasn't been on TV since September and hasn't been watchable since 2009. All the while they have this white-hot MiTB holder (something Del Rio was not) and waited until the last possible second to pull the trigger on.

7.) Held the World Title for damn near a year, but turned heel again, losing a lot of steam and having a lot of people lost interest in him. Defends it in forgetful matches that were decent to good, but suffered from an utter lack of care--versus Christian and RVD. Ditches the one guy still holding onto his overness, Ricardo Rodriguez, loses the cars, the pyro, I think the scarf too. Basically strips him from the interesting persona he once was and just turns him into a skeleton-crew of a competitor, for lack of a better term. Loses the belt to John Cena for the sole purpose of unifying and hasn't been heard from since.

WWE hit gold when they pushed Brock to the moon, but they pushed him correctly. I wouldn't say Del Rio has had as much talent as Brock once had, but he went straight to the moon just as quickly. Conversely, however, it seems like they had the right ideas to get him over, but kinda just went "yeah we did this right, so we can phone in the little details" and ended up half-assing and screwing over any chance of people giving a damn about him.