 What's good, Josh, you're brought back again with another video. So we're going to check out 10 times WWE foolishly buried their own champions. Now, for some odd reason, WWE from time to time tend to bury their champions. You're probably asking why would they do such a thing? My response would be, I don't know. The one time I can think offhand, of course, is Kofi Kingston getting buried by Brock Lesnar on a debut on Fox Network. Never made sense to me. I don't think it made sense to a lot of people. It was just kind of like a damn, that's kind of messed up. If you were buried, a guy that's had the championship since WrestleMania, only because you want to push Brock being on Fox on SmackDown. So screw Kofi, right? So but we're going to check this out. Appreciate all the love and support. And let's get right into this video. WWE superstar wins a championship. They should be presented strongly. So their title run obtains legitimacy and worth. However, WWE sometimes decides to outright bury their own champions. The champion in question can fall out with favor with WWE management, or sometimes the superstars only made champion out of fan pressure and intense popularity. So in turn, WWE could do everything they can to weaken the popularity of the superstar, damaging their credibility and star power as a result. But which champions were they? Well, join us now as WrestleMania looks at ten times WWE buried their own champions. Be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell for daily wrestling videos. And follow us on Facebook for exclusive lists. Number 10, Jack Swagger. Jack Swagger's world title run in 2010 actually started off pretty well. He would achieve victories over Chris Jericho, Edge and Randy Orton. And this was before Vince McMahon outright gave up on the reigning world champion. Swagger would suddenly begin to lose every match on television. He would lose to the likes of The Undertaker, John Morrison and Kofi Kingston. And all of this killed his credibility as a legitimate world champion. By the time the Fatal Four Way PPV came around in June of 2010, all hope was lost for Swagger as fans simply couldn't take him seriously anymore. He would drop the world title to Rey Mysterio in a Fatal Four Way match, which also included CM Punk and The Big Show. He was never made clear why Vince decided to bury Swagger, but some fans believe that Swagger never regained the credibility following his disastrous world title run. Number 9, Kofi Kingston. When WWE booked Kofi Kingston to defend the WWE title against Brock Lesnar on SmackDown's 20th anniversary episode, fans assumed that Lesnar was going to end Kofi's enjoyable title reign. However, they didn't expect Lesnar to completely squash Kofi in just seven seconds. Fans expected a back-and-forth competitive match, but Kofi almost conquered Lesnar while WWE had other ideas. The squash completely killed Kofi's credibility and it made fans question the legitimacy of his title reign. WWE even decided to debut Cain Velasquez after Lesnar's victory, meaning Kofi became an immediate afterthought. WWE's presentation of Kofi following the controversial loss was heavily criticized, as Kofi never got a rematch against Lesnar, nor did he seem remotely bothered that his length- And that's the problem. Did we think Kofi was going to win? No. Were we hoping we were going to have a decent, somewhat of a decent match? Yeah, sure. He gets squashed in a few seconds, enter Cain Velasquez, I think I've mispronounced his last name, whatever, who cares. And then he just doesn't care about getting the championship ever again. Just forgot about it. No comment. The title reign had ended in just a matter of seconds. The 69-day world title run of CM Punk in 2008 is often forgotten about by many fans. The main reason for this is that it was so unmemorable. Punk's world title run came at a time when John Cena and Batista were still on Raw and they were both a lot more over than Punk. This meant that Punk's world title run was never a main focus for WWE programming and he was virtually buried as a world champion. Punk had lost a total of three pay-per-view events as world champion, the first being Great American Bash where he and Batista would wrestle to a WDQ. The second win was over JBL at SummerSlam in 10 minutes and the final most infamous pay-per-view appearance as world champion saw Punk get punted in the skull by Randy Orton at Unforgiven and he'd be taken out of his planned world title scramble match. The run was a complete flop and WWE never made any genuine effort to make Punk appear as a legitimate world champion. 7. Jeff Hardy Fans were delighted when the beloved Jeff Hardy finally captured the world title at 2008's Armageddon pay-per-view. Hardy was insanely over with fans and fans anticipated that he would head into WrestleMania 25 as WWE champion. However, his title run just lasted 42 days. Hardy's reign instead of being filled with exciting title defenses were filled with a bizarre storyline which saw Hardy get involved in a range of accidents which ranged from him being driven off the road to his pyro malfunctioning. Hardy would drop the title in his first defense. He lost the edge at 2009's Royal Rumble pay-per-view after his brother Matt turned on him. It was clear to the fans that WWE had zero plans to make Hardy a credible WWE champion at this stage of his career and this explains why they decided to bury his title run as quickly as humanly possible. 6. Dolph Ziggler One of the most memorable RAW after WrestleMania moments occurred in 2013 when Dolph Ziggler cashed in his money in the box. I'm gonna be honest with you, I think that was probably one of the loudest pops Dolph Ziggler ever got. And that was probably one of the loudest pops in like Monday, the RAW after WrestleMania. That pop when he came out was immense. When he won it was stupid, bro. Oh man. The bank briefcase to win the world title. Well, the issue here was that Vince and WWE never really saw Ziggler as a main event level talent and his world title run showed this. The week following Ziggler's world title victory, he would lose a non-title match to Jack Swagger on RAW. This was evidence that his world title run was going to be filled with non-title losses and Ziggler would have to fight for any means of credibility. A few weeks into his title runner, Ziggler suffered a serious concussion which put him on the shelf for a month. When Ziggler returned, WWE decided to immediately take the world title off him. Ziggler would drop the world title to Albert Del Rio at the payback pay-per-view and unfortunately, he would never receive another run at the very top. And it sucks because Dolph was so talented, we wanted to see him at the top and they just, they didn't care. They didn't care for Dolph. They just didn't. Simple as that. They didn't feel like he was a main event guy. The WWE lighter. Number five, Cesaro. Cesaro's 2012 US title run was a huge letdown. What should have involved Cesaro bringing major credibility to the US title instead featured him seemingly losing every non-title match on television. Cesaro would be US champion for eight months and he was mainly used to put over other talent. He would lose to top WWE talents such as Randy Orton, Sheamus and John Cena and these may have been forgivable if Cesaro obtained other victories. But this wasn't the case. He would lose to every talent possible. He would lose to the likes of Santino Morella and Justin Gabriel, all of who seriously buried his run as US champion. Number four, Karrion Kross. Cesaro deserved credit too. In the summer of 2021, it was announced that Karrion Kross was making his main roster debut. Kross was the reigning NXT champion and fans expected him to become a major star on the main roster. Kross debuted on the July 19th edition of Raw and rather shockingly, he lost to Jeff Hardy in just under two minutes. This completely killed Kross's legitimacy. It destroyed him. I don't care what nobody says. Your debut on the show, the main roster, you're still the NXT champion and you haven't lost in the NXT and you get to the main roster, you lose to fucking Jeff Hardy, who I love, but you lose to Jeff Hardy and you lose to a Jeff Hardy cheated. He hit a roll up and used the ropes as leverage. You cheated. You still lost your debut match. If you didn't want Jeff to lose, you can't have him face any jobber, but you had him lose. And from there, it was done. He was dead. On NXT, it didn't matter. They were there over there chatting Jeff Hardy. It's over. It's done. He couldn't recover from that. Like you're not a big threat, bro. Jeff Hardy's beating you in two minutes. No disrespect to Jeff. Jeff is a legend, but come on now, bro. He's beating you. He beats you in two minutes. That shouldn't have been happening. They should have had at least a decent match and then you could have had Karrion get the win. See, it also completely buried the top champion of the popular NXT brand. Kross's presentation would be dramatically changed following the loss and fan perception of him and his character quickly soured. And of course, that goofy outfit didn't help. In November of 2021, Kross would be released by WWE, which caused a lot of outrage on social media for how WWE completely failed the talented superstar. 3. Christian When Edge retired in 2011, WWE urgently needed a top babyface for the Smackdown brand. The plan was to crown Christian as the world champion at Extreme Rules, which would cement him as the top babyface on the brand. On the Smackdown following the pay-per-view, new world champion Christian would be challenged by newly drafted superstar Randy Orton. Christian would then be forced to face Randy Orton on the show and WWE actually decided to have Christian lose. That's right, Christian lost the world title just a few days after winning it. Now, it's common knowledge that Vince McMahon wasn't a huge fan of Christian, but nevertheless, to bury him completely in this manner was too much for a lot of fans to handle. 2. Chris Jericho Chris Jericho shocked the world at the 2001 Vengeance pay-per-view when he became the first ever undisputed champion. Sadly for Jericho, the run that followed was presented rather poorly and Jericho was never taken seriously as undisputed champion. Jericho had storylines with The Rock and Stone Cold during this time and whilst he attained victories over the two legends on pay-per-view, they were presented as flukes and never made Jericho seem like a serious world champion. Jericho was also paired with Stephanie McMahon during this time and will be presented as Stephanie's personal lackey and Jericho would even begin to dog-sit Stephanie's dog. Jericho eventually dropped their undisputed title to Triple H at WrestleMania 18 and wouldn't receive another world title run until 2008. 1. Ray Mysterio A WrestleMania 22 featured one of the most feel-good moments in WWE. 1. Ray Mysterio History, Ray would defeat Randy Orton and Kurt Angle to win the world title for the first time in his career. A popularity aside, Vince McMahon wasn't keen on making Mysterio a world champion and as a result, he outright buried Ray as world champion. Ray would lose a ton of matches on TV to the likes of RVD, Mark Henry and The Great Carly. He wouldn't even let Ray get victories over lower-card talent such as Sabu and as WWE decided to book their match at 2006 One Night Stand pay-per-view to end in a draw. They eventually decided to end Ray's run in the summer of 2006 when he lost title to King Booker at the Great American Bash pay-per-view. Ray's run was a complete flop and WWE never made any effort at all to make Ray's world title run memorable for the right reasons. They have it folks, 10 times WWE buried their own champions. 2. Comment down below, let me know which one you feel had the worst. He didn't even try to get his title back. He was an afterthought. As soon as it happened, he went right back to the mid-card. Like nothing ever happened. He didn't just have one of the best moments in WrestleMania history. Just gone dead. That definitely is a number one for me. But I appreciate all the love and support. Roll 2, 70K. Appreciate y'all kicking in with me. See y'all in the next one. Peace.