10 WWE Champions Who Forfeited Their Title Due To Injury

You can't put much past 1990s Shawn Michaels, but even he wouldn't fake injury just to get out of doing the job for Bret Hart at WrestleMania 13, would he?

HBK won his second title at the Royal Rumble, seemingly setting up an encounter with either 'The Hitman', or the placeholder number one contender Steve Austin. Just 25 days later, though, his reign was cut short by a knee injury.

This was the same knee problem that threatened to end his career outright, so you can understand why WWE took the precaution of taking their star-man off TV for a couple of months.

It wasn't an ideal situation, of course, but without it we may never have seen the classic Austin-Hart submission bout at 'Mania.