5 Most Underwhelming World Heavyweight Champions in WWE History
The World Heavyweight Championship made it's way to WWE when Eric Bischoff awarded the title to former champion Triple H in 2002, giving the Raw brand a world championship since Brock Lesnar held the WWE Championship on SmackDown. The title was held by many great WWE legends like Edge, Batista, The Undertaker, Kurt Angle, Kane, John Cena etc. before being retired in 2013 with Randy Orton becoming the last man to carry the title before it was unified with the WWE Championship.
Throughout the title's history, it has been defended in the main event of multiple PPVs and episodes of Raw & Smackdown while being WWE's secondary world championship. While many superstars have taken the title to new heights, others failed to do the same and thus became really bad champions. Not only did they not look good as world heavyweight champion, but they didn't have what it took to stand at the top of the mountain and call themselves a champion.
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With that being said, let's look at 5 of the worst World Heavyweight Champions in the history of the WWE.
#5. Dolph Ziggler
Dolph Ziggler is regarded as an underrated superstar by many WWE fans, but he's actually a 2-time world champion. Ziggler won his first world title in 2011 when he was defeated by Edge, but he was awarded the title anyway since Edge used the spear during their championship match, a move that was banned by Ziggler's then-girlfriend Vickie Guerrero.
Dolph held the title for only a few days before losing it back to Edge a week later on Smackdown. His first reign was very short and not only did he win the title in controversial fashion, but he went on to lose his first title defence clean. This is by far one of the worst world title reign in WWE.
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After winning the title, Ziggler suffered a concussion which took him out of action for one month and when he returned to have his first title defence against Del Rio, he lost the match and his title, ending his reign at just 69 days. From that day on Dolph never went near the world championship gold. He has never successfully defended his titles on two occasions and he was still green during his two reigns.
After losing his title to Edge, Ziggler went on to win the Smackdown Money in the Bank contract in 2012 and failed to cash it in on Sheamus multiple times to win the World Heavyweight Championship. He successfully cashed-in his briefcase the night after WrestleMania 29 and won the title by pinning Alberto Del Rio.