Pete Dunne: The Longest Reigning WWE Champion in 30 Years

At 524 days, as of October 26, 2018, the WWE United Kingdom Champion "Brusierweight" Pete Dunne has become the longest continuous reigning singles champion in over 30 years since Hulk Hogan's first title reign came to end on February 5, 1988.

Dunne represents the WWE's United Kingdom brand but unlike other champions in the WWE, Dunne defends his championship in promotions around the world.  Since winning the championship Dunne has competed in near 200 matches. While not all were title matches compare that to Brock Lesnar who wrestled just 17 matches in his 504 day reign as Universal Champion and Asuka who wrestled 149 matches in her 523 day reign as NXT Women's Champion.

In the near 66 year history of the WWE Pete Dunne ranks sixth on the list of longest single reigning champions.  That is not an accomplishment that you can dismiss as only Bruno Sammartino, Bob Backlund, Hulk Hogan, and Pedro Morales have had a longer continuous single reigns as a champion.

However, Dunne has as long way to go before he breaks into their ranks.  Pedro Morales', number five on the list, 1,027 days as the WWWF Champion is over 500 days longer then Dunne's.  In order to tie Morales, Dunne would need to hold the United Kingdom Championship until Thursday March 12, 2020.

Although I don't see Dunne holding the championship for another seventeen months I do think it would be amazing if he was the champion for over two years.

Here are the 15 longest single reigning champions in WWE History:

2,803 Days Bruno Sammartino WWWF World Heavyweight Champion May 17, 1963 - January 18, 1971

2,135 Days Bob Backlund WWF World HeavyweightChampion February 20, 1978 - December 26, 1983

1,474 Days Hulk Hogan WWF World Heavyweight Champion January 23, 1984 - February 5, 1988

1,237 Days Bruno Sammartino WWF World Heavyweight Champion December 10, 1973 - April 30, 1977

1,027 Days Pedro Morales WWWF World Heavyweight Champion February 20, 1978 - December 1, 1973

524+ Days Pete Dunne WWE United Kingdom Champion May 20, 2017 - current

  as of October 26, 2018

523 Days Lex Luger WCW United States Champion May 22, 1989 - October 27, 1990

523 Days Asuka NXT Women's Champion April 1, 2016 - September 6, 2017

504 Days Brock Lesnar WWE Universal Champion April 2, 2017 - August 19, 2018

502 Days Rockin' Robin WWF Women's Champion October 7, 1988 - February 21, 1990

454 Days Honky Tonk Man WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion June 2, 1987 - August 29, 1988

448 Days Trish Stratus WWF Women's Champion January 9, 2005 - April 2, 2006

448 Days Duane Gill WWF Light Heavyweight Champion November 17, 1998 - February 8, 2000

441 Days Sensational Sherri WWF Women's Champion July 24, 1987 - October 7, 1988

434 Days CM Punk WWE Champion November 20, 2011 -  January 27, 2013

For those wondering I didn't count The Fabulous Moolah's 10,170 days reign as Women's Champion because even though the WWE does officially recognize it, as it was the NWA Women's Championship until May 19, 1984 when it was renamed the WWF Women's Championship.  There is a lot of controversy surrounding the actual length of the reign and the number of times the lost it officially or otherwise until Wendi Richter defeated her for it on July 23, 1984.

Other former championships I didn't include because they were only recognized occasionally were the WWWF United States Heavyweight Championship (1963 - 1976),  WWF International Championship (1959 - 1984), WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship (1965 - 1985), WWF World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship (1978 - 1989) and all WCW & ECW Championships.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment, read my other posts, and like my blogs Facebook page and while you're at it check out my weekly podcast The Wrestling Insomniac on the Nerdy Legion Podcast Network. 

Later Readers!

My Wrestling Year in Review 2017

I was going to start this out by saying "2017 was a great year for wrestling" but that's implying that any other year wasn't, which is unequivocally not true.  As a whole every year is a great year for professional wrestling.  Sure maybe an individual wrestler or promotion had a bad year, your guy didn't do as well as you would have liked perhaps, but as a whole, it was a great year for wrestling.

This blog has 137 posts and we added a contributor in Brandon Myers whose first posts were about his WrestleCade 2017 experience.  I had an article about me and my signed card collection featured in the collectibles column on the Pro Wrestling Torch website and contributed to a year end column.

Speaking of my trading card collection, between through the mail success, live events attended, and a few from my buddy Roy I added pretty near 70 cards bringing my total close to 500.

I made it to eleven wrestling shows this year including: six Limitless Wrestling, two IWE, Chikara, WWE House show in Augusta, and Ring of Honor Best in the World PPV in Lowell, MA.  I took my son Canaan to almost all of these shows and my friends Mikey and Roy were at all of them.  You can follow this link here to read reports of each show.   It was at Ring of Honor that I captured the beat wrestling picture I have ever taken.

This was captured just after Cody was handed the Ring of Honor World Championship that he had won defeating Christopher Daniels.  The pure emotion that Cody is releasing as his dream of becoming World Champion is attained is tremendous.

I found this year to be difficult to pick my favorite match of the year that I saw live so here is list of my favorite matches in no particular order:

January 27, 2017 Westbrook, Maine Limitless Wrestling
Take Me Home Tonight: "All Good" Anthony Greene & Ace Romero defeated American Destroyers: Donovan Dijak & Mikey Webb

March 17, 2017 Westbrook, Maine Limitless Wrestling
Matt Sydal pinned Ricochet

May 13, 2017 Westbrook, Maine Limitless Wrestling
"All Good" Anthony Greene defeated Paul London

Fans Bring the Weapons: Ace Romero pinned AR Fox

June 23, 2017 Lowell, MA ROH Best in The World PPV
El' Terrible & Ultimo Guerrero defeated The Kingdom: Matt Taven & Vinny Marseglia

Cody Rhodes pinned World Champion: Christopher Daniels to win the championship

July 21, 2017 Westbrook, Maine Limitless Wrestling
Le Tabarnak de Team: Mathieu St. Jacques & Thomas Dubois and Buxx Belmar defeated Maine State Posse: Aidan Agro, Danger Kid, & Alexander Lee

September 22, 2017 Westbrook, Maine Limitless Wrestling
JT Dunn pinned Joey Janela

Teddy Hart pinned Maxwell Jacob Friedman

November 3, 2017 Westbrook, Maine Limitless Wrestling
Ace Romero pinned Sami Callihan

Josh Briggs pinned Darby Allin

"Dirty Daddy" Chris Dickinson pinned Cam Zagami.

New Japan Pro Wrestling had probably it's greatest year ever as far as worldwide exposure and producing some of the greatest matches we've seen.  The trio of matches between Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada started off strong at WrestleKingdom 11.  Then their 60 minute draw at Dominion 2017 showed that this style match was still possible in 2017.  Their third match at the G1 Climax semi-final show where Omega pinned the Champion.  As it stands they are 1 - 1 - 1 in their series leaving us with tie-breaker hopefully sometime in 2018.  Incidentally these matches were rated 6 stars by The Wrestling Observer.

Okada had an amazing year as IWGP Champion with matches not just against Omega but also Katsuyori Shibata, Cody Rhodes, Bad Luck Fale, and Minoru Suzuki.

I got my first completed of Progress Wrestling this year when I watched the Super Strong Style 16 Tournament.  Similar to PWG's Battle of Los Angeles this is a three day event with some of the best in the world competing in a single elimination tournament.  If you have the chance check out Progress Wrestling you will not regret it.

On the WWE side of things I was more impressed with their network products than Raw and SmackDown.  The year started with an amazing United Kingdom Championship Tournament in January and in the Summer another tremendous tournament with the Mae Young Classic.

Pete Dunne & Tyler Bate had their own Trio of matches this year that started in the finals of the UK Tournament with Bate defeated Dunne to become the inaugural champion.  Then at NXT Takeover Chicago on May 20th and finally Dunne retained his championship on the November 29th episode of NXT.

Like I said wrestling 2017 was a great year for wrestling and there was a lot more awesomeness that happened in wrestling than what I briefly mentioned here.  The year 2018 is already shaping up to well for me if my plans hold true.  I have Limitless Wrestling on January 19th and on March 16th I will fulfill a lifelong dream of attending a show at the fabled Madison Square Garden. 

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment, read my other posts, and like my blogs Facebook page and while you're at it check out my weekly podcast Podcast of 1,000 Holds on the Nerdy Legion Podcast Network. 

Later Readers!

Progress Wrestling

I had of heard of Progress Wrestling before and have watched many clips and matches on the internet in the past but I had never watched a complete event before.  Recently I got a one month subscription to the Highspots Wrestling Network so I could watch the CZW Once In a Lifetime event featuring Matt Tremont vs. Atsuhi Onita in a barbed wire exploding bat match.

Sadly the match, as well as the event, was a bit of a disappointment for me.  I decided to check out what else Highspots had to offer and it has a lot indeed!  Wrestling events from promotions around the world, classic and vintage wrestling footage, and some fantastic documentaries including Ellbow Productions releases.

For me though it was finally my chance to check out some complete Progress Wrestling events.  I started out big with the 2017 Super Strong Style 16 Tournament.  A tournament held over three days this past May at the Electric Ballroom in London.

The talent in the tournament is no doubt the future of wrestling not just in the UK but around the world.  Zack Gibson, Jack Sexsmith, Zack Sabre Jr. David Starr, Jimmy Havoc, Travis Banks, Mark Andrews, Flamita, Tyler Bate, William Eaver, Mark Haskins, Flash Morgan Webster, Matt Riddle, Trent Seven, Nathan Cruz, & Jeff Cobb.  Several of these men have already appeared in the WWE and I wouldn't be surprised to see more of them signed by WWE in the future.  The weekend also featured Progress World Champion Pete Dunne amongst others.

I was blown away by Progress's product and I'm not just talking about the in ring talent.  The production value with the multi-camera set up, commentators, entrance music, and set is top notch.  One of my favorite things is how they opened the show with the ring announcer Jim Smallman in the ring talking to the fans.  Night one he asks all who traveled from another country to be at the show to stand up and then asks each one where they are from.  Night two he asked all who wasn't at night one to stand up and then demands to know why they weren't there.  Some pretty awesome fan interaction.

One of the best matches of the show was on night one between Zack Gibson and Jack Sexsmith.  The story they told in the match with Jack being the underdog having to constantly battle back from underneath against Gibson and then getting the upset win.  It was amazing!  The crowd exploded and I'm not ashamed to admit that I jumped off the couch with excitement applauding the television with a tear in my eye. It was sincerely a truly fantastic moment in wrestling.

The results to the tournament and non-tournament matches are out there, but I'm not going to spoil them here.  You need to go out of your way to watch this tournament yourself.  You can find it on either the Highspots Network or Demand Progress their own streaming service.  They both have Roku channels as well. 

Highspots is $9.99 a month with thousands of hours of various wrestling to watch, but are a few months behind on the current Progress content.  Demand Progress is $7.49 a month and they typically post their most recent show a week after the event occurs.  Demand Progress also features events from four other wrestling promotions.

I have firmly jumped on the Progress band wagon and am excited about the fact they have started running shows in the United States.  They ran a show during WrestleMania weekend in 2017 and again will be in 2018.  Also this past August they had a show in New York and Boston which both sold out very quickly.  I was not able to make it to the Boston show this time but I am not missing out when they return.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment, read my other posts, and like my blogs Facebook page and while you're at it check out my weekly podcast Podcast of 1,000 Holds on the Nerdy Legion Podcast Network. 

Later Readers!