CM Punk famously said, “I’ve grabbed so many of Vincent K. McMahon’s imaginary brass rings, that it’s finally dawned on me that they’re just that, they're completely imaginary.” Sadly, there’s a lot of truth to this statement. Many wrestlers have gotten themselves over with the fans, and yet have absolutely nothing to show for it. The hard truth is that Vince McMahon and WWE management control who gets pushed, not the fans and certainly not the wrestlers. That's become clear with some of the title wins that have gone to, arguably, undeserving superstars. However, it’s not all bad news. Vince and WWE officials do appreciate loyalty and respect their wrestlers’ dedication and contributions to the WWE and, in some cases, to the wrestling world. Because of this appreciation for certain wrestlers, WWE has acknowledged these wrestlers with a championship reign.

While these reigns are done out of pity and mostly just symbolic, WWE can never take these title wins away from the wrestlers they grant them to. These wrestlers have their names in the history books forever, even if no big push came from these title wins. Still, it’s pretty obvious to most fans that these title wins were mostly meaningless due to the sloppy booking afterwards or the pathetic reigns the wrestlers were given after their “big win.” Fans can tell these title wins were essentially an employee appreciation gift, with some of these token championships more obvious than others. In this article, we look at 15 of these wrestlers Vince gave a championship win to purely out of pity.

15 Goldberg

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During the latter days of WCW, Goldberg remained the face of the company, but after WWE bought the company out Goldberg wasn’t asking, “Who’s next?” but “What’s next?". WWE opted not to buy out Goldberg’s ludicrous contract which is why fans did not see him during the “Invasion Angle,” and Goldberg went to wrestle in Japan to moderate success. A year later, Goldberg would sign a yearlong contract to WWE, a contract that earned Goldberg a World Heavyweight Title reign, but this is not the pity championship Vince agreed to give “Da Man.” That would come much later.

Goldberg’s World Heavyweight Title victory was a guarantee in his contract, so Vince had no choice but to give the former face of WCW a title win. WWE was content to bury most of the former WCW stars, but Goldberg was mostly immune to this because of his contract. However, Goldberg was miserable in WWE, and his match at WrestleMania XX against Brock Lesnar seemingly ended his wrestling career on a sour note. However, Goldberg would return to WWE in 2016 with a much better mindset. Here, Goldberg would earn an upset win over Brock Lesnar in a rematch and later win a Universal Title after squashing Kevin Owens. Perhaps this was Vince’s way of saying “Thank you” for coming back to WWE or apologizing for Goldberg's unhappy exit from the company during his first run. Either way, the title win seemed very unnecessary.

14 Rhyno and Heath Slater

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Almost as shocking as Jinder Mahal’s WWE Championship reign was the out of the blue Tag Team Title win of Rhyno and Heath Slater. Slater was a lifetime jobber in WWE, whose biggest achievements were his association with The Nexus, The Corre, 3MB (a stable of jobbers) and The Social Outcasts (another stable of jobbers). Granted, Heath won the WWE Tag Team Titles with Justin Gabriel while in The Nexus and again with The Corre, but Heath has been the WWE’s punching bag for years for every day superstars and for returning legends. Rhyno hasn’t fared much better. Despite being a big deal in ECW, Rhyno had nothing show for it in WWE. However, with these two slapped together, Heath and Rhyno pulled out a huge Tag Title win during the SmackDown Tag Team Champion tournament, winning them the inaugural tag belts on the blue brand.

Maybe WWE management with thinking about Heath’s family (he’s got kids afterall), or because they heard his huge crowd reactions. More likely it’s because WWE officials felt pity for a superstar who had been jobbing for five years without complaining.

Same for the “Man Beast” Rhyno whose body of work speaks for itself. With Heath and Rhyno back to being jobbers, there’s no question that their huge and shocking title win was a "thank you" for a career of laying down in WWE.

13 Kane

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“The Big Red Machine” has been a veteran for WWE for over two decades, joining the company even before he became The Undertaker’s demented little brother, Kane. “The Devil’s Favorite Demon” has won many championships in WWE, but none was bigger than his WWE Champion win over the face of the Attitude Era, Stone Cold Steve Austin. Of course, Kane would lose the title the next night on Raw, but Kane would win multiple other championships throughout his career, such as the Intercontinental Title, the ECW Title, a WWE Hardcore Championship and just about every Tag Team Title possible in WWE. However, despite Kane’s veteran status, crowd reaction and capability in the ring, Kane never had a dominant push with a World Title during his prime.

WWE failed to pull the trigger on a world title win for Kane during a key moment of his career. His feud with Triple H was especially embarrassing. One could argue that Kane, and the company for that matter, needed Kane to win another World Title to fill the void of star power after The Rock, Austin and Brock Lesnar left the company. Instead, Kane suffered through the horrible “Katie Vick” angle and a poor unmasking angle with no payoff. Which brings us to Kane’s World Heavyweight Title win in 2010, which was clearly a huge thank you (and apology) for Creative ignoring Kane at his peak and putting the veteran through horribly damaging wrestling angles at the peak of his career.

12 Mark Henry

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“The World’s Strongest Man” Mark Henry is a lot like “The Big Red Machine” Kane. Both have been in WWE for decades, both are well-respected in the business, and both have been World Champions. While Henry hasn’t received as many accolades as Kane or the same amount of crowd support throughout the years, Mark Henry has earned himself a spot in the WWE Hall of Fame, endeared himself to millions of fans and built a memorable career in WWE.

Despite his long career and a fixture of the popular “Attitude Era,” many of the available titles in WWE eluded Henry.

However, there is one title (of the three) that really stands out as a pity title win for Henry’s long service in WWE.

Mark Henry would win the now defunct European Title and won an ECW Title in 2008. Unfortunately, the WWE’s version of ECW is largely considered the C-Brand of WWE behind SmackDown and Raw, and this title wasn’t seen in high regard with fans or WWE management. However, Henry’s World Heavyweight Title win in 2011 was held in higher esteem but was clearly pity win for Henry. Mark Henry debuted in 1996, and yet a WWE Championship has always been out of reach for him. Even after Mark’s popular “Sexual Chocolate” gimmick and his more serious “Hall of Pain” gimmick, WWE could never give Henry that WWE Championship win, and Henry had to settle with the token World Heavyweight Title win instead.

11 Bray Wyatt

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Bray Wyatt “followed the buzzards” all the way to WWE after competing in the company’s minor leagues then known as Florida Championship Wrestling. At that time, he found himself on the main roster as the mundane “Husky Harris.” A blessing in disguise saw Husky Harris demoted back to FCW where he found his dark and twisted character, Bray Wyatt. When Wyatt returned to Raw, he brought his “family” with him and terrorized the WWE roster while captivating the WWE audience. Wyatt started to get massively over, but instead of capitalizing on Bray’s popularity, Creative spent years fumbling it.

When Wyatt moved to SmackDown, there was a huge opportunity to push Wyatt to the moon. Wyatt began a bizarre storyline with Randy Orton and ultimately won the coveted WWE Championship at the Elimination Chamber pay per view. To fans, Bray’s title win appeared to be the beginning of a deserved push for Bray. Unfortunately, for everyone, the title win was all for nothing. Orton would win the Royal Rumble earlier that year, face his Wyatt Family leader at WrestleMania, and senselessly win the title from Bray. Despite having the whole world in his hands, Bray’s WWE Title win was clearly out of pity for his immense success of his Bray Wyatt character, as opposed to a desire to push the character. The fact that Bray has never sniffed a singles title since can attest to that.

10 Jillian Hall

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The male superstars aren’t the only ones who have received titles purely out of pity. Jillian Hall is a prime example of a “pat on the back” title win. Jillian Hall debuted on SmackDown after spending years wrestling in OVW and various independent promotions since 1998. Before joining WWE’s SmackDown brand, Jillian Hall was already a very capable wrestler, with years of in-ring work and experience in the business. When she came to the SmackDown brand, WWE enhanced Jillian’s appearance, and finally gave her a taste of mainstream attention. Unfortunately, that came at the cost of some horrible gimmicks.

Jillian debuted on the blue brand as a “fixer” for Melina, Johnny Nitro and Joey Mercury (MNM), and an “image consultant” for JBL, all the while sporting an enormous fake mole on her face. In one of the grossest segments ever, The Boogeyman would “eat” the growth off Jillian’s face, and with the “mole” now gone, Jillian could proceed with her career as a legitimate contender. Or so fans thought.

Creative forced yet another stupid gimmick on her, this time as an off-key singer, who thought she was actually great. Of course, the character was a jokey parody of Britney Spears, and got in the way of Jillian’s greatly underappreciated ring talent. As a clear reward for the garbage gimmicks, Jillian would defeat Mickie James for the Divas Championship on Raw, but to show that this title win was only symbolic, Jillian would lose the title immediately after winning it to Melina, upon the latter's return to Raw.

9 Christian

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Along with Edge, Christian was a major part of the Attitude Era, especially involving the WWE’s Tag Team Division. Edge and Christian, The Hardy Boyz and The Dudley Boyz tore the roof off the arena in their brutally awesome tag team matches for the Tag Team Titles. With Edge, Christian won the Tag Team Titles a total of seven times, and won the title two more times with Lance Storm and Chris Jericho. While Christian’s success largely stems from his work in the Tag Team Division, "Captain Charisma" had a moderately successful career as a singles star, winning the Intercontinental Title four times as well. Unfortunately, Christian didn’t see the same success as a World Champion as his former partner and real-life best friend, Edge.

While Edge is an 11-time World Champion, Christian has nine less world titles to speak of. Despite being red hot run in 2005, the leader of the “Christian Coalition” was denied a significant push to the World Heavyweight Title. Christian was arguably more over than Edge, or even John Cena or Batista at the time, and yet, Christian’s popularity was ignored. Christian eventually declined to renew his contract with WWE and went to TNA.

When Christian returned to WWE, he joined the ECW brand and won the ECW Title, which was basically a consolation prize, but finally won the "Big Gold Belt" in 2011 as a show of appreciation for Christian’s contributions to WWE.

That was clearly the only reason he won it, because Randy Orton would defeat Christian in his very first title defense less than a week later.

8 Goldust

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It’s a bizarre thought that the “Bizarre One” was the most serious title contender during his early, sexually ambiguous, days in WWE. Goldust is another wily veteran of professional wrestling, having won multiple titles in both WWE and WCW. Today, Goldust is mostly a jobber, but he’s shown no sign of age in his matches. Unfortunately, Goldust’s jobber status isn’t a recent trend. Goldust, as a singles competitor, hasn’t been taken seriously for over a decade, and somehow Creative altered his gimmick to something even more outrageous and unbelievable than his original portrayal of the Goldust character.

After some on and off time from WWE, Goldust returned to the Raw Brand in 2003, formed an alliance with Booker T and engaged in a feud with Triple H and Evolution. This resulted in Goldust getting electrocuted, adding an uncontrollable stutter to his character. While this version of Goldust was used mostly as a comedic role in WWE, it did earn Goldust a World Tag Team Title win with Booker T. However, Goldust continued to work on and off with WWE always returning as Goldust for comedic roles and never taken seriously.

For Goldust constantly being put in these silly roles, WWE gave Goldust two Tag Team Title wins (nearly 11 years after his last title win), with his half-brother Cody/Stardust, as recognition for his years of being treated as a mere comedy act for the company.

7 Zack Ryder

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Despite becoming widely popular, wrestling fans didn’t think Zack Ryder would win any WWE Championships aside from his invented Internet Championship. What a shock for his “broskies” when he actually won the Intercontinental Title at WrestleMania! “Woo Woo Woo! You know it!”

Ryder came a long way from being a “Major Brother” with Curt Hawkins before being repackaged. He split with Hawkins, and created a Jersey Shore like character, and the “Long Island Iced Z” gimmick was formed. After continued negligence, Ryder took it upon himself to promote himself, and Ryder garnered a large fanbase. Chants of “We want Ryder” could be heard even during segments involving The Rock.

For getting himself extremely over on his own without any TV time or help from WWE management, Zack Ryder was rewarded with a very deserving United States Title win over Dolph Ziggler. What should have been an Era of Ryder after the title win, turned into a disaster. About a month after winning the U.S. Title, Ryder dropped the belt to Jack Swagger, and Ryder returned to jobbing, making the whole U.S. Title win a hollow one.

About four years later, Ryder would get a pitiful Intercontinental Title win at WrestleMania 32, only to drop the title the next day to The Miz. Ryder is the poster child for grabbing the brass ring only to have it taken away from him for no reason.

6 King Booker

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The sad treatment of former WCW stars plagued WWE, and former WCW World Heavyweight Champion Booker T wasn’t immune to this discrimination. Booker T lost his WCW Championship to Kurt Angle and again to The Rock, and got destroyed in a church, bingo hall and supermarket by Stone Cold Steve Austin. Just when Booker thought his destruction by WWE's top stars was over, Booker T would enter into a feud with Triple H. "Tell me, he didn't just say that."

Booker T is another superstar that was red hot, but for some reason WWE didn’t think he deserved a title reign.

While Triple H was steamrolling the babyfaces of Raw, a huge opportunity arrived to give Booker T a chance to be a megastar. Instead, Triple H berated Booker T’s former company, his former title and Booker T personally, in promos that bordered on racism. Naturally, there was no payoff, and Triple H destroyed Booker T at WrestleMania XIX.

For the absolute trash feud with Triple H, WWE awarded a World Heavyweight Title to the newly dubbed “King Booker” in 2006. While his title reign was decent, it was an apparent apology for the terrible booking of Booker T during his peak years and finally some recognition for his contributions to professional wrestling by WWE.

5 Kelly Kelly

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Bless her heart, but Kelly Kelly just wasn’t the greatest Diva to grace the squared circle. Despite a six-year tenure in the WWE, Kelly was only marginal in the ring and was regulated mostly to jobbing to the more talented women in WWE. Still, Kelly was capable of earning some fluke wins thanks to her ultimate “roll-up of doom” that no one could kick out of. However, no win was a bigger fluke than her Divas Title win in 2011.

After debuting in 2006, Kelly Kelly finally won the big one and defeated Brie Bella in a special “Power to the People” edition of Raw. Kelly would drop the title to Beth Phoenix, but not before retaining against Phoenix in a match prior. Her title reign actually lasted longer than the Divas Title reigns of Mickie James and Natalya, but there’s no question that this Divas Title win was solely based on Kelly’s tenure. Kelly was never great on the mic or in the ring, and her hitting of the ropes was laughably bad. Kelly would depart from WWE a little over a year after her big win, making her Divas Title reign all the more irrelevant.

4 Brian Kendrick

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“The” Brian Kendrick truly is a “man with a plan.” He first joined WWE’s farm system in 2000 and wrestled briefly on and off for the company. Kendrick would re-sign in 2005, form a tag team with Paul London and win the WWE Tag Team Titles. Kendrick and London actually held the record for the longest Tag Team Title reign, a modern era record that wouldn’t be broken until a decade later by The New Day. While Kendrick saw huge success in the Tag Team Division, his singles career never really took off in WWE. After being released in 2009, Kendrick’s career seemed over in WWE, until he tried out for a trainer role in WWE. As luck would have it, NXT was in need of trainers and characters. Kendrick returned to WWE in 2016 as both and even participated in the Cruiserweight Classic.

Despite not winning the tournament, Kendrick’s timing was seemingly perfect, as he got an opportunity in the new Cruiserweight Division of WWE. Kendrick surprisingly defeated the inaugural Cruiserweight Champion, TJ Perkins, but Kendrick’s win seemed more of a reward for his previous work in WWE. His reign lasted only 30 days, losing to Rich Swann, and Kendrick hasn’t tasted a championship since. WWE management loves superstars that are loyal, and Kendrick’s return to help the Cruiserweight Division and train some of the company’s up-and-coming talent likely played a part in Kendrick’s surprising title win.

3 Chavo Guerrero

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He may not have had the career or the popularity of “Uncle Eddie,” but Chavo Guerrero made himself a nice wrestling career in WCW and in WWE. Chavo won the WCW Cruiserweight Title twice and was one of the few wrestlers to come over to WWE after WCW’s purchase. Chavo would join The Alliance during the Invasion Angle and teamed with Eddie Guerrero after the angle had ended. From here, Los Guerreros, as they were known, “lied, cheated and stole” their way to the top of the WWE Tag Team Division, winning the Tag Team Titles twice. However, Chavo never reached Eddie’s height as a singles star, only winning the WWE’s Cruiserweight Title even after Eddie’s untimely death in 2005.

Chavo was totally capable in the ring and had a fairly large fanbase, and yet the major titles escaped him. That is until 2008, when Chavo was drafted to ECW and won the ECW Championship from CM Punk, albeit with the help of Edge.

The ECW Title at this point was mostly a “good job” title and never really led to any push.

Naturally, Chavo’s title win was no different. In fact, management thought so little of Chavo and his title win that the former Kerwin White would drop the title to Kane at WrestleMania 24 in eleven seconds.

2 Rey Mysterio

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Like with most WCW stars, any success in the WWE was done purely out of pity, and Rey Mysterio’s title wins are prime examples. However, the pity of these wins doesn’t come from WWE’s terrible treatment of Rey, but more because of the loss of his good friend, Eddie Guerrero. Both Eddie and Rey had some great rivalries in WCW and in WWE. When Eddie passed, Rey received huge fan support, and WWE believed the time was right for a Rey Mysterio push. Rey would win the Royal Rumble and go on to defeat World Heavyweight Champion Kurt Angle and Randy Orton in a triple threat match to win the title. However, one has to wonder had Eddie not passed if Rey would have ever even won a Royal Rumble, for which Rey held the record for longest time in (before Daniel Bryan lasted 75 minutes in the Greatest Royal Rumble), or had won the title later at WrestleMania 22.

Rey Mysterio may have been very popular back then, but Rey's insta-push after Guerrero’s passing reeks of pity, especially considering how terrible Creative booked him after his win. Rey was destroyed by The Great Khali and Mark Henry and eventually dropped the title to King Booker. Rey would actually earn another World Heavyweight Title reign, but this reign was even worse, losing it to Kane after he cashed in his Money in the Bank contract and defeating Rey in under a minute. Rey’s third pity championship earned him a WWE Championship after winning a tournament for the vacant title, but again Rey’s win was only a symbolic one, seeing how he lost the title again, this time to John Cena a couple of hours later.

1 Tommy Dreamer

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Tommy Dreamer’s character of the loveable loser made him a sympathetic figure to wrestling fans. Dreamer was the “heart and soul” of ECW and one of its original members. Dreamer appeared in major feuds with The Sandman and Raven, but Dreamer may be the only superstar that ever hoped to never win a major title. Of course, his wish didn’t come true, as he was booked to defeat Tazz for the ECW World Heavyweight Title only to lose it to Justin Credible a half an hour later. Dreamer is quoted as saying in the The Rise and Fall of ECW documentary, “I was actually ****ed off. I wanted to go my entire ECW career without winning titles. The only reason I won titles is because people left.”

When WWE bought ECW, Dreamer came over to the company and appeared in the Invasion Angle. During his time in WWE, he won the WWE Hardcore Championship 14 times (which isn’t that many believe it or not), but his knack for losing never lost its charm in WWE either.

Dreamer was mostly a jobber in WWE, even more so than in ECW. That is until WWE graced him with their version of the ECW Championship.

His reign lasted almost two months, but this win was done purely out of pity for Dreamer who had been a jobber for life. However, WWE still recognized his importance to the business and wanted to give him something without actually pushing him towards a title with a history WWE actually cares about.