WWE Universal Championship

WWE Universal Championship
The current title holder Roman Reigns .
Data
Title holder	Roman Reigns
since	August 30, 2020
owner	WWE
broadcast	SmackDown
Introduced	July 25, 2016
Records
Most title wins Brock Lesnar (3 times) Longest reign Brock Lesnar (504 days) Shortest reign Finn Bálor (1 day) Oldest title holder Goldberg (53 years, 62 days) Youngest title holder Kevin Owens (32 years, 114 days) Heaviest title holder Braun Strowman (175 kg) Easiest title holder Finn Bálor (86 kg)

The WWE Universal Championship is the highest wrestling title that the American promotion WWE awards to male individual wrestlers of the SmackDown rooster. The title was introduced on July 25, 2016 as part of the return of the roster split between the two weekly WWE shows Raw and SmackDown . The current title holder in his second reign is Roman Reigns . As is common in wrestling, the award is based on a previously determined storyline .

history

Introduced as World Championship by Raw

On May 25, 2016, the WWE announced in a press release that the roster split (also: Brand Extension ), which was introduced in 2002 and discontinued at the end of 2011, will be returning. The WWE Draft took place on July 19, 2016 at SmackDown. After the title holder of the WWE Championship Dean Ambrose was drafted after SmackDown , Raw remained without his own world heavyweight title. When Dean Ambrose successfully defended his title on July 24, 2016 at the Pay-per-View Battleground in a triple-threat match against the Raw wrestlers Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns , Raw was finally without a main title.

At the following Raw edition on July 25, 2016, Commissioner Stephanie McMahon and General Manager Mick Foley announced that Raw would be given a new main title, and that the title would be named after the WWE fan base, the WWE Universe , and therefore will be called the WWE Universal Championship . It was also announced that there would be a match between Seth Rollins and another Raw superstar at SummerSlam on August 21, 2016 to crown the first holder of this title. Seth Rollins was seeded as the raw raster's first draft pick . His opponent was determined by two fatal four-way matches on the same evening. Finn Bálor won the first of these , while Roman Reigns won the second. In the main event of the same edition of Raw, Bálor and Reigns met in a match to determine the challenger to Seth Rollins at SummerSlam . Finn Bálor won the match, which means he qualified for the title match.

At SummerSlam on August 21, 2016, the title match between Bálor and Rollins took place, which Bálor was able to win and thus became the very first WWE Universal Champion . The belt design was revealed in the run-up to the match. The design of the WWE Universal Championship is similar to that of the WWE Championship . The belt, however, is in the red color of the owning show Raw . Like the WWE Championship , the main motif is a diamond-studded WWE logo, with the only difference now being “Universal Championship” under the actual logo. The two side panels also show the WWE logo. There were very negative fan reactions, which also influenced the subsequent match. Following the show, Raw's general manager Mick Foley, among others, dealt with what was happening at the event and was very unhappy about the reactions from fans. Adam Silverstein from CBS Sports also described the title as "ugly".

Finn Bálor suffered a serious shoulder injury in the match, forcing him to give up the title on Raw a day later. A week later, on August 29, 2016, Kevin Owens won a Fatal-Four-Way Elimination Match against Rollins, Reigns and Big Cass and became the new champion.

Switch to SmackDown

At Crown Jewel on October 31, 2019, SmackDown wrestler Bray Wyatt won the title by winning the Falls Count Anywhere match against Seth Rollins . With the win, the Universal Championship switched to SmackDown . The next evening, the WWE Championship also changed shows after current title holder Brock Lesnar left SmackDown . Bray Wyatt unveiled a new blue title belt on the November 15, 2019 edition of SmackDown . In addition to the SmackDown version of the title belt, Bray Wyatt introduced a second version of the championship for his Fiend character in the November 29th issue of SmackDown . The face of Fiend is depicted on the second belt .

List of title holders

Current title holder

#	Title holder	Title change			statistics		annotation
		date	event	place	Number	Days
1	Finn Bálor	August 21, 2016	SummerSlam	New York City , New York	1	1	Defeated Seth Rollins in a singles match for the newly created title.
-	Title vacant	22nd August 2016	Raw	New York City , New York	-	7th	Finn Bálor resigned the title due to a shoulder injury.
2	Kevin Owens	29th August 2016	Raw	Houston , Texas	1	188	Beat Big Cass , Roman Reigns, and Seth Rollins in a Fatal Four Way Elimination Match for the vacant title. Second longest reign in title history.
3	Goldberg	5th March 2017	Fastlane	Milwaukee , Wisconsin	1	28
4th	Brock Lesnar	2nd April 2017	WrestleMania 33	Orlando , Florida	1	504	Longest reign in title history.
5	Roman Reigns	19th August 2018	SummerSlam	New York City , New York	1	64
-	Title vacant	October 22, 2018	Raw	Providence , Rhode Island	-	11	Roman Reigns resigned from the title due to cancer.
6th	Brock Lesnar	2nd November 2018	Crown Jewel	Riyadh , Saudi Arabia	2	156	Defeated Braun Strowman in a singles match for the vacant title. Third-longest reign in title history.
7th	Seth Rollins	April 7, 2019	WrestleMania 35	East Rutherford , New Jersey	1	98
8th	Brock Lesnar	14th July 2019	Extreme rules	Philadelphia , Pennsylvania	3	28	Brock Lesnar honored his money-in-the-bank contract .
9	Seth Rollins	11th August 2019	SummerSlam	Toronto , Ontario	2	81
10	Bray Wyatt	October 31, 2019	Crown Jewel	Riyadh , Saudi Arabia	1	119
11	Goldberg	February 27, 2020	Great ShowDown	Riyadh , Saudi Arabia	2	37
12	Braun Strowman	April 4, 2020	WrestleMania 36	Orlando , Florida	1	141
13	Bray Wyatt	23 August 2020	SummerSlam	Orlando , Florida	2	7th	This was a Falls Count Anywhere match .
14th	Roman Reigns	August 30, 2020	Payback	Orlando , Florida	2	01+	This was a Triple Threat No Holds Barred Match that also featured Braun Strowman .

statistics

Roman Reigns held the title for 64 days.

Current title holder

space	Surname	number	Days in total
1	Brock Lesnar	3	688
2	Kevin Owens	1	188
3	Seth Rollins	2	178
4th	Braun Strowman	1	141
5	Bray Wyatt	2	126
6th	Roman Reigns	2	065+
7th	Goldberg	2	65
8th	Finn Bálor	1	<1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ WWE: SmackDown live from July, roster split before return Cagematch.de. Retrieved June 1, 2016
2. ↑ WWE SmackDown Live # 882 (WWE Draft 2016) Results & Report from Worcester, Massachusetts from July 19, 2016 (including videos) ( Memento of the original from July 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and still Not checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Wrestling-infos.de. Retrieved July 26, 2016 
3. ↑ WWE “Battleground 2016” results + report Wrestling-infos.de. Accessed on July 26, 2016
4. ↑ WWE Monday Night Raw # 1209 Results + Report from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from July 25, 2016 (incl. Videos) ( Memento of the original from July 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Wrestling-infos.de. Retrieved July 26, 2016 
5. ↑ WWE “SummerSlam 2016” results + report from Brooklyn, New York (08/21/2016) Wrestling-infos.de. Retrieved August 22, 2016
6. ↑ An up-close look at the all-new WWE Universal Championship: photos. WWE.com, accessed December 30, 2016 . 
7. ↑ WWE “SummerSlam 2016” results + report from Brooklyn, New York (08/21/2016) wrestling-infos.de. Retrieved August 22, 2016
8. ↑ Marc Middleton: Mick Foley Not Happy With Fan Reactions During Seth Rollins Vs. Finn Balor At WWE SummerSlam. Wrestlinginc.com, August 22, 2016, accessed December 30, 2016 . 
9. ↑ Adam Silverstein: WWE SummerSlam 2016 results: Brock Lesnar gets savage, Finn Balor wins title. CBS Sports , August 21, 2016, accessed August 21, 2016 . 
10. ↑ WWE Monday Night Raw # 1214 results + report from Houston, Texas from August 29, 2016 (incl. Videos) Wrestling-infos.de. Retrieved August 30, 2016

Web links

Commons : WWE Universal Champions  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• WWE Universal Championship history on wwe.com