10 Great WWE Championship Reigns (That Ended In The Worst Way Possible)

Championships are an integral part of everything that makes professional wrestling great. Without them, the whole ‘pretend fighting’ thing loses value. Pro wrestling is a soap opera that uses combat sports as its central focus, entertainment cloaked in competition. What is competition without an aim, without a prize, without a goal?

WWE has done a fairly wretched job of booking its own titles over the years, reducing the belts to little more than aesthetic props and creative crutches. Men and women get lumbered with titles that lack meaning, a meaningless that is accentuated with every pointless reign and even more pointless title change.

Even when the company has done a good job of booking a champion, that final act remains difficult. Wrestling is a story, and the difference between a good and a great championship reign is often the way it ends, the full stop on a lengthy sentence. Injuries have forced the promotion’s hand on a number of occasions, but WWE has also shot itself in the foot on plenty of occasions.

A championship reign is only as valuable as its final act. For every memorable WrestleMania moment and iconic briefcase cash-in (or both at the same time), there is a dinosaur transitional champion, a TV personality interference or a seven-second slap in the face.

People forget how protected John Cena was at the height of his powers. Cena was relentless, overcoming all the odds and beating everyone in his path with depressing predictability. Every now and then, fans would allow themselves to dream that his dominance might end, but those hopes soon crumbled in the face of meat and potatoes wrestling and a flurry of colourful shirts.

On September 17, 2006, John Cena defeated Edge in a Tables, Ladders and Chairs match, a bout with a most famous finish. The result of the championship match was a foregone conclusion, but the spectacular nature of the finish meant fans weren’t too annoyed at Cena beginning his third world title run.

Cena’s third reign was immeasurably better than his first two. Sure, the dominance remained, but the quality of matches was noticeably better. Cena had classic defences against a variety of opponents, from Umaga to Shawn Michaels to The Great Khali, giving the latter the best match of his career in the process. Cena also gave Lashley his best WWE match, so far at least. The reign lasted 380 days and opened the eyes of many to the qualities of John Cena as a real top guy.

And then he tore his pectoral. Any plans WWE had of building to a big match and crowning a new champion were thrown out the window. Cena was scheduled to defend the WWE Championship against Randy Orton and may well have lost, giving Orton his first world title in three years in the process. Instead, Orton was handed the title by Vince McMahon.

It was a depressing end to what had been a genuinely great WWE Championship reign.