10 Wrestlers Who Actually Asked To Drop The Title!

9. Chris Benoit – WCW World Championship

At the January 2000 WCW pay-per-view Souled Out Bret Hart was scheduled to defend his World Heavyweight Championship against Sid Vicious but withdrew from the card after suffering a concussion (that would ultimately end his career) the month prior. Eventually management settled on Chris Benoit to take Bret’s replacement to wrestle Sid at Souled Out for the now vacant World title. But WCW was in utter turmoil at the time, with Benoit and an excess of other wrestlers taking issue with the company on the whole and how it was being run, with head booker Vince Russo being removed and replaced with Kevin Sullivan who Benoit famously didn’t see eye-to-eye with.

In an effort to appease Benoit they booked him to win, which he did by making Sid tap to the Crippler Crossface. But it was too little, too late. Benoit fell out further with WCW management the following day at Nitro, where he threatened to walk. Management told him he’d be stripped of the belt if so, with Benoit simply not caring at that point, wanting to lose the WCW title as it had been so devalued over the prior year plus he didn’t want to have added complications making the jump over to the WWF.

So that night on Nitro Benoit was stripped of the title and he quickly showed up on WWF screens with The Radicalz.