It is a damn shame that the Attitude Era consisted of rapid title changes to the
point that it is difficult to isolate individual reigns as being great. Like,
obviously Steve Austin was a great WWE Champion, but his best reign on top is interrupted by
one day of Kane! So when you wonder to yourself where the likes of Steve Austin and The Rock are,
that is where. Trapped in an endless loop of hot potatoing the belt around. That isn’t to
say that all of the best WWE Championship reigns in history have to be long, I personally love a
short and quality reign, but a lengthy body of work sure does help when the performances the
champions are having are as good as the ones on this list. Next week we will go over the worst
go arounds with the WWE cummerbund, but let’s start with some positivity first. I’m Tempest
hailing from partsFUNknown and these are the 10 best WWE Championship Reigns of all time.
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Honourable Mention: Drew McIntyre
All around me are robotic faces, empty places, yeah Drew McIntyre’s moment couldn’t have come
at a worse time, finally being crowned WWE Champion with not one single fan cheering
for him in the building because of the worst stretch of time in many of our lifetimes. It
is always going to be impossible to give anything positive that happened during
this time the flowers that they deserve because that would involve watching any
of it again and I simply won’t but the biggest of props must be given to Drew
McIntyre for having the hardest job to do of any WWE Champion there has ever been.
10. Randy Savage
Had Randy Savage not had to play second fiddle to Hulk Hogan during his year-long title reign this
would have placed even higher on this list. Savage is unquestionably one of the greatest
performers in the history of wrestling and is one half of maybe the greatest WrestleMania
build WWE ever did with the Mega Powers uniting and eventually exploding. To be fair, that is the
bulk of this year-long reign. This wasn’t the era in which champions were defending these titles on
pay per views and as such all of Savage’s best title defences came on smaller shows, but what
set Savage apart as a champion was this storyline of jealousy and mistrust and if you know anything
about Randy Savage in real life you know that that role was cast to perfection. Considering Savage
was the first WWE Champion not named Hulk Hogan of the WrestleMania era, he was a huge part of a lot
of people’s fandom and is regarded incredibly highly because of it. Hogan absolutely would
not stay out of the fucking way, but such is the case with anything involving Hulk Hogan really.
9. AJ Styles
A perfect example of quality over quantity is the case of two-time WWE Champion AJ Styles.
Styles is another champion who can boast having a full go around the sun with the world’s most
impractical belt strap, but his year-long reign isn’t the subject of this entry. That reign was
not treated with a great amount of respect, as he engaged in a dick-kicking contest with
Shinsuke Nakamura and a feud with Samoa Joe that had a few screwy finishes too many,
all of which took place away from the main event of any WWE pay per view. His 2016 reign was the
opposite. Just under 5 months of being the best wrestler in the world with the belt to prove it.
This is when Styles was at his best in WWE, always the highlight of the show, the focal point of the
show with three rivalries playing out at the same time between he and Dean Ambrose, James Ellsworth,
and John Cena respectively. Deadly serious and extremely comedic all at once. AJ Styles,
WWE Champion, even all this time later that doesn’t get any less weird to say.
8. Daniel Bryan
What’s the asshole version of Captain Planet? Cause if you can’t give me a better answer in
five seconds that distinction will forever go to Eco-Warrior Daniel Bryan. It is and
will always be mad to me that Daniel Bryan, miraculously coming out of an early retirement,
had to turn heel in order to be booked well but once he was my god. Finally able to have a long
run as WWE Champion not cut short by shenanigans or injury, Bryan was a perfect heel champion,
presenting himself as what WWE so rarely does with their heels, being an incredibly talented wrestler
but also a prick. With incredible title defences against AJ Styles at TLC, all the people Samoa
Joe ran down in that one promo everyone shares incessantly on Twitter at Elimination Chamber, and
Ali and Kevin Owens at Fastlane, Bryan did some of the best character work of his career, blaming
all of us for destroying the planet like the vile heathens we are. As always,
the best kind of heels are the ones that are justified in their heeldom but are being dicks
about it. But while it started as Bryan in a cardigan preaching about global warming,
it became Bryan being a hypocrite trying to keep Kofi Kingston beneath him with the same
criticisms WWE had levied against him years earlier before dropping the title in the best
match of WrestleMania 35. The Yes Movement may have been more iconic but in terms of a run being
done on purpose, this might be the best of Bryan’s WWE career and definitely his best title reign.
7. CM Punk
Man I wish I could put this reign higher. 434 days as WWE Champion was an inconceivable thought when
CM Punk won the title at Survivor Series 2011 considering since the start of May that year it
had been the eighth time the WWE title had changed hands. Ninth if you consider the unification at
SummerSlam! Yet Punk reigned for well over a year. He had great matches with Chris Jericho and Daniel
Bryan throughout 2012 but the problem with this reign was always pretty simple. CM Punk was the
WWE Champion, but he wasn’t the top guy. He wasn’t going to be anywhere near the main event of a pay
per view unless he was facing John Cena or John Cena wasn’t on the show. Punk vs. Bryan naaaah
let’s close with John Cena vs. John Laurinaitis. Fuckheads. That is what keeps it from ranking
higher, but that’s negative, what gets this reign onto this list in the first place? Well,
it’s the sheer amount of stellar performances this incredibly frustrated man gave over these
434 days. The box with god promo against The Rock, that Over The Limit match with Daniel Bryan,
serving as the catalyst for The Shield’s introduction, all of the work he did
alongside Paul Heyman, that time he said The Miz sucks on a lie detector. Truly iconic.
6. Bret Hart
When times were grim in the mid 90s, who did Vince McMahon turn to? When all the big,
tall and wide stars of the WWF missed the mark, who did Vince McMahon turn to? Bret Sergeant Hart.
Bret’s first reign as WWF Champion was good, having good matches at every turn, but he was
mostly tasked with taking on upper midcard talent due to the incredible lack of top stars in the WWF
at the time with most leaving during the steroid trials. In 1994, however, Bret surpassed his own
WWF Championship reign, delivering his best by continuing his legendary rivalry with his brother
Owen. Bret carried the WWF through one of its most difficult eras ever simply by being undeniable. He
was the best wrestler in the company and at the time making an argument on the contrary was near
impossible. His SummerSlam cagematch with Owen might be a bit dated by today’s standards but
at the time was known as probably the best cage match ever. His iconic Raw match with the 1-2-3
Kid was during this reign, you know the one with the head tilt, it's great. Bret might not have
had the catalog of classic matches during his title reign like other champions on this list,
but what he was able to do with what he had to work with puts this reign among the greats.
5. Triple H
For everything that all of your favourite wrestling YouTubers have to say about Triple H,
all of it warranted, no one can ever take anything away from Triple H’s 2000. Well,
besides WrestleMania. No one can ever be perfect I suppose. Steph’s wedding crasher held world titles
in WWE 14 times and you will struggle to find very many of those reigns that are remembered fondly.
However. That can not be said about Triple H’s WWE Championship reign to start the year 2000. This
was the reign that really made this man a star. The Triple H/Cactus Jack rivalry started the year
and held on to the title of best rivalry of the year. The Street Fight, the Hell in a Cell match,
the Chris Jericho Dusty finish, and capping it all off with maybe the peak moment of the
Attitude Era at Backlash? 2000 is maybe the best year WWE has ever had and a big part of that comes
from Triple H being the premier antagonist of the business with the work to back it up.
4. John Cena
There are a number of folks on the top half of this list that the fans who reside on the internet
weren’t big fans of during their heyday. Like John Felix Anthony Cena Jr. from the time he won the
WWE Championship at WrestleMania 21, John Cena spend 26 of the next 30 months as WWE Champion.
That is fucking insane. Cena caught a lot of flack as a wrestler for not being particularly smooth in
the ring during those years and his character was a bit of an asshole but that couldn’t stop
him during his yearlong reign from Unforgiven 2006 until No Mercy 2007 from becoming one of the
greatest WWE Champions of all time. This title reign contained Cena’s bonkers fun feud with
Umaga, his WrestleMania match and hourlong Raw rematch with Shawn Michaels, one of the best
four-ways ever with Shawn, Edge and Randy Orton, an actually good pay per view match
with Bobby Lashley, one of the only good singles matches Cena ever had with Orton at SummerSlam,
partially due to the fans not being bored out of their skulls by having to watch it 20 more times,
it is just a solid ass run from a guy you would not expect to be able to diversify his title
matches for an entire year but Cena did it. This reign always felt to me like the time the
torch was really passed to Cena, particularly at WrestleMania 23, and it is a shame this reign only
ended with an injury and not with Cena having a chance to climb even higher up this list.
3. Roman Reigns
Well I’ll be damned. The current WWE Championship reign places awfully high on
this list now doesn’t it. The focus of Roman’s Reign has been on the Universal Championship
as that is the title he had been holding for 1000 days plus plus plus, but as I say this,
Roman Reigns has been WWE Champion for over 440 days, the longest reign since a certain someone
helped launch WrestleMania. And when you consider that the bulk of what people have loved the most
about The Bloodline storyline with all the Sami Zayn business and The Usos’ inner turmoil came
since Roman won the belt at WrestleMania 38, I don’t think it is outrageous at all to consider
the reign Roman is having right now one of the very best WWE title reigns there has ever been.
His matches keep being top tier and this is by far the most invested people have been in
a storyline involving a WWE Champion in fucking years. As in the actual reign of a champion,
everyone got up for Kofi and Bryan winning their titles at WrestleMania,
but the epic story of the bloodline that everyone and their manager Chuck from Subway have been
raving about came with Roman as WWE Champion. Good enough for a top three finish I reckon.
2. Hulk Hogan
Before I begin, I must preface this entry by saying Fuck Hulk Hogan, all my homies hate Hulk
Hogan. It is a sad day for me whenever I have to praise Hulk Hogan for anything but there
really isn’t any way Hogan isn’t sitting near the top of this mountain. I’m not going to say
that Hogan’s cartoon 80s WWF style of wrestling is for me or many of you watching this list,
but this is an entry that is not reliant on match quality whatsoever. Hogan WAS wrestling in the
minds of a generation and his first reign as WWF Champion lasted over four years. He WAS the face
of WrestleMania and an invaluable piece of the puzzle that was the show’s formation. Hogan is
still considered the most successful WWE superstar of all time, granted a good portion of that
comes from Hogan leaving the spotlight about as gracefully as Ned Flanders being dragged through a
psych ward, but those who break records involving longevity rarely let go of that success willingly.
Hogan’s 1474 day reign as WWE Champion took fans through the first three WrestleManias including
Mania 3 and his match with Andre The Giant, still one of the most financially successful matches
in WWE history. But hey, if longevity is what you’re looking for, do I have a champion for you.
1. Bruno Sammartino
During my time in University I saw the same NBA Final every single year. The Cleveland Cavaliers
vs. The Golden State Warriors four years in a fucking row. And I thought that was madness. Now
imagine all the little New York wrestling fans who made it all the way through Middle School
and high school with only ONE WWWF Champion. 2803 days. Nearly 8 years of setting truly untouchable
records with the title and with Madison Square Garden for Bruno Sammartino. Loads of matches have
brought fans into a frenzy throughout wrestling history. There have only been a few matches that
have silenced the crowd like Bruno Sammartino losing the title to Ivan Koloff in 1971. Oh to be
able to experience that moment. With the MSG crowd shocked into complete silence having witnessed the
unthinkable outcome of Bruno losing. That was a testament to the love people had for Bruno and
the success that he had as champion and if you needed more proof you have eight years worth of
evidence that Bruno Sammartino’s first reign was the very best WWE Championship reign of all time.