People way overstate Vince's impact on preventing guys from being stars, with 5 hours a week of Raw/Smackdown for the most part everyone gets their shot to prove themselves, and you don't always need a title to do that. The WWE is begging at all times for people who are over and who can carry storylines, and if you can do that they'll push you. Vince is constantly reaching on pushes for wrestlers just to hope it sticks. Half the time when he's not pushing someone with a world title or mid card belt it's because he's protecting them from flying too close to the sun. The easiest way for your career to end is to be a mid carder who is hotshotted an IC or US title, have it be a terrible reign that ends after a month, and then what? You already proved you're not champion material in any form. You're done.
Take someone like Sami Zayn. You can say he never got his title run. But I would argue the WWE gave Sami possibly something more valuable, feud opportunities. He had PPV matches with random mid carders like Braun, Joe, Corbin, Lashley, etc. He got to go out there and give a way too long promo to Lashley, he got to have a segment with Foley to put him over. Him and Corbin were two guys that always had an undercard feud going for a year or two. This was really his shot to prove himself and the feuds weren't good and some of them were dropped before completion which is always a bad sign. IIRC he had a DQ finish at a PPV with Corbin, but the feud never ended afterwards, it just fizzled out on Raw and Corbin feuded face Nak instead. That's what you don't want to happen. The difference between Reigns and Zayn is that when they put Reigns with guys like Braun, Lashley, McIntyre, etc. it actually connects as a storyline. They put Reigns with a complete scrub in Jinder and at least it was a PPV match and some semblance of a storyline. You put 90% of the faces in a storyline against post title reign Jinder and it goes out to ice cold crickets on Raw and then forgotten about, and IIRC they may have done that with Sami himself once. I'm intrigued by Lacey Evans right now because after being buried for months after her Becky storyline, she got put in a mediocre program with Natalya and they somehow pulled off turning into a multiple week thing, PPV match and Last Woman Standing match. This is the type of thing that stars do, they take the filler feuds they're given with someone who's an afterthought and make something important out of it.
Or someone like Samoa Joe. I would argue the WWE has done everything they can to make Samoa Joe a main eventer, since on the surface a lot of the tools are there to be someone Vince loves. Just because they never gave him the belt doesn't mean they haven't tried. They gave him the big Brock match, extended feud with Reigns, extended title feud with AJ, and then finally gave him a belt in the the US title and his reign sucked. They put him back in the world title picture with Kofi and it was Kofi's most forgettable storyline of his reign (although the match was good). The only reason Joe is cold is for whatever reason all that size, athleticism, skill and promo ability doesn't add up as much as you would think. He was feuding against a guy like AJ who was champion for a year and begging to lose it, if Samoa Joe was red hot they would've given him the title, but all he had was a tired threatening family storyline to draw heat and it wasn't worth it.
