The WWE Is Ruining... Andrade "Cien" Almas

As a pro wrestling fan, it is a part of our identity to always know how to utilize wrestlers better than the WWE. If WWE would just give me, random WWE fan, a job a the company, ratings would immediately rise to the levels of the Monday Night Wars, despite how television ratings have changed as a whole over the last 20 years. But until that happens, WWE will continue ruining our favorite wrestlers, and that is why it is time to point out the error in their ways. Because of WWE's incompetence, I am literally going to pick a wrestler at random and point out how they could be better utilized, because WWE is ruining everyone in one way or another.

Today, I want to talk about a personal favorite of mine, Andrade "Cien" Almas.

Almas made his name in his home country of Mexico, wrestling for CMLL while having a few stints in NJPW under the name and mask of La Sombra. In fact, La Sombra was a part of Los Ingobernales before there was ever such thing as a Los Ingobernales de Japon. Anyway, it turned out that he was not wearing a mask due to La Parka disease and is actually a handsome devil who was signed by the WWE and originally wrestled under his own name of Manny Andrade at the beginning of 2016.

On February 26 of that year, I saw the best match I have ever seen at an NXT house show when Sami Zayn and Andrade. Usually those matches are pretty bland, but those two decided to go out in the middle of the show and put on an absolute clinic. This was what started my Andrade fandom. A hilarious note about this show is that The Vaudevillains dominated two jobbers in Patrick Clark and Kenneth Crawford, aka Velveteen Dream and Montez Ford, the two guys who may have the highest ceilings of anyone in NXT.

Luckily, after about six months, his name was changed to Andrade "Cien" Almas since Manny Andrade is the most Mexican jobber name of all time. Shortly after that, he made his TV debut, beating Noah Ponjes, now known as "The Finest" Kona Reeves. He was up and down after that, getting built up only to lose big matches and then go spiraling back down the card. He wore suspenders and a stupid hat, but he was supposed to be a babyface, and it just didn't work.

Finally, instead of winning, he started losing. But instead of being disappointed about losing, he just didn't care and would just party with chicks after losing matches. Finally, Zelina Vega became his manager to set him straight, and he eventually won the NXT Championship at NXT Takeover in November of 2017.

Let me also remind you what his title reign was known for, and that is for retiring Johnny Gargano from NXT. Yo, Johnny Gargano is still cruising around NXT, and had he been retired, he never would have been able to attack Aleister Black, and Candice LeRae could have been Candice FREAKING LeRae instead of Mrs. Gargano. Although Aleister Black would end his title reign WrestleMania weekend, Almas was ready to debut on Smackdown shortly after that.

When he got to Smackdown, he did what any future superstar would do, and that's start a feud with Sin Cara. But after that, he's actually wrestled the best in the WWE with matches against AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, and Rey Mysterio. He hasn't won any of them, but at least they're letting him wrestle really good wrestlers.

Honestly, it's too early to tell whether the WWE is ruining Andrade Almas. His NXT Title run was after a losing streak to some pretty unimpressive names. At least he's now losing to important names. If they just use him to have good matches with their top names, they are missing the boat, because even without fluent English, he has a star quality to him. I will say that Zelina Vega is incredibly important as a mouthpiece to help him get over early on, but even dumbass WWE fans should be able to see that this guy is the shit.

So what should the WWE do to help Almas fulfill his potential? I would say the biggest thing is don't do it half-assed. Even if Almas only gets wins over low-level talent for a while and loses to the big names, that's totally fine. But eventually, you have to give him that big surprise win over AJ Styles or Daniel Bryan, and then you need to be ready to put the rocket on him and just have him start whooping ass, finding ways to shock people for victories. I see no reason the guy can't be a World Champion, and he actually has the in-ring talent to put on memorable main event matches.

Oh, and if you could put him in a long-term feud with Sami Zayn, I certainly wouldn't be mad about it.

Other Wrestlers WWE Is Ruining
Alicia Fox
Bobby Lashley
Charlotte Flair
Dana Brooke
Dash Wilder
Ember Moon
Kane
Karl Anderson
Kofi Kingston
Luke Gallows
Mickie James
Mojo Rawley
Nia Jax
Peyton Royce
Randy Orton
Scott Dawson
Tyler Breeze