On October 25, 2015, Alberto Del Rio made a triumphant return to the WWE and pinned John Cena clean to win the U.S. Title. Less than a year later, the squandering of that hype was officially finished with Del Rio leaving the company.
Both the WWE and Del Rio made the announcement on Friday.
My business relationship with @WWE has come to an end in good terms…thanks for the opportunities they gave me.
Termine mi relación con WWE— Alberto El Patron (@PrideOfMexico) September 9, 2016
Del Rio has just finished serving a thirty day suspension for a violation of the WWE wellness policy.
So ends the second act of what once looked like it could have been a WWE Hall of Fame career.
Del Rio (real name José Alberto Rodríguez) made a huge splash when he initially debuted with the company in 2010. He would go on to win the WWE Championship and WWE’s World Heavyweight Championship twice as well as becoming the first person to win a Royal Rumble and Money in the Bank match in the same calendar year (2011).
That stint ended in 2014 when Del Rio was involved in an altercation with a WWE employee on a plane. The employee had allegedly made a racially-insensitive joke and Del Rio attacked him. He was released due to “unprofessional conduct” and would go on to work with various other federations.
He returned to the WWE in late 2015 to much fanfare, winning the aforementioned match over John Cena. From there, however, Del Rio languished in the mid-card and became a glorified jobber for a large portion of 2016.
On August 18, 2016, he was suspended for thirty days for his first violation of WWE’s wellness policy (as was his girlfriend, WWE wrestler Paige). It had been reported for weeks that this would mark the end of his disappointing second run with the company and today that was confirmed.
Rodríguez is now reportedly heading to Lucha Libre Elite in Mexico. There’s always the possibility he could return to WWE down the road but given how he was booked this time around it seems unlikely he’ll ever reach the same heights as before.
If nothing else, Del Rio leaves us with one hell of a collection of times he called other people “perro.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8ag3vPUtRc
