Dolph Ziggler On Current WWE Role: ‘I Hate It.’

With two reigns as world champion and six runs with midcard championships, Dolph Ziggler has been a fixture of WWE‘s roster for over a decade.

But for all of his success, “The Showoff” isn’t happy with his current role as a midcarder on the SmackDown Live roster. Ziggler opened up about his status in the company on the latest episode of E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness with Edge and Christian.

“I hate it,” Ziggler said “But also I’m someone who, I hate that I’m not the champion. I hate that the show is not about me because that that’s the mentality you should have if you’re in the business. If you’re the ‘Hey I want to be the opening guy who works for 10 years and saves a bunch of money,’ (guy) that’s great. But there’s a thousand other guys in the back that say, ‘I want to be the best. I want to main event WrestleMania, I want the show to be about me.’

“So you have to have that mentality. But also I’ve been around enough to know the score, to know what’s going on. So I hate being in that position. I think I should be a bigger part of the show. But so does everybody else.”

Ziggler originally debuted back in 2005 as a caddie/enforcer for Kerwin White, a parody character played by Chavo Guerrero. He was also a member of the male cheerleader faction The Spirit Squad before re-debuting as a singles competitor in 2008. He quickly established himself as one of the top in-ring talents on the roster, eventually building up a cult following with the fans.

He won the World Heavyweight Championship twice, once while pairing up with SmackDown general manager Vickie Guerrero and once by cashing in the Money in the Bank contract. But he hasn’t held a championship in over a year and was on the losing end of a WWE Championship feud with Dean Ambrose last summer.

Ziggler told Edge and Christian that he doesn’t mind losing matches, but losing consistently hurts his appeal with fans.

“You get passed over a handful of times for a couple of years, then you start to have more of a cult following and it gets hot,” Ziggler said. “But after a couple of years of not having the trigger pulled and the eight-year-old kids now know that you’re in that roll, I noticed in the last two years that even my live event matches are a little hard for me to do my job. Because when I come out and a 10-year-old kid goes, ‘I know you’re losing,’ we go, ‘Aww, crap.’

“I’ve said this to the boss on several occasions, I’ve made a career out of almost never winning, which is awesome. But at some point I have to be seen as somebody who could win without pulling a needle out of a haystack or a lottery ball out… because that loses all of that luster.”

Ziggler said he feels being known as a great worker should be helping his case to staying in the main event scene, not hurting it.

“I feel like after a while you’re proving it so much, even that becomes a thing like, ‘Hey, sorry, you have the curse of a worker,’” Ziggler said. “Or you’re like, ‘Hey, you’re our Shawn Michaels guy, you can work with anybody and it could seem like a main event somewhere.’ Well that shouldn’t be a bad thing, but sometimes it is.”

Ziggler has spent the last few months impersonating other wrestlers for their over-the-top gimmicks, leading to a losing feud with Bobby Roode.

You can listen to Ziggler’s full interview with Edge and Christian here.