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Really, I think winning the belt was the best and worst thing to happen to him. The timing was great, but they just had no plans for him. Then, you have the Shield coming up, Bryan was getting undoubtedly more popular and the company chose to push Sheamus and Del Rio over him and he never seemed to recover. He started 2013 as one of the hottest guys with a popular valet in AJ and muscle in Big E, only to end with the WWE losing streak gimmick.
2014, he'd still get a reaction but the company did nothing with him until the end of the year where he was the sole-survivor and GIGA OVER. Then... they just did nothing with him again, made him look like a geek and had him lose all the time again.
Realistically, he probably should've left by then because he was still popular enough to have a following. Staying did nothing for him. I think the only other thing of note was the angle with Miz and that famous SD picture, but that's about it for his career. Even then, he felt like he was washed as a character.
This is why you strike while the iron is hot instead of meandering about and passive aggressively crying on Twitter about his push. Look at Ryder, the dumbest thing Ryder did was not leave earlier, because he's doing something interesting rather than crying about being in catering. He could've made that move around the same time with Cody. Shit, Cody said in an interview that he tried convincing Ryder to do the same thing he did.
Ziggler, is stuck in the same place since like 2014. No character or direction. He made comfortable money, but could've made a ton more if he took any chance on himself. He was way better than Cody was at the time and his brother is cool with all the hotter indy promotions, so it's not like he'd have to work his way up to some PWG appearance.
