10 Most Shocking First-Time WWE Champions
5. JBL
If Eddie Guerrero was seen as WWE Championship material despite the shock that fans experienced when he won the title, John Bradshaw Layfield would be on the opposite end of that spectrum.
While JBL was a fair enough performer, his WWE career up through 2004 had been spent in the mid-card, with most of that time as a member of multiple tag teams.
Layfield also wasn't short on gimmicks as he had gone from Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw to Blackjack Bradshaw to just Bradshaw to a member of The Acolytes to the beer-drinking, cigar-smoking APA (Acolyte Protection Agency), and now he was becoming yet another new character, the Wall Street guru John Bradshaw Layfield, aka JBL.
Few superstars that go through that many transitions are ever seen as legit main event, WWE Championship contenders.
JBL defeated Eddie Guerrero at the Great American Bash in 2004, ending Eddie's four month reign. Ironically, not only was Eddie's title win seen as a shock, but his loss of the title was as well. To a great many fans, JBL simply wasn't up to standard, and they could't see why the ultra-talented Guerrero was being dethroned so soon into his reign.
JBL would hold the WWE title until WrestleMania 21, with many fans expecting him to drop the title much sooner. While the loss to Cena at WrestleMania 21 might have been its own surprise for some, it couldn't match the level of shock that came when he defeated Guerrero in that Texas Bull Rope match 280 days earlier.