I'm all for a long title run, but there is absolutely nobody who deserves to be pushed to the moon like that right now who is not named John Cena or CM Punk.
Back in the day WWF had one taped TV show per week, one monthly or bi-monthly NBC Main Event special (wrestling on NBC, unbelieveable to think that was real, lol) and four PPVs. The biggest stars rarely wrestled on TV, you may seen Piper in his pit or Hogan on one of the many talk-show style interviews (Paul Bearer, Brother Love, The Genius, etc) but the biggest stars were a rare occurance on TV... and the biggest stars *never* wrestled each other on TV.
Today every conceiveable match-up has already been done, and the match-ups that haven't been done aren't that intriguing. I could care less if Dolph Ziggler feuds with Evan Bourne or Jack Swagger or whoever is on the program these days... but in 1986 Junk Yard Dog vs Jake The Snake or One Man Gang vs Big John Studd was a cause for the highest level of speculation not only because it was so rare to see big names square off, but to my knowledge neither of those feuds ever came about in the WWF.
WWF used to get by on feeding jobbers to their roster talent, but the hotshotting of wrestling in the 1990s has destroyed that business model. No one is going to tune into RAW to see Otunga vs Jow Independent in a squash match every week... but in 1988 people would tune in to see Haku vs Joe Jobber in a main event TV match.
So until WWE can build up its next new megastar, we will never see a year-long title reign. WWE creative doesn't seem to have enough ideas to stretch out a program that long. WWE would need about 3-4 times as many ideas for the same length of a championship reign, and they don't have it in them to do it.
Back in the day WWF had one taped TV show per week, one monthly or bi-monthly NBC Main Event special (wrestling on NBC, unbelieveable to think that was real, lol) and four PPVs. The biggest stars rarely wrestled on TV, you may seen Piper in his pit or Hogan on one of the many talk-show style interviews (Paul Bearer, Brother Love, The Genius, etc) but the biggest stars were a rare occurance on TV... and the biggest stars *never* wrestled each other on TV.
Today every conceiveable match-up has already been done, and the match-ups that haven't been done aren't that intriguing. I could care less if Dolph Ziggler feuds with Evan Bourne or Jack Swagger or whoever is on the program these days... but in 1986 Junk Yard Dog vs Jake The Snake or One Man Gang vs Big John Studd was a cause for the highest level of speculation not only because it was so rare to see big names square off, but to my knowledge neither of those feuds ever came about in the WWF.
WWF used to get by on feeding jobbers to their roster talent, but the hotshotting of wrestling in the 1990s has destroyed that business model. No one is going to tune into RAW to see Otunga vs Jow Independent in a squash match every week... but in 1988 people would tune in to see Haku vs Joe Jobber in a main event TV match.
So until WWE can build up its next new megastar, we will never see a year-long title reign. WWE creative doesn't seem to have enough ideas to stretch out a program that long. WWE would need about 3-4 times as many ideas for the same length of a championship reign, and they don't have it in them to do it.