5 WWE Superstars who were 'awarded' Championships without winning a match
The basic premise of pro-wrestling has always been a contest between two Superstars with both gunning for the top prize. Every promotion has a string of title belts that the wrestlers affiliated with the company compete for. Over the course of WWE's decades-long run, several Championships have come and gone, with the WWE title being a mainstay throughout the company's run.
A long list of Superstars have won and lost Championship gold over the years, but the story has always remained the same: in order to win the gold, one needs to defeat their opponent.
There have been exceptions to this rule though. In some rare instances, WWE Superstars were handed Championship belts even though they didn't earn it by winning a match. Let's take a look at five such instances in the list below:
#5 Mr. McMahon hands the WWE title to Randy Orton
At SummerSlam 2007, John Cena defeated Randy Orton to retain his WWE Championship. Orton defeated Cena via DQ at Unforgiven, thus failing to win the title. On the road to No Mercy 2007, John Cena suffered a legitimate injury during an episode of WWE RAW, soon after which he was attacked by Orton and hit with an RKO. Orton didn't stop here, and went on to deliver a thunderous RKO to Cena on the announce table.
No Mercy 2007 kicked off with Mr. McMahon awarding the WWE title to Orton, as Cena had vacated the belt due to his injury. His reign didn't last long though, and he lost the title to Triple H in the opening match of the PPV. It was a long night for Triple H though, as he later faced Umaga in a WWE title match.
The Game managed to defeat Umaga to retain his belt, but the night hadn't ended yet. Orton later defeated Triple H in a Last Man Standing match in the main event of the show to regain the title.