Big E, Cody Rhodes and AEW, WWE Stars off to Rough Starts in 2022

Everyone starts the new year with aspirations to be better than ever, setting new goals and hoping to achieve greatness. Usually, by the time February comes along, those new year's resolutions have dissolved into a more realistic picture than the ideal.

Sometimes, you just get off to a bad start. Runners can trip and stumble instead of bolting at the speed of light, and in professional wrestling, stars can fall victim to the same misfortune.

While some are winning the Royal Rumble or the TBS Championship, others in WWE and AEW are getting injured, losing all their matches and being humiliated.

Let's take a look at some of the wrestlers who are off to rough starts in 2022.

The worst way Big E could have kicked off 2022 was dropping his WWE Championship at Day 1.

Big E's since admitted to Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated that he's disappointed with how his title reign went down. Even he knows he wasn't booked strong as champion and wasn't given the opportunity to make his run memorable.

It's also sad to see that WWE has largely booted him out of the main event scene since then, too. Rather than trying to rebuild him for a second run, he was switched to SmackDown and seems firmly reinserted into the tag team scene, especially after coming across as more of an afterthought in the Royal Rumble.

Speaking of the Royal Rumble, Kofi Kingston also botched his go-to spot. That is typically one of the major highlights and his time to steal the spotlight. The botch sucked the energy out of the match, and it never recovered.

He's taken it in stride, but it's certainly not how any of it was supposed to go down.

Lastly, despite the name, the Royal Rumble didn't even have the King of the Ring in it, as Xavier Woods suffered an injury and has been missing ever since.

At the tail end of 2021, Cody Rhodes was in a better spot than he was in a long while. After spending the past 12 months in lackluster feuds that he either underwhelmed in or lost, he managed to win the TNT Championship for the third time from Sammy Guevara.

Then, he was hit with two big letdowns in a row.

First, he had to isolate with a family member who tested positive for COVID-19, which prevented him from making some appearances. That pushed his scheduled rematch with Guevara to a later date, which saw the momentum swing like a pendulum away from him.

At their title unification ladder match, Rhodes fell short of retaining. It calls into question why he even won the title to begin with.

This now means Rhodes has the two shortest reigns with the belt at 31 and 35 days. Winning it three times is quite the accomplishment, but losing it a month later only because you couldn't lose it even sooner isn't a great way to start 2022.

Either Rhodes is onto something magical with a heel turn that hasn't fully formulated, or he's having an abysmal run for someone with his talent and pedigree.

Natalya fluctuates between being a featured player to being pushed to the sidelines all too often. Since she had her time with the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships last year, it was only natural she'd be back to her losing ways soon after that.

Lo and behold, even after winning a few Guinness World Records, WWE managed to twist it in a negative way by having her win another for the shortest women's match in WWE history.

If you're going to lose, do it with style. This was a fun way to play with the character, rather than going straight to the obvious and more serious approach of having her accumulate legitimate wins.

However, in a storyline sense, that's still an awful way to start the year.

She also claims to have set another record for her appearance in the Royal Rumble, but actually hasn't. WWE might lie about the numbers to get some story points across, but she has no Royal Rumble records to her name.

Natalya is sixth in terms of cumulative eliminations, her iron woman time from 2019 was beaten by Bianca Belair in 2021 and she has both Belair and Charlotte Flair ahead of her for cumulative time.

If she's now just making up records, that's a much less effective version of her character and another downgrade so early in this gimmick.

Since drawing the ire of The House of Black, The Varsity Blonds have been steamrolled.

Every time they are within the vicinity of Malakai Black or Brody King, bad things happen. They've not only lost all their matches against them, Julia Hart's even lost the sight in her left eye from the mist!

Brian Pillman Jr. also hesitated on the ropes for a springboard attempt, which has transcended from a botch to more of a storyline sign of intimidation getting in his mind.

While they've managed to score some wins on Dark and Dark: Elevation, including Hart, who came up short in her attempt to win the TBS Championship, this feud with The House of Black has definitely set them back.

On January 1, Ridge Holland had the biggest match of his career at Day 1, wherein he started the show by rather quickly breaking his nose.

That took him out of the match and put him on the shelf for several weeks—not at all what WWE had planned, assuredly.

While he's since recovered enough to step back in the ring, he's also forced to wear a protective face mask and can't be feeling great any time someone lands a punch or a kick anywhere close to that area.

This may have stunted his push, too. For all we know, Holland would have been a more prominent competitor in the Royal Rumble but was held back to not be out there too long.

With The Usos firmly holding the SmackDown Tag Team Championships, it's unclear if or when Holland and Sheamus will get a chance to win some tag team gold, but at least he's been on the winning side against Cesaro and Ricochet lately.

On the very same week he signed with All Elite Wrestling, Jake Atlas also suffered an injury that has put him on the shelf.

There's no telling what the timetable is for his return, but the injury happened at arguably the worst possible moment. He didn't even have a chance to start building any momentum or capitalize on being a new signing.

Granted, it's better to get injured after the contract's been finalized rather than before, but after waiting his time for his 90-day no-compete clause, he was most likely itching to get back in the ring and showcase his talents. That will have to wait a little while longer.

Hopefully, by then, the moment won't have passed.

So far in 2022, Roderick Strong has lost all of his six matches, as well as his final one from 2021.

He kicked off the year dropping the NXT Cruiserweight Championship to Carmelo Hayes in a title unification match at New Year's Evil.

Then, he entered a feud with Imperium that saw him lose to Gunther as well as in a six-man tag team match this past week.

He hasn't seen any better luck on the main roster, either. Tommaso Ciampa beat him in a dark match before SmackDown, LA Knight did the same the week prior and T-Bar defeated him on Main Event.

Strong was one of the talents teased to possibly make a jump to the main roster, but he didn't even appear in the Royal Rumble. That isn't a sign of good things to come.

While you could say Eddie Kingston should be on this list for his injury, The Inner Circle seems to be struggling even more.

When Kingston is back, he'll be fine. But soon enough, this faction may no longer be together.

Sammy Guevara is doing great, and that may be because he's not involved in the drama between Chris Jericho, Santana and Ortiz.

These three have been arguing over Jericho's feud with Kingston to the point where The Demo God wasn't even tagged in during their trios match. This has prompted Jericho to demand their presence in an Inner Circle meeting next week.

Assuredly, emotions will fly off the handle and more bad will come out of this than good. These may be the end days for this group, and all because Jericho can't get his ego in check.

On the January 11 tapings for 205 Live, Odyssey Jones suffered an injury in a match against Sanga. It was his first match of the year, and it didn't air due to this unfortunate accident.

Jones was then shown on NXT and was "reinjured" in storyline fashion by Harland, who attacked him while he was getting his injury checked on.

Jones has since undergone surgery, and it isn't known when he'll be able to return to the ring. Being inactive for what will likely be a good portion of the year from the very onset isn't anything to be happy about.

That is especially true in an era where WWE is looking to cut people for seemingly any reason and in a brand like NXT 2.0 where everyone is always seeking opportunities to make a good impression. You can't do that if you're on the sidelines.

Finally, it would be foolish not to mention how there are tons of wrestlers in both companies who are in a bad spot due to not being seen all that often and only losing when they do appear.

Mace might as well not be a member of the SmackDown roster. He's never used in any capacity.

Jinder Mahal and Shanky are only on television when they're losing and weren't deemed worthy of competing in the Royal Rumble.

Chaos Project, TH2 and the resident jobbers of AEW are in the same boat. There isn't much positivity flowing in the direction of someone like JD Drake, who appeared twice on Dark and lost both of those matches during a month where the leader of his faction, Peter Avalon, seems to no longer be under his former contract.

Most enhancement talent won't break out of this pattern, so it's less of a rough start and more business as usual, but it's still not how anyone would want their careers to look so soon into the new year.

Even someone like Cesaro, who should be doing at least something of value, has wrestled three times and lost all those matches—one of which turned into a handicap match that he still lost alongside Ricochet. He wasn't in the Royal Rumble, either, which is a massive downgrade from where he was at this point in 2021.

Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.