Longest Reigning WWE Champions

I scraped tables from Wrestlingdata.com to determine who the longest reigning WWE Champions of all time are. The lineage of the WWE title goes back to 1963. Back then the WWE was known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation, or the WWWF. I found that 5 out of the top 10 longest reigning WWE champions were from the WWWF days, with 4 out of 5 of them holding the belt for over 1,000 days! WWE history can be broken down into "eras". I determined who the longest reigning champion was for each era, up until today.

Eras

The WWWF era spanned from 1963 to 1983. The "golden era" spanned from 1983 up until the early 90's. The mid 90's was a transitional period where the WWF was about to usher in the "attitude era". I included the transitional era in with the golden era since it was pretty short. The 'attitude era" was from 1997 to 2002. the "ruthless aggression era" was from 2002 to 2008. The PG era was from 2008 to 2016. I called 2016 to present the "modern era" since it doesn't have an official name yet.

Findings

Unsurprisingly, the WWWF era had the longest reigning champion of all time, as well as many of the longest title reigns in history. The golden era was the last time we saw a wrestler hold the title for over 1,000 days, for a while. The next person to hold a title for over 1,000 days wouldn't come til the modern era. A common trend to note is that the longest reigning champion of their respective era is usually the wrestler most synonymous with that era, with the exception being John Cena. It could be argued he was the face of both the ruthless aggression and PG era, however he is not the longest reigning champion of the PG era.

Era with the Longest Reigning Champion

1. WWWF Era
2. Golden Era
3. Modern Era
4. PG Era
5. Ruthless Aggression Era
6. Attitude Era