WWE celebrated the longest-reigning WWE Champions with a top ten highlight video released Wednesday on YouTube. The video honors champions who have held WWE’s most prestigious prize for the most total days.
Legends from the 1960s through the 1980s dominate the top of the list, while the bottom half features several modern stars with considerably shorter reigns.
- Bruno Sammartino: 4,040 days, 2x champion
- Hulk Hogan: 2,185 days, 6x champion
- Bob Backlund: 2,138 days, 2x champion
- John Cena: 1,360 days, 14x champion
- Pedro Morales: 1,027 days, 1x champion
- Roman Reigns: 855 days, 4x champion
- Brock Lesnar: 828 days, 7x champion
- Randy Orton: 685 days, 10x champion
- Bret Hart: 654 days, 5x champion
- Cody Rhodes: 620+ days and counting, 3x champion
Current champion Cody Rhodes edged out his boss, mentor, and nine-time WWE title holder, Triple H, by a couple of weeks to take tenth place.
A three-time champion, Rhodes held the title for 378 days in his first reign, becoming the tenth man in history to hold the WWE title for a full calendar year.
Notably, Rhodes will climb to number eight if his current reign lasts through SummerSlam.
The list doesn’t recognize WWE’s various secondary world championships introduced following its 2001 acquisition of WCW and subsequent brand split between Raw and SmackDown in 2002.
This is why Roman Reigns ranks sixth despite his 1,316-day Universal Championship reign. If WWE recognized the longest-reigning world champions in its history, Reigns’ combined reigns as WWE, Universal, and now World Heavyweight Champion would surpass 2,200 days, making him its second-longest-reigning world champion of all time.
That still puts him far behind the all-time leader, Bruno Sammartino, and his whopping 4,040 days at the top of WWE.
After the Capitol Wrestling Corporation left the NWA and became the WWWF, Sammartino defeated Buddy Rogers, becoming the second man to hold what would become the WWE Championship.
Sammartino’s first title reign lasted from 1963 to 1971, totaling 2,803 days. His second reign, which began two years after his run ended, lasted 1,237 days.
At that time, WWE was a regional promotion, with champions like Bruno and Pedro Morales appealing to its Italian and Hispanic communities in the Northeast. After Vince McMahon purchased the company from his father in 1982, WWE began a national expansion that led to it becoming a global brand.
As WWE evolved from a territory into a national staple on TV, pay-per-view, and ultimately streaming, frequent title changes and shorter reigns became more common.
With shorter title reigns likely to remain the norm, Sammartino’s record seems untouchable. While that’s a product of a bygone era, it’s a fitting tribute to a man who helped build WWE’s foundation as its top star for more than two decades.
