Ring of Honor World Champion Jay Lethal hit a major milestone on Monday as he broke the record for most combined days with the title at 646 days.
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Lethal initially won the championship at Best in the World in 2015 in a “Winner Take All” match with Jay Briscoe, and went on to hold it for 427 days before finally dropping it to Bullet Club’s Adam Cole at Death Before Dishonor XIV in August 2016. His latest run began at a television taping back in June where he defeated then-champion Dalton Castle, Cody Rhodes and Matt Taven in a four-way match to reclaim the gold.
HUGE CONGRATS to #ROH World Champion @TheLethalJay for #BREAKING the record for most combined days as champion!!
Send #TheChamp a congrats with: #Lethal646
Learn more about The Franchise’s legendary record: //t.co/DDGt6Fnzwa pic.twitter.com/c0gQW4RXiJ
— ROH Wrestling (@ringofhonor) February 4, 2019
The previous record of 645 days was set by Samoa Joe, who in his only reign held it from March 2003 to December 2004. He can break yet another record if he successfully defends the title one more time as he, Nigel McGuinness and Bryan Danielson (WWE’s Daniel Bryan) are currently in a three-way tie for most combined defenses at 38.
Lethal is one of just four men in Ring of Honor history to hold the ROH World Championship more than once, joining Cole (who holds the record with three reigns), Briscoe and Austin Aries. Other notable former champions include Rhodes, Kevin Steen (Kevin Owens), Christopher Daniels, Roderick Strong, Kyle O’Reilly and CM Punk.
In an exclusive interview with Comicbook.com back in September, Lethal discussed the pressures of being world champion a second time.
“I think the first time you win the championship, especially in professional wrestling, you’ve got to be performing at a higher level or high enough to get people to notice and go, ‘Hey, this guy deserves to be the World Champion,’” Lethal said. “The second time is always much harder than that. The second time. it’s more of the conversation of, ‘What this guy did when he was the World Champion before was so good, let’s try it again,’ so it’s almost a pat on the back to say the first time was so good, we had to go with it again.”
Lethal’s opponent for ROH’s next pay-per-view, the ROH 17th Anniversary show, had yet to be determined. But he did tell Comicbook that if given the choice, he’d like to face Kenny Omega at the upcoming G1 Supercard event at Madison Square Garden on April 6.
Photo: RING OF HONOR-Bruno Silveria
