10 "Little Guys" Who Should Have Been WWE Champion

I suppose we should all just be thankful that at least two of the four initial exports from the WCW, known as The Radicalz, went on to become deserved WWE Champions at one time or another (three of five if you include Chris Jericho).

While it's easy to see why Perry Saturn never got a shot at the gold - Exhibit A: Moppy - it's still a little infuriating that someone as ludicrously talented as Dean Malenko was never really given a chance in WWE.

And while it's tempting to suggest that Malenko's lack of promo skills would naturally make him a lower-tier option as WWE Champion...that certainly never stopped Chris Benoit.

And Benoit, as lauded as he's been as a technical wrestler over the years, couldn't match up against the likes of Malenko, who was truly one of the most gifted mat technicians of all-time.

Besides, if promo deficiencies were his only issue, why not just give him a manager to act as his mouthpiece like they did with Brock Lesnar? That would take care of whatever personality defects they thought Malenko had.

Instead, they decided to turn him into a laughingstock, giving him a Godfather-lite gimmick known as "Double Ho Seven", which was just as terrible as it sounds.