Christian joined WWE in 2009 as a shock debut on ECW. The former Tag Team Champion had been a huge star in TNA outside of the WWE after leaving the company in 2005 and returned to huge fanfare, despite being on the third brand.
He helped elevate the brand with some of his best ever work. He held the ECW Championship twice, beating Jack Swagger and Tommy Dreamer to win the titles. He held the belt until the final episode of ECW, almost becoming the last ECW Champion ever. Sadly, Christian lost the ECW Championship in controversial circumstances to somebody who had no right being a world champion in WWE.
Christian Was Almost The Last ECW Champion
Christian was the ECW Champion for nearly 9 months and was the top wrestler on the WWE’s third brand. He was a big star coming in from TNA and WWE had kept him on ECW to help build up that show due to their dearth of stars compared to Raw and Smackdown.
In reward for his hard work on the lesser show, WWE had Christian hold the championship until the final episode of ECW. He was a huge fan favourite and fans wanted nothing more than to see him hold onto the title for the last show and leave as the final ECW Champion.
However, Christian was not the last ECW Champion. He dropped the title to Ezekiel Jackson on the 16 February 2010 episode of ECW, the last episode of the failed TV show reboot in history
After interference from William Regal, Jackson hit a Rock Bottom onto Christian through a table. This match was an extreme rules match, paying tribute to the extreme past of the much loved ECW brand of days gone by. He pinned Christian to become the new ECW Champion just minutes before the title belt was dissolved for good.
Why Wasn’t Christian The Last ECW Champion?
According to a report by Bleacher Report, Christian wasn’t the last ECW because Ezekiel Jackson was chosen by Vince McMahon to be the last ECW Champion. Jackson was made the last ECW Champion instead of Christian because McMahon thought he needed momentum going into his move to Smackdown after ECW folded and was replaced by NXT.
Ezekiel Jackson defeated Christian to win the ECW title for the first time, on the final episode of ECW. The program was cancelled after the final episode and replaced by the NXT Game show the following week. As soon as the show went off the air, the ECW Championship became defunct and Jackson was stripped of the title.
This made him the shortest reigning ECW Champion of all time. Ezekiel Jackson’s ECW Championship reign lasted only 2 minutes and 59 seconds, from the bell ringing to end his match with Christian to the screen fading to black to end a mixed run of ECW.
Christian soon moved to Smackdown where he would become a two-time World Heavyweight Champion, but ultimately became somebody who should have had more than he got. He also was forced to retire in 2014 due to injury but returned to wrestling years later for one of the best Royal Rumble returns of all time.
What happened to Ezekiel Jackson was much more anticlimactic and less impressive, ending in him retiring from the business altogether just a few years later.