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Greatest championship reigns


SmartMark15

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Forgive me if this thread exists elsewhere on the board. Feel free to point me in the right direction.

 

I was hoping to start a discussion on what you might consider some of the greatest individual championship reigns in the history of wrestling. Feel free to use any criteria you see fit (matches, hot angles, drawing power, etc.). You can point it any championship as well: tags, women's, etc.

 

Allow me to start things off by naming some off the top of my head:

 

Bryan Danielson - ROH World Championship '06

John Cena - WWE Championship '07

Mitsuharu Misawa - Triple Crown '92-'94

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Samoa Joe's ROH World Championship run in the mid-2000's is one of my favorite championship runs ever.

 

That came to mind as well. I didn't put it simply because I haven't personally seen much of it. But just in terms of opponents faced and iconic matches (Punk trilogy, vs. Bryan, vs. Briscoe), it's certainly up there.

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Flair's run from 83-87 has to be the winner here, wouldn't it? It wasn't an uninterrupted run but 1 or 2 week swaps in those days were more or less blips in the radar. Had great angles in nearly every territory where he'd make the local hero look like a million bucks and use treachery to sneak away with the title.

 

I mean, I'm not a guy who gets offended if you want to argue Flair isn't the GOAT, but as lesson on how to book a champion he seems like the gold standard IMO.

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Lizmark's run with the National Lightheavyweight belt from 1992-94. Quality TV matches against Jerry Estrada, Satanico, and Parka, with a really good defense at Triplemania I too. I also liked the match in which he won it, although I don't know if that would count as part of his reign or Universo 2000's. Unfortunately the match in which he was finally dethroned was just meaningless gimmicky AAA stuff, which set the tone for how the belt would be treated in the future.

 

Atlantis's NWA Middleweight title run was on the same level, although other than the famous Blue Panther match all of his televised defenses were against the same person, and the title changes at each end weren't for TV. On the house show circuit he supposedly had championship matches with Dandy and Satanico that ran over half an hour, but who knows with that stuff? It's still an impressive list of defenses. There are plenty of reigns that look like that, though, with a whole bunch of matches we'll never get to see. Look at what Hijo del Santo did with the UWA World Lightweight title.

 

I know that Virus's time with the CMLL Super Lightweight title was generally a happy period for current fans.

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Backlund's 78-83 run with the WWF strap (let's ignore the brief Inoki swap like the mags and WWF did for years) had longevity, great matches and drawing power. There is tons of footage available, unlike with Sammartino's epic 7 1/2 year run or 3 1/2 year encore (several MSG bouts during reign #2 but nowhere near the amount of Bob)

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Some British ones:

George Kidd won the World Lightweight title in 1951 and held it for 26 years. Apparently, he had 49 title defenses in that time though none of them were on TV.

 

Mike Marino was the World Mid-Heavyweight champ from 1957 up until his death in 1981 but he dropped the belt a few times including once to Lord Alfred Hayes, or Judo Al Hayes as he was known then.

 

The most prestigious championship in Great Britain was the British Heavyweight title held by Bert Assirati and other greats. A few reigns stand out to me -- Assirati from 1955-58, Billy Joyce from 1960-64, Billy Robinson from '67-70 and Albert Wall from '71-74.

 

Of the reigns we have footage from, Marty Jones' (interrupted) run with the World Mid-Heavyweight title from '82-99 is the most prolific.

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Atlantis's NWA Middleweight title run was on the same level, although other than the famous Blue Panther match all of his televised defenses were against the same person, and the title changes at each end weren't for TV. On the house show circuit he supposedly had championship matches with Dandy and Satanico that ran over half an hour, but who knows with that stuff? It's still an impressive list of defenses. There are plenty of reigns that look like that, though, with a whole bunch of matches we'll never get to see. Look at what Hijo del Santo did with the UWA World Lightweight title.

 

I know that Virus's time with the CMLL Super Lightweight title was generally a happy period for current fans.

 

The idea of a one hour lucha draw intrigues me.

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I'm a huge believer in Hogan's first title run. He proved that overwhelming charisma could overcome underwhelming ring work and make a shitload of money.

 

Harley Race's five reigns as NWA World Champion from February of 77 until June of 81 in which he dropped the title for a total of 21 days.

 

Savage's I-C title reign in 1986-87; HTM's from '87-'88.

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Kenta Kobashi's 2 year GHC title reign. Kobashi on 2 terrible knees that would've ended anyone else's career and kept him sidelined almost 2 plus years combined previous to this reign.

 

 

He embarked on a title reign that kept the Japanese wrestling business going and made the GHC title the most prestigious title in Japan and arguably the world all the while under an onslaught from the booming popularity of PRIDE and K1.

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These are ones that have struck me as significant or legendary but I can't give the years or days...

 

Lou Thesz, Dory Funk, Jr. - NWA World Champion

 

Verne Gagne, Nick Bockwinkel -AWA

 

Samoa Joe, Bryan Danielson, Nigel McGuiness - ROH World Champion

 

And Kobashi's 2003-2005 GHC run which created the mold for all puro that would follow. Enjoyed this the Tokyo Dome chopfest with Sasaki ten years ago but, I hate that we're still feeling the after effects...

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Danielson, McGuinness, Joe & Trevor would be my top-4 favorites.

Here's one that hasn't been mentioned yet: Io Shirai's current World of Stardom aka the "Red Belt" reign has been excellent from start.

 

Roderick Strong's run w/ the PWG World Championship in 2015-2016 was fantastic too, inspired my username here too haha. :P

 

Timothy Thatcher's EVOLVE World Championship reign doesn't get the credit it deserves. It had a few forgettable matches vs. Ethan Page, Caleb Konley & Matt Riddle (the first few matches they had weren't very good), but for the most part I thought it was really great.

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I'm a huge believer in Hogan's first title run. He proved that overwhelming charisma could overcome underwhelming ring work and make a shitload of money.

 

 

Dude, There wasn't anything underwhelming about Hogan's ring work during that first reign, especially the first year.

I would say his ringwork was good until you hit 87 and he got really formula. I know when I watched a lot of house shows from this era he was in the best or the second best match of the night. There were good matches with Muraco, Savage, Orndorff, Bundy, Orton and even random TV stuff with Johnny Rodz. The Piper matches always disappointed but I put that on Piper more than I do Hogan.

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That's a good point about Hogan. I would almost point to the Harley Race series as being the delineation point between "classic" Hogan (or Earth 2 Hogan as I like to call him) and "cartoon" (Earth 1) Hogan. He even wore the white trunks vs Harley for their TDM at MSG in the summer of 87, perhaps for the last time on TV

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Sheamus World Title run in 2012 was big for me.

 

Cena in 2006-07 of course.

You're saying those were two of the greatest individual championship reigns in the history of wrestling?

Well Cena's sure. Not sure what's weird about that.

 

Sheamus is a personal favourite purely for the work. He was so great as a dominant babyface champ, having great matches with everyone in sight, knowing just how much to give to play his role, incredible selling, and two of the best matches in company history to bookend it. It's a great run.

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That's a good point about Hogan. I would almost point to the Harley Race series as being the delineation point between "classic" Hogan (or Earth 2 Hogan as I like to call him) and "cartoon" (Earth 1) Hogan. He even wore the white trunks vs Harley for their TDM at MSG in the summer of 87, perhaps for the last time on TV

 

I actually had the WM3 match with Andre as kind of where he went into safe mode. So I think we're thinking about the same time frame.

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Here's one:

 

Eddie Kingston's initial run with the CHIKARA Grand Championship was really great for me. I was closely following the product at the time and I remember really enjoying a lot of the matches (vs. Quack, vs. Brodie Lee, vs. Jigsaw) and even getting rather invested in the angle with Tim Donst.

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Here's one:

 

Eddie Kingston's initial run with the CHIKARA Grand Championship was really great for me. I was closely following the product at the time and I remember really enjoying a lot of the matches (vs. Quack, vs. Brodie Lee, vs. Jigsaw) and even getting rather invested in the angle with Tim Donst.

 

It really was. Felt like the promotion was running red hot until they did that stupid shutdown angle that they've never quite recovered from booking wise.

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