15 WWE Title Changes That IMMEDIATELY Backfired
13. Edge & Chris Jericho Get Cut Short (Unified WWE Tag-Team Titles)
Title Change: New Canadian duo Edge and Chris Jericho won the old Unified WWE Tag-Team Titles at The Bash in June 2009. They beat out The Colons and Legacy pair Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase to dethrone the Primo-meets-Epico express in a hurry. Everything looked wonderful as Mr. Rated-R and Y2J posed with the belts in front of fans, and it seemed WWE had found new tag division leaders for the rest of the year.
At least.
Why It Backfired: Then, disaster struck. An Achilles injury forced Edge out of action, and Jericho scrambled to replace him with the ambling Big Show. Being totally fair, “Jeri-Show” proved decent and had some tidy matches, but the unfortunate timing of Edge’s injury meant the supergroup-style team he had going on with Jericho blew up in WWE’s faces practically overnight.
The fact Edge and Jericho only got to work 2 more matches together as champs before the injury should be considered a crime against wrestling. Oh what could've been had the Achilles stayed intact, eh? Fans could only point to The Bash bout, a match on Raw vs. Primo and Epico, then another showing on SmackDown vs. CM Punk and Jeff Hardy (best of pals, so they were!) before the injury happened.
Not nearly enough, basically.
WWE's writers had the best of intentions with this super-team, but fate stepped in with an evil grin and halted their plans. Boo fate. As aforementioned, Show was perfectly fine as a substitute, but he was never going to match the dazzling in-ring exploits of Edge. Everyone got robbed in June/July '09. Robbed!