There should have been an other, or even better, charisma. Because while I enjoy an Alberto Del Rio match myself, he's boring as hell in every other way. When the best part of your act, wrestling not included, is your ring announcer, you've got some major problems.
Whatever charisma is, Del Rio lacks it sorely. He can do all the hand gesturing and vocal inflection he likes, I simply find him boring and unappealing. For some time, I looked forward to seeing him. When he debuted and made Rey Mysterio tap out(which I can only remember Brock Lesnar doing prior), I wanted to see more. He main-evented his first television show, even though Smackdown, and made one of the top guys at the time that had been World Champion just a month prior tap out. That's one heck of a debut, and when he was chosen to "injure" Christian, who had recently come off a phenomenal ECW Title reign and moved to Smackdown, I wanted to see more.
Unfortunately for Del Rio, that seemed to be the glass ceiling in some ways. Everyone, at this point, was singing his praises. Then he got weekly promo time, and for awhile, it wasn't bad. It was just repetitive. Not so much repetitive in the form of repeating 'destiny' week in and out, but he displayed little range. Anger, happiness, frustration, or arrogance, he came off the same. Further, his promos almost felt like a 'wink, wink' type thing, as if saying, "This isn't really who I am." There's always the possibility that it's his English, because I truly believe that if Sin Cara wasn't a walking highlight reel of botches, he still would struggle to connect with the audience because of his English, and his mask, to a lesser degree. After all, Rey Mysterio has done fine.
Further, it's a gimmick, the rich self-indulgent man with men as his servants/on his payroll that's been done before, and done much better. Ted DiBiase Sr., aka the Million Dollar Man, was, in my opinion, the greatest heel of all time, so that's impossible to follow. But he generates less heat then JBL did, who, like ADR used to, employed a right-hand man and drove a car in to every show. And ADR is a far better wrestler then JBL.
Finally, and the jury is out on this one until it happens, but he's hard to take seriously because of his poor winning percentage, as most people see he loses a lot. But the bigger problem has been, in my opinion, the length of his title reigns. While DiBiase Sr. never won a WWF Title, he was so good as a heel and a constant threat that it didn't matter. JBL created great heat in the way the Honky Tonk man did, and that's he kept retaining the WWE Title(like HTM did the IC) by any means possible. As a heel, in his only two non-gimmick single's defenses, he lost, and worse, he tapped out. That severely damaged his 'rich character', because his character should be able to pay off other heels to interfere, like Paul Heyman did for CM Punk with the Shield. Transitional champions like Del Rio lose a lot of traction, and further, it becomes not about them. He becomes a man simply to drop the title to someone else, without making another Superstar do the deed. Punk beat Cena two PPV's in a row for titles, but when Del Rio took it from Punk via Money In The Bank, Cena made him tap out in his first defense. When he lost it to Punk, WWE didn't want Punk losing to Cena, so they had Cena lose it to Del Rio in triple threat cage match. His first non-gimmick defense? He tapped to Punk. When it counts, Del RIo has been booked weakly, RR winner or not.
Finally, Del Rio as a face was a flop, which hurts him even worse. I liked the longer title reign, but would have preferred it with him as a heel, even giving him a clean win, which he rarely gets in any case against upper-echelon competition, heel or face. When WWE doesn't present him as someone who can win at all, cleanly or otherwise against top competition, then why should I see him as such? He couldn't even get a clean win over Sin Cara on Raw, for goodness sakes.
But no, it's not his name. There have been worse that have been much, much more successful. Dolph Ziggler's is far worse and champion or not, hes far more credible.
