10 Most Wildly Unpopular WWE Title Changes

9. Sheamus Defeats John Cena - TLC 2009

2009 is, equally, often quoted as WWE's worst year- creatively- in recent memory. Atrocious guest hosts were showing up every week to p*** into our eardrums and WWE hit a creative iceberg so severe that they resorted to booking an exhausting John Cena vs Randy Orton feud which spanned 6 months and 5 straight PPV's to fill the time. They followed up Cena's eventual win in that feud with an equally stale Survivor Series main event of Cena vs Triple H vs Shawn Michaels. One might understand their desperation, thus, to stop treading water and inject a modicum of new blood into the main event scene when they announced newcomer Sheamus as the #1 Contender to Cena's title in December 2009. The problem with this plan was that it reeked of exactly what it was: desperation. Sheamus defeated Cena at TLC in 2009 when John Cena fell through a table and it barely even broke. It looked like it meant to have been something comical; a spoof or a parody. As it was, WWE were deathly serious. They wanted you to just accept this, supposedly dominant, upstart as your champion when he ran away from matches, got counted out all the time and won the belt when the previous champion slipped and fell through a table. It's no surprise then that the crowd didn't get into Sheamus one jot. Thankfully, Sheamus would lose the belt after only 70 days back to the same John Cena when WWE came to terms with the fans outright lack of care into Sheamus' character. Not to be deterred, they tried again later in 2010 when he won thanks to an attack by the Nexus. Nobody cared that time either. He would lose that title after an improved tally of 91 days. Say what you will about Sheamus now but he has come on leaps and bounds as a babyface since the dark days of his initial heel run where people would take p*** breaks during his matches.