When the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the NBA season, the NHL season, and the rest of the world in flux, Vince McMahon, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, and WWE decided to do something borderline unprecedented across the greater sports landscape and just sort of… keep going, moving the shows to the performance center and eventually the “Thunderdome” in Orlando in order to keep RAW, NXT, and SmackDown coming to fans on a weekly basis.

In hindsight, the move worked out pretty well; while crowds were certainly missed, fans still got to watch seven hours of meaningful live wrestling each week and even got to watch Premium Live Events from the comfort of their own home, with WrestleMania 36 still broadcast to fans the world over on the first weekend in April as if it was coming to them live from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida.

And yet, even though fans were grateful to watch something during the pandemic, having to hold “The Showcase of the Immortals” in front of a recorded audience of zero did lead to some moments and storylines hitting like a flyball to mid-center field instead of a clear home run, with Dolph Ziggler specifically noting how fans were robbed of the finish to his storyline with Otis, Mandy Rose, and Sonya Deville in an interview with Sam Roberts.

“I hate, I f*king hate that I had one singles match in 18 f*king years, and it was on a soundproof stage with no f*king fans. Here's why I hate it. I don't hate it because I only got one ever, and there was nobody there. That's f*king hilarious. That's a great rib. Well done, Junior and everybody else. I am heartbroken that this beautiful story of this kick-a** lady and this bad-a** guy that you're rooting for, and this a**hole, 80's bad guy with his collar popped — My whole life is finally on TV,” Ziggler said via Fightful.

“I'm the 80's bad guy. I'm Blane, and I'm going to race you down the mountain because my dad owns this place. I finally get it, and we invest so much time in it, and we don't have the matches or the stuff that a lot of you guys see as important, but the behind-the scenes stuff, where Sonya and I have this weird chemistry right off the bat to where we seem like these a**hole Bond villains. I'm like, ‘This is the most beautiful story I have ever been a part of in this company, and I'm so proud of it. And I go, ‘All I wanted is that moment where I get punched in the balls, and Otis picks up Mandy, and they kiss.' And I go, ‘I am heartbroken that this is not in front of 80,000 people.' It broke my heart because it was the payoff of a long story, and sometimes we cut those short, and sometimes we do those wrong. When we do them great, that's awesome, and I'm usually not a part of it. I finally was, and I hate that you guys weren't there.”

Alright, to be fair to Ziggler, Otis' moment with Rose still hit incredibly well even through a television screen, with his statement “I love you, Mandy” drawing cheers from the hundreds of thousands of fans watching from home. Still, it would have been interesting to see how the fan s in the area would have reacted to the showing and the couple in general afterwards, as Otis was a member of Alpha Academy, and Rose was back in NXT by the time fans were regularly allowed back in arenas.

Dolph Ziggler discusses Snooki's moment in WWE.

Turning his attention from one big-time moment he had with a firey, small woman in the WWE Universe to another, Dolph Ziggler recalled to Sam Roberts Snooki's debut in WWE and how he ended up having a “great time” working with the Jersey Shore star.

“She did great. [There wasn't high expectations?] Expectations were very low. She did fantastic. I was blown away because sometimes celebrities come and they're like sometimes it's us on a media day, 5 a.m until 2 p.m, and you're just bouncing around, and you're like a zombie you don't give a sh*t, you're promoting this, ‘yeah, yeah, RAW is tonight. I got it,'” Ziggler said via Sportskeeda. “But like sometimes celebrities come, and they promote something on RAW, and it's like they're going through the motions, they don't care about, ‘no one should touch me. No one should mess with my hair.' (…) But there's stuff like that like where I go, ‘it's Snooki. She has like a reputation for being like she didn't give a sh*t. She's here to get paid, whatever.' She busted her a**. She did great. That was so cool.”

Is Ziggler's match with Snooki going to go down as the greatest contest of his career? No probably not, but hey, there's a time-honored tradition of WWE pairing up veteran stars with celebrities in order to get a few more eyes on the promotion; Ziggler should be proud that the company trusted him to do that job and put Snooki over.