9. Jeff Hardy (December 2008- January 2009)
A little controversial maybe but hear me out. Jeff Hardy was not ready to win the WWE title and did not deserve to. To explain my argument here let me draw an analogy. In the early eighties WWE promoted a guy called Tito Santana. Tito was a great worker who was fast, technically sound and could make a decent match with anyone. He was tag team champion, intercontinental champion and a perennial crowd favourite. He was also never considered to be WWE champion nor did he ever expect to be and the reason why is in the WWE of the 1980's being a good worker did not automatically entitle you to be WWE champion. The standard was higher and the expectations greater for a WWE champion. You had to have a certain something, a credibility and a pedigree behind you that suggested you were ready to lead the company. Jeff Hardy, despite having a decent body of work behind him, had not proven himself at a main event level in any way and the thing about it is WWE wasn't sure about him either. The way you can tell this is that, even when you combine all his reigns as world heavyweight champion with his solitary run as WWE champion you get a grand total of around two months spanning the entire three reigns. This is not the mark of a champion the company believe in and they were right not to. Jeff Hardy became champion because he had a great deal of fan support and very few others did at that time and this is the crux of the thing right here. When fan pressure forces WWE to put a title on someone it never works out because put simply, WWE are not invested in him and resent being told what to do by their audience. Conversely, when WWE picks the guy themselves they are invested in him and will make a concerted effort to ensure he succeeds regardless of what the fans think of them. So, in closing Jeff Hardy was a WWE champion that WWE never really wanted which is not the same as saying they didn't rate him, they certainly did and certainly wanted to keep him and would undoubtedly have let him win the World Heavyweight championship a number more times as they don't really care as much about a belt that only goes back to 2002 in terms of its history. The WWE title matters to the WWE and always will do, they didn't believe Jeff should hold it and neither did I quite simply because he was a decent worker but that was all Jeff was and i expect more than Tito Santana when I am looking for a WWE champion.