Roman Reigns Surpasses CM Punk's WWE Championship Milestone

By Connor Casey

When CM Punk's WWE Championship reign reached 434 days in 2013 it was seen as a massive accomplishment within WWE. At the time, championship reigns lasting longer than a year were incredibly rare and the person to hold the title for more than 365 days since the 80s was John Cena. But WWE has pivoted to longer title reigns in recent years, and you can now count Roman Reigns as the latest champion to surpass Punk's 434-day mark. Reigns has technically been world champion for over a thousand consecutive days since winning the Universal Championship back in 2020, but he didn't unify it with the WWE Championship until WrestleMania 38 in April 2022. As of today, he has officially held the WWE Championship for 435 days, even though it's currently called the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. 

There's actually been some confusion over whether or not the WWE Championship lineage will continue now that it has been unified with the Universal title and Reigns has been delivered one singular championship belt. Sean Ross Sapp cleared up that via a WWE source during a recent Fightful Select report — "A WWE source has claimed to Fightful that technically the Universal and WWE Championship 'histories' are still separate, but said that they believe the WWE Title's history will be continued once Reigns loses the championship, whenever that may be."

Paul Heyman recently spoke with Rick Rubin and went into great detail about Reigns' evolution as WWE's top star. He also explained that Reigns was well aware of the fact that his "Big Dog" persona wasn't fully connecting with fans. 

"...Roman understood the cap of 'The Big Dog' as a personality. Roman understood that the presentation of 'The Big Dog, Roman Reigns,' as much as he could make it his own, was always going to be 'The corporate structure produced this talent, this Superstar, in their vision of the top guy in WWE.' (The audience) could smell it a mile away," Heyman said. "...Roman Reigns always had a vision of something past 'The Big Dog.' But he was still too young."

Related:

"But the perception was, I'll tell you as a fan, I really enjoyed The Shield. And post-Shield, I was not into Roman during 'The Big Dog' era. You could feel this inauthenticity," Rubin said. 

"I don't think Roman Reigns would argue with you. I guarantee you he wouldn't," Heyman responded. 

Trending Now: