I don't remember what everyone has said but yeah he's been shyt on. I remember what I've said and I'll stand on it. He's not ready. I essentially have said the same thing as Cena did lol. The dude is not ready for primetime and he's shown that quite a few times now.
Now, will he be ready one day? Will he grow into a star of some kind? Yeah, that's possible but with wrestling it also kinda depends on how many chances you get. Austin Theory is like a mediocre white quarterback. Sometimes they are out of the league in 2 years. Sometimes they get to hang around (unlike black QBs) and get to carve out a career for themselves.
It might be unfair to say people are "wrong" about Theory if the WWE just decides to force him down everyone's throat for a decade. Everyone would improve after a decade of reps in the midcard and near the main event. The more reps you get, the better you're gonna be no matter who you are.
Ehhh.. the last part is a bit of a copout
Saying he isn’t ready is a fair criticism. Many of our favorites weren’t ready at 26 either. We saw Seth sink for a little while after the mega push. We saw Roman sink for damn near 8 years, but eventually they became exactly who WWE intended on them being.
But I’ll tell you right now, there’s not a lot of level headed “he’s not ready yet” rhetoric going on around theory. It’s a whole lot of “he’s trash” chatter. A lot of flop talk. A lot of “xxx is everything WWE thinks theory is” talk.. and I personally think it’s gonna age horribly. We won’t know till way down the line because homie ain’t even 27 yet, but we’ll see..
I’ll say this though.. if 2nd year Jason Tatum is struggling and I’m calling him trash, overhyped etc. and saying he’s not who Boston thinks he is… I shouldn’t be able to go “well he was at the time, he improved with more reps tho!” When the nikka becomes exactly who the franchise thought he was. If muhfukkas gon be loud, stand on that wrongness when the time comes