10 Worst Booked WWE Champions Of 2020
In which WWE Creative turns its pots of gold into crocks of s**t.
Championships in WWE used to mean something. Mick Foley capped off the seminal Have A Nice Day with his first WWF Championship victory, Chris Jericho talked about staring at the belt in stupefied wonder in Undisputed, and in Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling, Bret Hart movingly describes a broken down Dynamite Kid clutching the Tag Team Championship to his chest, having sacrificed his health for the respect the belt represented. Granted, nobody should consider Dynamite Kid a role model, but it still feels like something has been lost with how little titles in WWE mean nowadays.
This year alone has seen a slew of poorly booked championship runs that have done nothing for either the belt or the wrestler holding it. Winning one of the company's top prizes should be a milestone in any wrestler's career but WWE Creative has turned gold into lead all too often, its lacklustre booking dragging the company's champions down instead of elevating them.
To misbook one championship reign may be regarded as a misfortune. To misbook ten looks like WWE are trying to produce their own version of Springtime for Hitler.
10. The Street Profits (WWE RAW Tag Team Championship)
By the time the Street Profits swapped their RAW Tag Team championships for the SmackDown straps following the brand split, they'd held on to the belts for an impressive 223 days.
Unfortunately, that's the only thing about their reign that was impressive.
Things started off badly when they needed outside assistance from Kevin Owens in two successive matches to win and defend the belts, despite being babyfaces. After defending the straps at WrestleMania (cleanly this time) the Profits were handily beaten by the Viking Raiders which led to the utterly bizarre "Anything You Can Do, We Can Do Better" series (or, to give it another title, "A Series of Ridiculous Events").
What could have been a fun one-off skit was stretched way past its shelf life as the two teams spent more than a month competing in events such as basketball, bowling, axe-throwing... in short, anything except actually wrestling each other. This had the unfortunate side effect of making the Profits look like cowards, as it gave the impression they were happy to face the Raiders everywhere except in the ring after having their asses handed to them in the pairs' prior match.
The Profits would eventually get their win back, but by then the damage had been done. The Profits' RAW reign never really took off, but since switching to SmackDown, WWE have done a good job making the pair look strong and ready to find the smoke again.