Ranking Every WWE Title Change On Raw From Worst To Best

By Michael Hamflett / March 2, 2021

To paraphrase an exhausted idiom; does the show make the title or the title make the show?

That's what WWE ask themselves and the audience when the decision is made to book a major WWE Championship change on Monday Night Raw, but the financial paradigm has shifted so much in the past few years that this will eventually become the norm more that a traditional Sunday switch.

Traditionally, a pay-per-view was a place to change things up - an easy way to reward the paying customer for their purchase while tacitly reminding them why they should make the same choice the following month. This philosophy had the knock-on impact of making free televised title changes all the more valuable.

Yet, it could be argued that Mondays have always been a better for something so big to go down.

As the televisual centrepiece of WWE, Raw's always been as much about the moments as the matches, and that's how this list will approach ranking the various ups and downs of the company's top strap. Regardless of a contest's quality, that belt changing hands should inspire a feeling watching wrestling that's stronger than just about anything else. It's not doing its job otherwise, as was the case for some of the first few entries here...

20. Rey Mysterio Vs John Cena (July 25, 2011)

More later on how Rey Mysterio won the belt and how pointless that was, but first to the needless termination of his WWE Championship reign on the very night he won it courtesy of WWE's top babyface.

It was during the minuscule period between Money In The Bank 2011 (and this match specifically) that the CM Punk angle looked far too ginormous and detailed for WWE to master - booking the company's hated top babyface to beat an earnest fan favourite in the latter's second match of the night was such a ham-fisted way to get to the Cena/Punk rematch they desperately wanted. The title change meant nothing, because the belt itself didn't either.