WWE: 5 Worst World Champions During The Brand Extension

When the WWE bought WCW in 2001, they were left with a large roster of superstars, so when the Invasion angle had finished, they decided to split said roster into two separate rosters after WrestleMania X8 in April 2002. Half of the roster would be drafted to the Raw brand, the other half going into the Smackdown brand.

There was initially only one world title, the WWE Undisputed Championship, but when this was made exclusive to Smackdown in September 2002 (becoming simply the WWE Championship), the Raw brand brought back the World Heavyweight Championship as their world title belt. The following list refers to the worst WWE or World Heavyweight champions from this time until the two belts were again unified at the TLC pay-per-view in December 2013. Having separate brands and world titles allowed some superstars, who might otherwise have had the opportunity, to work their way to the top of a particular brand and win a world title, the moving over to another brand to become an even bigger star. John Cena is a prime example of this. The likes of Edge, Batista and Randy Orton have also benefitted from there being separate belts. But over time, a period of 11 years, there's always going to be bad decisions and therefore bad champions getting a run with one of the world titles. How do I define who the worst champions are? Well, drawing power, television ratings and pay-per-view performance will be taken into account, but not one of the main criteria. It's simply those who I look back and think "How were they ever WWE (/World Heavyweight) Champion?" Or simply "They would definitely have not been a world champion if there was only one belt." Perhaps not always to that extreme, but the ones who plummeted right back down to the mid-card after losing the title are usually prime examples of superstars who have had failed runs as champion. There's a few that are not on my list that probably meet some of the above criteria, but personal preference comes into it as well, of course, so your list might be different to mine.