Can you have too much talent on a professional wrestling roster? On Dec. 8, WWE finally granted Luke Harper his long-awaited release, along with rarely used jobbers The Ascension (Konor and Viktor) and Sin Cara. Batches of releases have been commonplace in WWE over the years, as contracts run out and wrestlers request freedom from the biggest wrestling company in the world, so the Dec. 8 bloodbath was not a surprise. All four men had their various moments of wildly different relevance—Luke Harper was an Intercontinental Champion, remember that?—but their common thread was that they were not being used consistently. Unfortunately for a big swath of the WWE roster, that still remains true.
The list of under- or misused talent in WWE is vast. For every Seth Rollins, there’s an Apollo Crews, a former NXT standout who might as well not exist in the current main roster landscape. Or, worse, a Rusev, a hyper-talented performer stuck doing cuckolding storylines with his real-life wife (at WWE’s TLC pay-per-view, Rusev lost to his wife’s new lover, Bobby Lashley, in a tables match—just another indignity). Aleister Black, who was as sure a star as you could bank on, has been hiding in a closet for months, only now finally getting a feud with Buddy Murphy, another skilled wrestler stuck doing comedy bits. The list could and does go on, and it’s only getting larger.
