One of the more common complaints among older wrestling fans is that championship titles don’t mean as much as they used to. In support of that claim, there’s the issue of shorter title reigns. After all, back in the day, it was far from unheard of for a reign to last multiple years. Now, a year-long reign is a major milestone, and talents like Brock Lesnar and CM Punk entered rarified air for title reigns that ran over a full year’s time.
This article goes back in time to the 1980s. It’s a time when WWE had fewer championships, fewer special events, and fewer television hours to fill. Accordingly, it’s also a time with fewer title changes. With the WWE, Intercontinental, Tag Team, and Women’s Championships the only titles with long enough runs to garner noteworthy title reigns, this list looks back at the ten longest reigns across the championships.
10 Randy Savage, WWE Champion For 371 Days
Randy Savage’s first world title reign was largely defined by symmetry. Savage peaked as a face and when he won the title with an assist from Hulk Hogan in Atlantic City. He peaked as a heel in losing to title The Hulkster in Atlantic City. The other pice of coming full circle—that he won the title at WrestleMania 4 and lost it just a shave over a year later at WrestleMania 5.
The Macho Man’s reign is largely defined by Hogan—their partnership, feuding, and Savage carrying the title while Hogan was absent to film No Holds Barred. Nonetheless, Savage distinguished himself for his polished ring work and intense promos in that era.
9 Don Muraco, Intercontinental Champion For 385 Days
Don Muraco’s legacy tends to be a bit lost to the sands of time nowadays, for enjoying his greatest successes in the pre-Hulkamania days of WWE. Nonetheless, he was an upper-level heel for the company and an Intercontinetnal Champion who reigned for over a full year in his second run with the title.
Muraco’s marathon reign may be best remembered for defense against Jimmy Snuka in a steel cage in Madison Square Garden. The match became an instant classic for its aftermath. Though Muraco retained, Snuka got the last laugh by hitting a splash off the top of the cage on him after the final bell.
8 Pedro Morales, Intercontinental Champion For 425 Days
Pedro Morales was a staple performer for WWE throughout the 1970s and into the early eighties. His accomplishments include being recognized as the original triple crown champion, winning the World, Tag Team, and Intercontinental Championships.
Morales’s resume includes one of the longest Intercontinental Championship reigns in history. His second reign with the title spanned 425 days as the Puerto Rican star was quite arguably second only to world champ Bob Backlund in popularity.
7 Sensational Sherri, Women’s Champion For 441 Days
Sensational Sherri’s WWE run uncharacteristically started out with her playing the hero as she unseated inveterate champ The Fabulous Moolah for the women’s title. While Sherri may have initially come off as something like Wendi Richter reboot—a talented young woman to carry women’s wrestling in WWE into the next generation—she shifted gears to become something more like the new Moolah—a wicked heel who reigned for well over a year.
Despite having some respected talents in the female locker room, WWE didn’t place much emphasis on women in that era. Sherri didn’t have all that many memorable matches to hang her hat on from that reign and became the standard-bearer for an only semi-active division.
6 Rockin’ Robin, Women Champion For 450 Days In The 1980s (502 Days Total)
It’s telling that Rockin’ Robin—a plucky face WWE never seemed to put all that much stock in—would not only defeat Sensational Sherri, but wind up with a longer title reign than the better-established champ before her.
During Robin’s time as champion, WWE let women’s wrestling go by degrees. She took the title in the fall of 1988 and her only noteworthy defense came against Judy Martin at the 1989 Royal Rumble event. From there, Robin would hold onto the title for the length of that year, and in 1990 before WWE dissolved the women’s division and suspended the title.
5 Demolition, Tag Team Champions For 478 Days
The general theory is that WWE created Demolition to have its own version of the popular Road Warriors tag team. Indeed, Ax and Smash were impressive big men who wore face paint and spikes, and certainly looked the part of an intimidating tandem, while working some very good matches along the way.
Demolition’s reign over the tag division set a record at 478 days—longer than any team in WWE would continuously hold the titles until New Day in the 2010s.
4 Honky Tonk Man, Intercontinental Champion For 454 days
The list of Intercontinental Champions of the 1980s—and particularly the Hulkamania era—includes names like Randy Savage, Ricky Steamboat, and The Ultimate Warrior. These were rising stars who’d go on to win world titles in WWE or elsewhere. And then there was The Honky Tonk Man.
Honky was good at generating heat as a loathsome heel who felt imminently beatable at all times. Perhaps that’s why he got a record 454 day reign as Intercontinental Champion, which included fending off stars including Savage and Brutus Beefcake.
3 Bob Backlund, WWE Champion For 1,456 Days In The 1980s (1470/2118 Days Total)
Before Vincent Kennedy McMahon took charge of WWE, Bob Backlund represented the last of the old guard. While not as overwhelmingly popular as predecessor Bruno Sammartino, and not as flashy as successor Hulk Hogan, Backlund was nonetheless the face of the WWE for nearly six years.
Backlund’s historic run on top started in the late 1970s, meaning he loses some ground the purposes of this list. The duration of his reign is further muddied by a “phantom” title loss to Antonio Inoki overseas. So, depending on which title chronology one follows, Backlund reigned as world champ for the first 1,470 days of the 1980s or 1,456 of the first days of the decade before dropping the title to The Iron Sheik.
2 Hulk Hogan, WWE Champion For 1,474
Hulk Hogan pinned The Iron Sheik to win the WWE Championship in December 1983. Thus would begin a new era for WWE in terms of the company going national and focusing its attention on a top star who favored showmanship over technical performance. Hogan also represented the last of a certain breed as well—to date, he was the last WWE Champion to reign continuously for over four years (and no one since him has topped two straight years).
Hogan’s reign could reasonably be described as the most iconic in WWE history, featuring Hogan fending off heel foreigners like The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff, friends turned foe like Paul Orndorff, and monsters like King Kong Bundy and Andre the Giant, in addition to his famous feud with Roddy Piper. While Hogan has garnered his share of criticism over the decades to follow, this reign offered a foundation for WWE’s long term success as a worldwide brand.
1 The Fabulous Moolah, Women’s Champion For 1,666 days/ In The 1980s (2,113 Days Total)
The Fabulous Moolah’s reign as WWE Women’s Champion has one of the shadier chronologies and histories. It came from a time when the lines were murky between different promotions. Moreover, it was all but impossible to track what happened in different territories, and particularly those operating in smaller markets.
It’s difficult to pin down when WWE started recognizing the NWA World Women’s Championship as its own title (though most sources point to a transaction happening between Moolah and the company in 1984, just before she would lose the title to Wendi Richter). Regardless, WWE traces Moolah’s time as champion back to 1978, thus making her reign 2,113 days long in total, including the first 1,666 days of the 1980s.