10 WWE Champions You Didn't Care To Hate
7. Jack Swagger
It has been heartening to see Jake Hager do well in AEW. Okay, that is somewhat relative, it isn't as if he has been setting the world on fire and revolutionising the game or anything, but the big man found himself a solid role as the silent heavy as Chris Jericho in the Inner Circle before that stable took a backseat for AEW's first generation of homegrown stars.
When you consider the hole that Jack Swagger had been buried in, Hager's rebuilt credibility is nothing short of a miracle. It could have been so different too. When Swagger burst onto the WWECW scene in 2008 there was something about the All-American American that was strangely captivating. He was dorky but in a frat boy-jock sort of way, and he had the in-ring credibility to be taken seriously.
Everything changed when Swagger moved to RAW in 2009, proving that WWE's main roster issues today are nothing new. Swagger was immediately lost in the shuffle and became just about as faceless as a mid-carder could be. He wasn't even an outsider to win the Money in the Bank ladder match at WrestleMania XXVI but win it he did, sparking one of the most forgettable world title runs in the history of WWE.
WWE has convinced itself that championships can make a star, overlooking the glaring logic of the opposite being true. Swagger was a fish out of water with the big gold bet and fans stopped caring. Who can blame them?
Well done to Jake Hager for turning this ship around in AEW, but yeah, this wasn't great at all.