bruno sammartino is the longest reigning wwe world champion.
bruno sammartino is the longest reigning wwe world champion.
who is the longest reigning wwe world champion?
bruno sammartino
the wwe championship was the first world championship introduced into the promotion in 1963. the inaugural champion was buddy rogers, and there have been 51 different official champions overall and 11 vacancies. the longest reigning champion is bruno sammartino, who held the title from may 17, 1963 to january 18, 1971, for a total of 2,803 days (7 years, 8 months, and 1 day); sammartino also holds the record for longest combined reign at 4,040 days. andré the giant is the shortest reigning champion, officially holding the title for 1 minute, 48 seconds. the youngest champion is brock lesnar, who won the title at the age of 25, while the oldest champion is vince mcmahon, who won it at the age of 54. john cena holds the record for most reigns with 13.
wwe championship
immediately following summerslam 2011, the brand extension officially ended, meaning that both the wwe champion and the world heavyweight champion could appear on both "raw" and "smackdown". in november 2013, then world heavyweight champion john cena made a challenge to then wwe champion randy orton to determine an undisputed world champion; the match would take place at the pay-per-view the following month. randy orton defeated john cena in a tlc match and unified the titles. subsequently, the world heavyweight championship was retired and the wwe championship was renamed the wwe world heavyweight championship and retained its lineage. like the wwe undisputed championship, the wwe world heavyweight championship was represented by the belts of its two predecessors until a singular belt design was commissioned in august 2014. in june 2016, the championship was reverted to being called the wwe championship before wwe reintroduced the brand extension the following month. the wwe champion was drafted to smackdown and it was renamed the wwe world championship though reverted to wwe championship in december 2016. in response, raw created their own world championship, the wwe universal championship. with this, wwe no longer has an undisputed world champion as there are two world championships in the promotion again.
undisputed championship