Top 20 worst world title changes in wrestling history

18. Randy Orton def. Christian: SmackDown – May 6, 2011

Hey look, it’s Randy Orton again. The spring of 2011 was an emotional time for WWE, mainly due to the fact that Edge was forced to retire due to injury, his last match coming at WrestleMania XXVII against Alberto Del Rio. However, he was at least able to retire as the World Heavyweight Champion, something that doesn’t happen often, so that was nice. And things continued to be nice after the title was vacated due to the fact that his longtime tag-team partner and real-life best friend, Christian, beat Del Rio in a Ladder Match to win his first world title in WWE. And with Edge at ringside, things certainly got emotional and it was a very cool thing to watch.

What wasn’t so nice was the fact that just a few days later on SmackDown, Christian became a former World Heavyweight Champion at the hands of Randy Orton, somebody Captain Charisma really hadn’t been involved in a program with and really wasn’t in the title picture at all at that time. So instead of running with the storyline that Christian rode this emotional wave to the World Heavyweight Championship and nothing would get in his way of hanging onto it for his dear friend, they just took it off of him for no good reason and put it on Orton, who obviously didn’t need it at the time.

Christian would win the title back a few months later at Money in the Bank, albeit via disqualification as the rules allowed for that in the match, but the emotion of the story was gone and he dropped it right back to Orton less than a month later at SummerSlam. Wasted opportunity here.