There are, as of this writing, 50 men who have held the WWE World Championship, ranging for the original champ Buddy Rogers, to Jinder Mahal who unexpectedly won the strap at Backlash last month. Not all champions are created equally, though. Length of reigns ranges from over seven years for Bruno Sammartino to less than a single episode of Raw for Rey Mysterio. John Cena has held this specific title thirteen times, while there are plenty of guys who have only held it once. There were fighting champions who defended their titles multiple times a month on TV, and part timers who didn’t meet the spurious thirty day title defense rule. How to compare these 50 men who each, at one time or another, arrived at the top of the professional wrestling business?

This countdown is focused on what the wrestlers accomplished as champions. It’s not a ranking of the best kayfabe wrestlers, or best all-around performers over the course of a career. On the contrary, the countdown is restricted to what they accomplished as WWE World Champions. In developing the ranking, I considered quality of in ring and on the mic performance, drawing power, kayfabe success, longevity, and legacy. As is the case for any countdown of this nature, personal opinion is a factor, too.

Note: this ranking does not include the World Heavyweight Championship, The Universal Championship, the WWE ECW Championship, or world titles from any other companies. We’re looking at just one title, with just one lineage (though that lineage does get muddied at a few points—we’ll get into that below).

50 50. Andre The Giant

It feels like sacrilege to rank Andre the Giant at the bottom of any list. But in a countdown based purely on what a guy did as champ, Andre didn’t exactly live up to his legend when he was atop WWE. The Giant won the WWE Championship via collusion with newly arrived top heel The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase and an evil referee that DiBiase had paid off. From there, Andre promptly sold the title to Dibiase, only for WWE President Jack Tunney to void the transaction and declare the title vacant.

Andre didn’t really do anything as champion, and was a shell of the worker he’d been in his physical prime. For all of that, he finds himself at the bottom of this countdown.

49 49. Rey Mysterio

We go from the largest WWE Champion ever to the smallest.

The summer of 2011 belonged to CM Punk. Punk engaged in an electric storyline that bent reality, and featured him winning the WWE Championship only to walk out on the company, thus vacating the title. A tournament occurred and Rey Mysterio wound up the victor, defeating The Miz in the finals.

That outcome is all well and good, and there’s no denying Mysterio was an amazing talent, even years past his prime. This would wind up a painfully short run, however, when Mysterio was forced to defend the title he won at the start of Raw against former champion John Cena at the end of the show. Cena went over clean, Mysterio’s WWE Championship legacy suffered from one of the shortest reigns in history.

48 48. Kane

After a number of false starts as a WWE Superstar, Glenn Jacobs found his footing in the gimmick of Kane. After a year as a very effective monster heel, he found himself booked against WWE Champion Steve Austin in a First Blood Match. The booking was very sound from the perspective of stacking the odds against Austin, and fitting with Vince McMahon and the powers that be conspiring against him. Unfortunately, when a masked man with most of his body covered fought a guy with most of his body exposed in a First Blood Match, there was little way for the company to book its way out of a corner. There was little way for Kane not to be champion.

Kane did win the title and held it for a day, before dropping it back to Austin the next night on Raw. His entire time as WWE champion amounted to less than 24 hours. While Kane would go on to better reigns as ECW and Word Heavyweight Champion, this first time as a world champion didn’t exactly add much to The Big Red Machine’s legacy.

47 47. Vince McMahon

In the fall of 1999, Vince McMahon and Triple H got into a heated rivalry. While this feud was no Austin-McMahon, it did reveal a different dimension of McMahon, featuring him as less of a tyrannical businessman than a protective father. The storyline included Triple H crashing Stephanie McMahon’s wedding with Test, and memorable street fight at Armageddon 1999 that culminated in Stephanie turning on her father. Also, McMahon beat Triple H for the WWE Championship shortly before Unforgiven.

While on one hand, McMahon didn’t really have any business winning a world title, he was more than an iconic enough character to justify the run, and the title win on SmackDown offered an electric moment. McMahon would wind up vacating the title rather than ever defending it.

46 46. Stan Stasiak

Stan Stasiak may be one of the least remembered WWE Champions in history for holding the title for just a little over a week, during a time when WWE was still a regional promotion, before it had any weekly TV shows or PPV. Relatively little video footage of Stasiak—especially as champion—survives to this day. He was a legit champ, though, who defeated legendary face Pedro Morales before dropping it to even greater legend Bruno Sammartino, for Sammartino’s second reign atop the company.

Stasiak helped define an archetype as a transitional champion who moved the belt from one top face to another so that the faces never had to face off directly and muddy the waters of whom the fans should cheer for. For his part, Stasiak was a solid heel character and worker who would stay in and around the main event picture for years.

45 45. Jinder Mahal

It’s a bit unfair to evaluate Jinder Mahal in a countdown like this given he won the WWE Championship for the first time less than a month ago, holds it presently, and has plenty of time to define his legacy. Mahal hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, though.

A part of Mahal’s uphill battle as WWE Champion is that he arrived at the main event scene with so little build—an unexceptional worker who wasn’t particularly over, and who was on his second lower mid-card tenure with the company. Mahal won a battle royal to become the number contender to the WWE Championship and suddenly had the Singh Brothers assigned to the role of his sidekicks. This activity conspicuously aligned with rumors of WWE focusing on new business efforts in India, creating speculation he was getting pushed specifically to cater to that audience. No one seemed particularly upset about Mahal getting a title shot, but getting the title win over Randy Orton seemed much more problematic.

Mahal may still prove himself worthy of the push of a lifetime, but has a long way to go to convince his naysayers.

44 44. Bray Wyatt

With any luck, at 30 years old and as a steady upper card talent for nearly four years, Bray Wyatt may still have WWE Championship reigns ahead of him to improve his standing amongst the title’s champions. For now, though, his first title reign wasn’t exactly great.

Wyatt won the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber 2017. Over the month and a half to follow, Wyatt would weather challenges from AJ Styles, John Cena, and Luke Harper. Come WrestleMania 33, he’d have a chance to cement his championship legacy, defending the title against long time main event talent Randy Orton. When the lights were on brightest, and after Wyatt had spoken up in the media about how they ought to get the main event spot, expectations were high for Orton vs. Wyatt.

The match wound up most memorable for the odd choice to periodically project bugs on the mat and suggest they were under Wyatt’s control to play mind games with Orton. Rather than adding intrigue, the effect was poorly received as silly and ineffectual—a lame attempt at covering for a lackluster match that wound up being the end of Wyatt’s championship reign.

43 43. Alberto Del Rio

In between runs with the World Heavyweight Championship, Alberto Del Rio had two brief reigns with the WWE Championship in the second half of 2011. The first came when he cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase to take the title off of CM Punk at SummerSlam. He’d go on to trade the title with John Cena before dropping it more definitively back to Punk at Survivor Series.

Del Rio’s time as WWE Champion came across as less concerned with Del Rio’s success than with playing into Punk’s storyline as he was screwed out of the title, and spent most of all the fall feuding with Kevin Nash and Triple H before finding his way back to the title, all the more established as a main event guy. Del Rio never got much more than a month with the title. While he performed well enough in his role, he was never really the man while he held the top title.

42 42. The Miz

The Miz stands out as one of hardcore fans’ least favored WWE champions, not to mention one of the most unlikely WrestleMania main eventers, and on top of that, an odd pick to have actually won a WrestleMania event (over John Cena, no less).

For all of the questions about Miz’s credibility and whether he had any business as WWE’s top champ, we need to remember, he did get over in 2010 as the United States Champion, Big Show’s tag team partner, and them Mr. Money in the Bank. It was reasonably sound for him to get a spin at the WWE Championship and, to his credit, he held the title for nearly half of a year, successfully defending the title against John Morrison and Jerry Lawler, besides getting the better of Randy Orton and John Cena in more spurious victories.

41 41. Sgt. Slaughter

Sgt. Slaughter played both an American hero and a militaristic heel for WWE in the 1980s, before running afoul of Vince McMahon for purportedly asking for more money. Slaughter would make his return to the company—a familiar, credible star—in the early 1990s as the company crafted a new spin on the heel foreigner gimmick. As tensions boiled over leading to the real life Persian Gulf War, Slaughter was recast as an Iraqi sympathizer villain.

With an assist from Randy Savage, Slaughter won the WWE Championship at the 1991 Royal Rumble, besting The Ultimate Warrior. Slaughter would drop the title to Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania VII. In a sense, Slaughter was a transitional champion to get the title from Warrior back to Hogan. Just the same, he did get a few months as champ and a WrestleMania main event out of the angle. Slaughter might rate higher had his angle drawn better, but rumors abound that his championship reign and story with Hogan were a flop that forced WWE to downscale expectations and venue size for that year’s WrestleMania.

40 40. The Iron Sheik

The day after Christmas, 1984, The Iron Sheik defeated long time WWE Champion Bob Backlund for the title. The match is infamous for its finish—Sheik locking in his dreaded camel clutch, Backlund refusing to submit, and Backlund’s manager Arnold Skaaland throwing in the towel to surrender on behalf of his charge.

Sheik would go on to reign for about a month, defending against Backlund in return matches, getting the better of Chief Jay Strongbow and Tito Santana and a handful of other faces in title defenses. In the end, though, for all of his credibility and talent, Sheik amounted to a high profile transitional champion. He’d drop the title to Hulk Hogan, late January 1985, to kick start the original Hulkamania run.

39 39. Ivan Koloff

Ivan Koloff holds the distinction of being the man to end the longest WWE Championship reign in history. Bruno Sammartino was coming up on eight years with the WWE Championship, and there was no reason for fans at the garden to think that he’d trop the title. Out of nowhere, the Russian Bear got the better of the Living Legend, pinning him after a top rope knee drop.

Koloff would only hold the title for three weeks, which undercuts the immensity of the accomplishment a bit, as he turned out to be more of a transitional champion than anything, getting the belt to hero Pedro Morales who would hold it for nearly three years. Just the same, Koloff was the real deal as a main eventer who would stay relevant, challenging Morales, and the next great face champion, Bob Backlund, too.

38 38. Rob Van Dam

Rob Van Dam was a quintessential example of a guy who came into WWE white hot based on his work elsewhere, and saw his electricity dissipate by degrees over the years to follow when WWE failed to pull the trigger on a big push. Then, in 2006, it happened.

In a perfect storm of fans turning on John Cena, and WWE relaunching its own version of ECW, Van Dam got a shot as both world champion and the new face of the new brand (capitalizing on all of his old potential from the old brand). RVD would defeat Cena for the WWE (and relaunched ECW) Championship in front of a raucous pro-ECW crowd at One Night Stand 2006.

RVD’s run would get short when he got busted for marijuana possession in real life, which led to his down fall on stage. After a little under a month holding both titles, he lost them both in close succession and would never regain a world title in WWE.

37 37. Sycho Sid

From late 1996 to early 1997, Sycho Sid would get two WWE Championship reigns which added up to a little over three months. While Sid did fit in as a world champion—his look and power made him a main event draw for all of the 1990s—neither of these reigns were really about establishing Sid as the best in the business. The first go-round was more about giving Shawn Michaels a redemption story. Sid beat him for the title, then dropped it back in front of HBK’s hometown crowd in a stadium show for Royal Rumble 1997. The latter time was more of a temporary fix after Michaels unexpectedly went home, and WWE shuffled the deck going into WrestleMania season. Sid wound up with a second reign and a second WrestleMania main event, for which he dropped the championship to The Undertaker.

Sid doesn’t have any particularly great wrestling matches to his name, but there may have never been a wrestler with a better look for the business, and he seems well in place on a list of WWE champions as a character.

36 36. Jeff Hardy

In 2008, Jeff Hardy offered up an unlikely feel good story for WWE. After spending much of the year knocking on the door of the main event and thrust into a handful of title shot scenarios only to get beat back again and again, he finally made good on his promise. The popular, eccentric star rolled up Triple H in a Triple Threat match at Armageddon 2008 to finally capture his first world championship.

Hardy fans hoped he’d get to carry the title into WrestleMania, but it wasn’t meant to be. Hardy would end up dropping the championship to Edge at the following month’s Royal Rumble. Though he’d go on to some better successes in the World Heavyweight Championship picture, Hardy’s day in the son with this title was pretty limited, despite putting on great performances in that period.

35 35. Big Show

The Big Show is an iconic and long term WWE star. He’s closing in on two decades with WWE, and it’s hard to believe that he was only WWE Champion for just shy of a cumulative three month period (though, to be fair, he did have World Heavyweight and ECW Championship reigns to buffer that record).

Show first struck gold at Survivor Series 1999. As a kayfabe last minute replacement for Steve Austin, he defeated The Rock and Triple H in a Triple Threat Match to win the title. Show was only sort of treated as the top guy, defending the title mostly against mid-carder The Big Boss Man before dropping it back to Triple H on an episode of Raw two months later. Show would get another month with the belt in 2002 after Paul Heyman turned on Brock Lesnar to help the big man steal the strap.

In a sense, Show’s limited success with the WWE Championship is emblematic of his WWE legacy. He was always credible enough to be a threat, but never really the guy in WWE’s booking.

34 34. Batista

Make no mistake about it, Batista is very much the kind of star who did much better with the World Heavyweight Championship than the WWE Championship, and ends up on the short end of this ranking for that. Nonetheless, Batista was a two-time WWE Champion and worthy of some recognition.

The Animal won the title for the first time when he defeated Randy Orton at Extreme Rules 2009. Unfortunately, he got injured in the process and had to relinquish the title two nights later, amounting little more than an asterisk of a reign. He’d get his hands on the title again in 2010, winning it under far less auspicious circumstances—Vince McMahon kayfabe gifted him a title shot against an already exhausted John Cena. The storyline mostly served to position Batista as champ and as an obstacle for Cena to come at WrestleMania XXVI. For as predictable as that story may have been, Batista nonetheless played the part of physical monster, combined with arrogant douche character nicely to put over Cena after a little over a month with the strap.

33 33. Dean Ambrose

The Shield split up in 2014. While there was a time when Dean Ambrose was viewed as the top star of the group, by 2016, he was the lone member of the crew not to win a world title, nor fully establish himself as a consistent main eventer.

All of that changed at Money in the Bank 2016. Seth Rollins made his return to the ring and defeated Roman Reigns for the WWE Championship. Seconds later, however, Ambrose cashed in the Money in the Bank briefcase he’d won earlier in the night to serve up some poetic justice by stealing the title from Rollins. Ambrose would go on to successfully defend the title against not only Rollins in a rematch, but Reigns, too, in a Shield alumni triple threat match. The reign would extend into the fall, after Ambrose beat back Dolph Ziggler, too, at SummerSlam and got solidified as the face of SmackDown after the new brand split took offense. Unfortunately for Ambrose, he’d get eclipsed by another ascendant star, AJ Styles, whose incredible ring acumen had won over both management and the fans. Styles took the title off Ambrose at three-month mark.

32 32. Sheamus

Sheamus came out of nowhere as a WWE Champion. After a successful run on WWE ECW, he debuted on Raw and promptly found himself challenging John Cena for the WWE Championship. All signs pointed to Sheamus losing their match at the TLC PPV. It was a filler show before WWE hit the road to WrestleMania and Sheamus wasn’t yet all that established. He’d fill a spot as a fresh world title contender, get a whirl with a top talent, and perhaps get a world title reign down the road after he was better established.

To the surprise of most, Sheamus defeated Cena in a Tables Match—a pretty shrewd twist of booking that got him a title win without really hurting Cena because he’d neither been pinned nor forced to submit. Sheamus would get a couple months with the title in a respectable enough reign, before cycling out of the world title picture in time for ‘Mania. He’d win the title back later in the year, though the reign was largely overshadowed by the concurrent Nexus angle. Sheamus would go on to greater success with the World Heavyweight Championship in the years to follow, though he would have one more WWE Championship run to date, after he cashed in Money in the Bank at Survivor Series 2015 on Roman Reigns. This reign largely felt like a place holder until Reigns was over enough to get the title back—sure enough, Sheamus would only keep it for about a month.

31 31. JBL

Bradshaw was a big mid-carder best known for his work alongside Ron Simmons as the accolades. Then, all but over night, a move to the Smackdown brand led to the complete reinvention of his career. Suddenly Bradshaw was a New York millionaire cowboy who pontificated about his immigrant phobia. He was immediately established as a rival for Eddie Guerrero, and a challenger for Guerrero’s WWE Championship.

JBL as he was newly known was a classic right place right time champion who benefited from a new gimmick and a roster relatively thin of top heel charactersto quite suddenly get vaulted into the main event picture. Moreover, Guerrero purportedly wanted the title off of him, feeling too much pressure, thus setting up JBL for a title run he may or may not have otherwise been afforded.

JBL clicked at just the right time, in particular upping his game on the mic to become a character worthy of a main event push. He’d spend the better part of a year reigning over Smackdown, fending off Big Show, The Undertaker, Kurt Angle, and others before he finally succumbed the challenge of a young guy who’d never yet tasted world championship gold—John Cena.