Roman Reigns made history once again on Sunday night at WrestleMania 38, defeating Brock Lesnar to unify the WWE and Universal Championships. “The Tribal Chief” already has the longest single reign as Universal Champion in company history, currently at 582 days. But he’s just over a month away from making history again, as he needs to hold SmackDown’s top championship for another 42 days (starting Monday) in order to become the longest-reigning overall Universal Champion of all time. Lesnar still holds the record for most cumulative days with the gold at 688 days, though he did his across three reigns compared to Roman’s two.
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Reigns first debuted his “Tribal Chief” persona at the 2020 SummerSlam pay-per-view, attacking both “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman after the show’s main event. He then won the championship one week later at the Payback pay-per-view and has not suffered a pinfall or submission loss since.
En route to his record-breaking title reign, Reigns has successfully defended his title against Jey Uso, Strowman, Kevin Owens, Daniel Bryan, Edge, Cesaro, Rey Mysterio, John Cena, Finn Balor, Lesnar, Sami Zayn, Seth Rollins and Goldberg. It’s unclear if he’ll defend the two titles separately, as one championship with two belts or debut a brand-new belt as Unified Universal Champion.
However, Reigns revealed in a recent interview with ESPN that he was nearly on the verge of leaving the company during his 2020 hiatus had he not been allowed to bring his new persona to WWE programming “mostly unscripted.” He explained, “I just kept going back to ‘power,’ I just want to be viewed as the most powerful superstar of all time, when it comes to WWE and sports entertainment. I just really wanted to convey this portrait of strength. Almost like a Mafia-style power. Not only is it respect, but they fear me.” That’s why authenticity was invaluable. I just knew if I’m gonna make this what it needs to be, I have to be able to connect to it. And nobody can really write that for me. I have a writer and they do put stuff on paper. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I want to use it and/or even want to look at it. So, it just depends. A lot of times I will read it, and if I’m not into it, then I’m just not into it. And I’ve gotta make it mine. “
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