10 Worst WWE Title Challengers

The title of this one may sound a little bit contradictory because if you’re lucky enough to be challenging for the WWE Championship, arguably the grandest prize in the entire industry, then you must be doing something right.

By and large that logic proves to be true, but every now and then we do see some names crop up in the title picture that may not appear to belong there. Whether it’s due to being pushed too soon, a result of the character having been poorly-booked beforehand, or simply guys being plonked into title matches on nothing more than a whim, there have been a number of WWE Championship challengers who’ve us shaking our heads and asking 'why?'.

From the major pay-per-view match-ups to the less memorable contests at random TV tapings, this article looks back at some of the challengers that you might consider the worst in the history of the belt.

For the record, we’re going to overlook the jobber challengers that we’ve seen over the years, so apologies to the Cory Students and the Dan Dubiels of this world. But thanks for the memories anyway, lads.

By the end of his time in WWE, Salvatore Sincere had an overall win rate of just 25%. During his early days in the company, though, he wasn’t booked to lose quite so often, scoring four victories in his first seven matches.

Still, that kind of a return shouldn’t quite be enough to warrant a WWE title shot. And yet in November 1996, on a WWF Superstars taping, that’s exactly what Sincere received.

The champion at the time was Shawn Michaels, and so the meeting with Sincere was likely little more than a warm-up routine for his imminent match with Sycho Sid at the 1996 Survivor Series. It won’t have come as much of a surprise, then, when Michaels emerged the victor, though at over seven minutes in length this match was perhaps less straightforward than you might have expected.

Still, even though this wasn’t a serious programme for the WWE Title, given that Sincere had only been with the company for a few months at the time, he could hardly be deemed a prime candidate for a shot at Michaels’ Championship.