Ranking Every WWE Champion Of The Attitude Era

During the Attitude Era, Triple H was the ideal bridge between the mid-card and the main event. He wasn't quite a dominant personality like The Rock or Stone Cold, but you needed someone who was constantly giving chase to the top guys in order to inject a little freshness into the title hunt.

The problem is, the first couple of times Triple H held the championship, a lot of his freewheeling spark he had as the de facto leader of DX got zapped out of him, turning the character into a self-serious brutalizer almost overnight.

It wasn't necessarily a bad change - after all, a guy has to evolve out of his sophomore antics to be taken seriously as WWE Champion - but it caught a lot of fans off guard.

That evolution certainly paid off for the character and the company, as he and The Rock went on to have one of the best feuds of the era, culminating in a stellar Iron Man match at Judgment Day 2000.

Without Triple H getting that big bump to the top, the company would have surely floundered during Stone Cold's absence.

And say what you will about Hunter now, but during that time he seemed to get better and better with each ensuing title reign, which is exactly what those runs should accomplish.

Unfortunately, what should have been his most dominant and lengthy run in 2002 was cut short by an egomaniacal relic from the past and a father-in-law who loved him some nostalgia.