5 Times when Champions in WWE wrestled non-title PPV matches

#3 Bray Wyatt vs The Miz (WWE TLC 2019)

An easy victory.

This was the most recent case of a Champion in WWE wrestling a one-on-one pay-per-view match without the title being on the line. Bray Wyatt was riding high as the Universal Champion, having defeated Daniel Bryan at Survivor Series. The Miz decided to intervene in this rivalry, making for an intriguing dynamic.

With 'The Fiend' taking Bryan under the ring and ridding him off his hair, Miz was given a piece of Wyatt at TLC as a placeholder opponent. However, it was the Firefly Fun House version of the complex character who would face the A-Lister, with the big blue belt not being up for grabs.

This may have been done to build intrigue for the match and Wyatt's first live appearance as himself on WWE programming in over a year, as there was zero chance that The Miz would win the Universal Championship. Even with the match being non-title, he lost pretty easily.

In fact, this match permanently damaged The Miz as an upper-level babyface. He looked terrible in defeat, urgently requiring a heel turn to recover from this. This would not be Bray Wyatt's last non-title pay-per-view match involving a World Champion, nor was it his first.