Ranking Each Of Randy Orton’s 12 World Title Wins

At TLC 2013, when Orton beat John Cena to unify the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships, it wasn’t necessarily a terrible match. The story heading into it, however, was borderline ridiculous.

WWE did its best to convince us that this was the first-ever Undisputed Championship match in the title’s 50-year history. Chris Jericho, amongst others, would surely suggest otherwise. Plus, the Orton vs. Cena meeting was being touted as a dream match, arguably the biggest in company history, despite the fact that we’d seen this rivalry done to death throughout the mid to late-2000s.

All of this grandiloquence led to the contrived Championship Ascension ceremony, in which a whole host of former champions, including the likes of Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart, assembled in the ring to hear Stephanie place her husband, Triple H, at the “pinnacle” of that assembly. CM Punk’s reaction said it all.

The icing on the cake, further undermining WWE’s narrative, was the fact that throughout all of this, the crowd couldn’t stop chanting for Daniel Bryan.

Though the eventual match was decent, if unspectacular, the context surrounding this one makes it difficult to be enthused about the win.