10 Most Disappointing WWE World Title Reigns
With so much competition that there isn't even a spot for the Great Khali!
Back at WrestleMania 33, Randy Orton defeated Bray Wyatt to win his 13th WWE Championship. Just seven weeks later, and after failing to successfully defend the belt one single time, he was dethroned by Jinder Mahal, who himself had one of the worst win-loss records in the company at the time.
Safe to say, it all made for a rather disappointing title run.
Still, Orton isn’t alone in having the kind of world title reign that just doesn’t deliver the goods - not by a long shot.
Plenty of names, including some of the biggest in the company, have endured some fairly forgettable times as champion, and for all sorts of reasons - whether it be injuries, bad timing or simply a lack of support from the powers that be.
Rather than simply focusing on the shortest or the most puzzling world title reigns, we’re talking exclusively about those reigns that could, and should, have delivered so much but instead left us feeling rather let down. And as touched upon earlier, sometimes that’s due to factors outside of the individual’s control, as our first entry very much proves…
10. Daniel Bryan
Though it wasn’t necessarily any fault of his own, Daniel Bryan’s third and final WWE World Heavyweight Championship run proved to be something of an anti-climax.
Bryan had won the title in an incredible main event at WrestleMania XXX, capping off an arduous six-and-a-half-month chase for the belt, in which he’d overcome countless roadblocks both inside the ring and out of it. The subsequent run as champion, however, was over in just 64 days.
Bryan was forced to relinquish the title on 9 June after a neck injury forced him to undergo surgery. By that point, Bryan had only successfully defended the title on one occasion, defeating Kane at Extreme Rules 2014—which was a solid enough match but hardly the kind of glittering championship résumé that someone of Bryan’s calibre might’ve hoped for.
His only other defence came on the Raw after ‘Mania, when he faced Triple H in a match that ended as an underwhelming no contest.
Given his monumental coronation and the rags-to-riches story of the Yes! movement, Bryan was deserving of so much more having finally got his hands on the belt. Unfortunately, though, absolutely rotten luck would ravage any hopes of that happening.