It’s been just over a week since Brock Lesnar pinned Big E in the main event of the Day 1 pay-per-view, earning his ninth world championship under the WWE banner. Lesnar already holds the record for longest single reign and most combined days as WWE Universal Champion (albeit Roman Reigns seems to be dead set on smashing both of those records), but he’ll need to hold the WWE title for at least another 268 days in order to knock off Pedro Morales and join the top five list of most cumulative days with WWE’s top prize (currently occupied by Bruno Sammartino, Hulk Hogan, Bob Backlund, John Cena and Morales).
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But there is one record “The Beast” did manage to break with his latest title win as he now holds the honor of the longest gap of time between two world championship reigns. He first won the WWE Undisputed Championship from The Rock at the 2002 SummerSlam pay-per-view and his latest title reign began 7,069 days later (19 years, four months, seven days). That dwarfs the previous record for the longest gap between world title reigns set by Hulk Hogan. “The Hulkster’s” first reign began on Jan. 23, 1984 and the last of his six reigns as champion began on April 21, 2002 — 6,663 days (18 years, two months, 29 days) later.
Lesnar appeared on this week’s Friday Night SmackDown and attempted to challenge Reigns to a Champion vs. Champion match at WrestleMania 38 this coming April in Dallas. Reigns scoffed at the idea, and now both men have to defend their respective titles later this month at the Royal Rumble. Lesnar will take on Bobby Lashley in a long-awaited dream match, while Seth Rollins (having somehow hopped over from Raw) will take on his former Shield brother.
Reigns and Lesnar have main evented WrestleMania twice before, both of which received mixed reactions, but Paul Heyman recently argued in an interview with Ariel Helwani that it’s a better draw than the Reigns vs. The Rock dream match fans have been campaigning for.
“Number one, I would want to spend a lot more time on that storyline instead of rushing it (Reigns vs. Rock),” Heyman said. “Five months. For something that enormous, I would want more time in it. Number two, I think Dwayne’s schedule for next year is in place and he’s not available. Even if he was, I don’t think it would be bigger box office at the moment, if you look at the trajectory right now, isn’t it Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns?”
