How do you rank the greatest WWE champions? Ive seen people already hail Cena and Flair as the best ever because they have 15 and 16 world title reigns, but to me that means they lost it 15 times, i dont see that as being great at all.
First, total reigns is important. That means the company keeps coming back to you as the main guy, which they wouldn't do if you couldn't sell tickets, and typically the Word Champ is the most important guy in the most important storylines.
Second, total time as champ is important. Even in the modern era, when live weekly TV and monthly PPV exposes a champ to the mass audience much faster than back in the 80s when each company did only a handful of "super cards" and relied almost exclusively on their touring business, if the company keeps coming back to you for extended periods (
with only minor blips/short term losses on your resume) then you must be a proven money earner.
Third, how successful was the company during your time. This is the hardest one to equate because SO MANY things factor into this, most off is how good is the under card
(people are most interested in the top event but fans don't spend $$ on tickets without a few high profile undercard bouts that interest them) and how good is the booking & choice of opponents. Lets say John Cena sells out vs Randy Orton, but can he fill an arena vs Albert Del Rio ?? You also have to look at business before he became champ as part of this. Maybe business in general is down but ratings & attendance did increase markedly with you on top. I call this the "Brett Hart" syndrome, it seemed WWE was always trying to find someone more charismatic and entertaining to be their main guy during most of Hart's tenure 1993-97, yet inevitably the company always fell back on him during those down years. Why ? Because even though guys like Nash & HBK were great talents, WWE was doing better business with Hart on top. This is what kept Flair & Hogan as relevant as they were into the late 90s, no matter what the climate business wise over all, they always made more money for the company when they were #1 than the wide variety of other guys could.
Just focusing on WWE takes legendary great champs like Harley Race & Flair out of the picture. You can give a nod to Hart who was one of the hardest working WWE champs ever, and note that while WWE business may have been down during his tenure the industry in general was sagging much of that time and the company kept going back to him because he was guaranteed money
(Cena is the Brett Hart of today's WWE in this respect). The fact he left WWE and effectively ended his tenure after a little more than four years does hurt him though - Longevity matters.
The next guy who deserves special mention is Randy Savage who carried the company well during two tenures without Hogan on the card. Savage had some great opponents in guys like Ted DiBiase & Flair but his star power and work ethic were a major factor in him having two fairly successful reigns. The fact he only had two reigns hurts, if he had stayed in WWE he likely would have gotten more, although for the purpose of this discussion we are not including his WCW Titles. Certainly once Hogan & Flair were in WCW that title was every bit as important as the WWE title.
Cena has been the one Post Attitude Era star who is really a major star. Not just a star with the loyal viewing audience, he is well known to casual fans and fans who don't watch anymore. Outside of Attitude guys like Austin & Rock and 80s icons like Hogan & Flair & maybe Piper who else can you say that about ? Cena has always delivered steady numbers that typically were better than the other people who shared the title scene, and he has always been guaranteed money whenever WWE needed it (
like with D. Bryan's sudden injury departure right after W-Mania).
Hogan was the public face of the pro wrestling explosion in pop culture in the 1980s and was the biggest asset to McMahon's national expansion talent wise. At a time when wrestling business and interest in the industry was greater than in any decade, their were a handful of guys who unbelievably huge, Flair was the biggest, Rhodes & Andre not far behind, same with Savage, Hogan was bigger than all of them, by a good margin. The one thing I will say about Hogan that negatively impacts his status is once he established his star power, he was a part time player at best most of the decade. 80s fans know that Hogan was always criticized for how little he often wrestled, especially with Flair in the NWA wrestling 200 plus times every year through out the US, South America, & Japan. WWE and Vince did a terrific job with their marketing and promotion of keeping the WWE afloat and profitable with a champ who many times didn't even wrestle for weeks at time. A lot of that success has to do with McMahon. Still, Hogan did most of the "super cards" and W-Mania never would have taken off the way it did if not for him.
My choice then is Bruno Sammartino. WWE was built around Bruno. Plain and simple, the company didn't exist prior to Sammartino being champion. If he had been a failure out of the gate it's doubtful they would have recovered. Maybe they could have convinced a huge star like Buddy Rogers to leave the NWA full time but that was unlikely, more likely WWE would have been just a feeder or subsidiary market for the NWA. With Bruno as the centerpiece, WWE took off, establishing it's own brand, and became a major independent company in the industry. Bottom line, he wouldn't have spent 9 years as champ (even though it was split between just two reigns) if he wasn't successful, and unlike Hogan, who came into a successful company but was a part of it reaching new heights, unlike guys like Savage, Cena, or Bob Backlund who all did very good jobs of maintaining the status quo and keeping the company at or near the levels it was at previously, Bruno was the guy they BUILT WWE around. Hogan helped improve the car, Savage, Backlund, & Cena all drove the car well, as did Hart, but Bruno was the one who built the car in the first place. If he isn't a major success out of the gate WWE is just another small time promotion hoping for a bite of the NWA's apple like World Class & Florida Championship Wrestling. Instead they were a legit rival organization that was profitable and successful and proved to be landing spot and launching pad for some of the industry's biggest names even before Vince Jr took over and changed the whole business model.
For that reason I have to go with Bruno, I cant pick anyone else.
