From WWE.com:

STAMFORD, Conn. — WWE has suspended Jose Rodriguez (Alberto Del Rio) for 30 days effective tomorrow, Thursday, Aug. 18, for his first violation of the company’s talent wellness policy.

 

http://www.wwe.com/article/alberto-del-rio-suspended

 

With the rumors of heat between him and Triple H, his general unhappiness, and the out clause he supposedly has in September, this is all very interesting timing.

 

I wonder why the suspension is beginning tomorrow. That's new, isn't it?

What a totally useless comeback this guy had. He never looked better than in Lucha Underground anyway. He's a goner.

The WWE is just shit sometimes. Remember when he first debuted and he could had been a huge star? They botched it then, he left. They brought him back and just did garbage with him, why even bother? Just to fuck with AAA or LU?

Also love how this was announced right after Triple H finished his pre-Takeover media phone conference.

The WWE is just shit sometimes. Remember when he first debuted and he could had been a huge star? They botched it then, he left. They brought him back and just did garbage with him, why even bother? Just to fuck with AAA or LU?

 

I think they do it to spite the wrestler, I'm not even joking. Spite may be the wrong word, perhaps "own" the wrestler. As if to say, you can leave under the worse circumstance, but you'll always want back.

What a totally useless comeback this guy had. He never looked better than in Lucha Underground anyway. He's a goner.

 

Not only that but his promo in LU was awesome & him returning to WWE just made it all hollow words. Which might not really really matter, but to his fans it might. It was the first thing that I thought of when he went back to WWE anyway. Felt like Grade-A selling out to me. Which, I can't imagine myself in that scenario - mostly because I'm white & won't ever be offered that much money - but after the racist crap & how he was basically a hero to a lot of Latino fans, it felt odd to go back. Of course, that's just from my outside-looking-in perspective where I doubt I had all the facts anyway.

 

I really liked him in Lucha Underground. In WWE he just gets lost in the shuffle.

Not only that but his promo in LU was awesome & him returning to WWE just made it all hollow words. Which might not really really matter, but to his fans it might. It was the first thing that I thought of when he went back to WWE anyway. Felt like Grade-A selling out to me. Which, I can't imagine myself in that scenario - mostly because I'm white & won't ever be offered that much money - but after the racist crap & how he was basically a hero to a lot of Latino fans, it felt odd to go back.

Agreed. Especially since he left Lucha Underground because he wasn't happy about not being in the main matches of Ultima Lucha. Made him look like a whining bitch who just packs it up when he doesn't get his way, straight to the place he was graced with racism and where he was used to do, well, like it's been said, shit.

It's a very Vince thing to want to get guys who left with "upper hand" to come back to WWE so he can claim victory.

Adding insult to injury is that this was announced on ADR's girlfriend Paige's birthday. WWE is such a weird, petty company sometimes...

One thing no one is considering: I hope this doesn't eventually lead to Paige leaving as well. She's beyond stale right now, but she has tremendous upside and could be a mainstay of the Women's division for years to come. ADR would honestly be no loss at this point, because he's been badly mismanaged and isn't even remotely over anymore, but Paige would be a giant loss, at least in terms of future potential.

If ADR leaves, Paige will certainly follow if they stay together. The last thing you want to be is in a relationship with someone who leaves the company on less than the best terms. Especially if he goes somewhere else and has any level of success. They won't be able to help themselves from taking it out on her.

If ADR leaves, Paige will certainly follow if they stay together. The last thing you want to be is in a relationship with someone who leaves the company on less than the best terms. Especially if he goes somewhere else and has any level of success. They won't be able to help themselves from taking it out on her.

IIRC, they dealt with AJ Lee fairly well after Punk quit, but she was more or less on top of what was a pretty thin women's division at the time. Paige has been hurt or otherwise buried for most of the year so I don't know how much more they can hurt her.

Oh dear - now Paige herself is suspended for a wellness violation.

So I'm picturing Del Rio and Paige doing blow and fucking like rabbits in hotel rooms across the country. 😎

I don't really want to have that mental picture in mind. Although that's probably what they were doing. And good for them too !

I wonder why the suspension is beginning tomorrow. That's new, isn't it?

 

Now that Paige has been suspended too, I wonder if they post-dated it for tomorrow so they could say they didn't actually suspend her on her birthday. Still pretty fucked up and petty though.

I don't really want to have that mental picture in mind. Although that's probably what they were doing. And good for them too !

Oh, if that's actually the case the Alberto's my hero.

Inb4 everyone goes back to Zapruder the Stone Cold Podcast Paige did where she was talking faster than an 80s Roddy Piper promo.

Inb4 everyone goes back to Zapruder the Stone Cold Podcast Paige did where she was talking faster than an 80s Roddy Piper promo.

 

If anyone's going to analyze "drug-like" behavior on the Stone Cold Podcast, Dean Ambrose should be first in line.

Dean always sounds like that in interviews, he reminds me a lot of a guy I worked with that everyone was convinced was a stoner but was just unfortunate to be born with a voice that sounded like Shaggy from Scooby-doo.

 

 

I just remember her excuse was that she was just excited to be talking with Stone Cold, which...yeah. Maybe excited like Jessie Spano from Saved By The Bell.

Well there was the whole incident with Paige after Money in the Bank where there are pics of her being put in handcuffs and then put into an ambulance while still in the handcuffs. Somehow that kind of went under the radar.

 

http://www.cagesideseats.com/2016/6/20/11984490/paige-handcuffed-hospital-wwe-money-in-the-bank-2016-raw

Per unbiased and steadfast journalist Court Bauer, the incident of Paige being arrested was all a lighthearted misunderstanding wherein the police and accused alike were slapping each other the back and yuk-yuking it up in no time.

The weirdest thing about all this was finding out through Facebook that Del Rio’s a four-time WWE champion.

Del Rio needed at least another six months on the indies to cement an identity, but the wishful thinking put forth online that 2015 WWE was going to let him be a babyface by casting himself in opposition to a former employee who made a racist remark in poor taste was never realistic. They were never going to cast themselves as true-life, stock-plummeting, advertiser-repellant heels. He could have become an over babyface on implicit vibes alone. But Vince is more of a Trump affiliate than most of us care to stomach, and so they turned him heel and put him in a bumbling stable of inept foreigners.

That said, it feels like revisionist history to not acknowledge that various people on this board and similar spheres online have criticized Del Rio quite a bit as a worker and character in recent years. We’re years past his matches with Big Show and Rey, and he has taken a lot of flack in recent months. The smark view of Del Rio has been schizophrenic since his debut, and not all of it has been his push or lack thereof. Fans seem up and down on him as a perennial “guy with upside”, or guy not living up to said upside, depending on how you see it.

In the tradition of everything in wrestling being ten years behind the times, Del Rio, Paige, Ambrose and Roman only this summer got the memo that coke was back. Have fun listening to Jinder Mahal’s conspiracy theories in a Silverlake apartment halfway through a two-day bender, kids.

I don't think anyone's overrating Del Rio's ability to point out he could have been used better in WWE, especially right after we saw him being used better in ROH/AAA/LU right before.

 

He's clearly a guy who has some talent but can also mail it in like nobody's business when not motivated, and I'd gather it was hard to find much motivation in recent times.

No one has seemed to mention that there is an inherent difference in your need for motivation when you're a guy traveling around to a bunch of different promotions & charging them top dollar to bring you in vs. having a guaranteed contract. Del Rio knew he had to perform at his best when a couple of lazy performances could mean that RoH or AAA decides to stop using him. He seemed to stop caring in his second WWE run pretty much as soon as he signed the contract. It's not like they gave Del Rio a whole lot to work with but it's not like he gave them a real reason to give him stuff to do either.

They debuted him in front of a hot LA crowd eager to cheer him, only to pair him up with Zeb the same night, Pretty sure he got the memo right there they weren't going to do anything meaningful with him.