5 of the worst World Heavyweight Champions in WWE history
To be the man, you’ve got to beat the man, but in this instance “the man” isn’t exactly up there with the Shawn Michaels and Ric Flairs of the world. After bringing the Big Gold Belt design over to WWE in 2003, the company decided to bill the World Heavyweight Championship as the premier title in the company – even above the WWE Championship.
For a long time, it stayed that way, with the likes of Triple H, The Undertaker and Batista taking the strap to unprecedented heights of success and popularity. Unfortunately as the years went on, things started to go progressively downhill and before you could even say “title change” the belt was merged together with the WWE Title and eventually retired.
So what was the catalyst behind the Universal Championship’s predecessor fading into the distance? In truth a lot of things, with one of them being that there wasn’t really any need to have two World Titles in the company anymore. Then again, another big reason could also be because some of the champions that held the belt towards the end of its run didn’t really make too much of an impact.
With that being said, here are the five world World Heavyweight Champions in WWE history.
#5 Alberto Del Rio
It was his destiny to win the World Heavyweight Championship, and perhaps if he’d captured it during his feud with Edge in 2011 then he wouldn’t be on this list. Unfortunately, WWE decided to wait before pulling the trigger on making Del Rio SmackDown’s top star, and because of that his credibility as champion seriously suffered.
Plus, it didn’t help that during his championship reign he was involved in feuds that were so unbelievably dull that it’s almost unfathomable to think that they were allowed to air. It’s no coincidence that Alberto was the last long-term holder of the belt, and within a few months of him dropping it to Cena, the strap was eventually retired.
Onto a man Alberto knows quite well...