10 Worst-Booked WWE/World Champions Of All Time
These days, winning the title doesn't guarantee a thing.
Once upon a time, holding a World Championship used to mean that a wrestler was the best in his organization, with a claim for being the best in the business. As the title legitimized the champion, the same thing happened to the belt -- it looked all the more prestigious for being held by a dominant warrior and contested in exciting main events.
Today, booking the champion as the top dog of a company seems to be the exception to the rule. Recent runs by John Cena, Brock Lesnar, and The Rock notwithstanding, a huge number of title reigns over the past decade-plus have been characterized by booking that makes the champ look weak, devalues the title as a whole, and in the end, costs WWE potential earnings. This is a list of the ten most egregious examples in WWE history.
Just a note -- this list does not include super-short title reigns (a day or less), or reigns where it was clear that the champion was only meant to be transitional (The Iron Sheik, for example). While the wisdom of such booking can be debated, those decisions were part of larger stories and the titleholders in question were, presumably, not meant to be stars on the level of the company's top draws.
10. Alberto Del Rio
Alberto Del Rio was touted as a can't-miss prospect when he debuted in WWE in the summer of 2010, and he found success very quickly -- he immediately defeated the legendary Rey Mysterio, Jr. in his first feud, then won the Royal Rumble and Money in the Bank in 2011. At SummerSlam of the same year, he cashed in his briefcase and defeated CM Punk to win the WWE Championship.
Unfortunately, Del Rio's train went off the rails from there. In his first major title defense (at Night of Champions, playing semi-main event to Triple H versus CM Punk), Del Rio lost the belt to perennial champion John Cena.
He would win it back two weeks later at Hell in a Cell, becoming a two-time champion, but in November, he lost the belt -- for good, this time -- to CM Punk at the Survivor Series. Again, he wasn't in the main event.
In 2013, Del Rio would turn face and capture the World Heavyweight Championship from The Big Show, but his run as a fan favorite was largely panned. When he was defeated for the title by longtime heel Dolph Ziggler, it garnered one of the most famously positive crowd reactions in Monday Night Raw history.