10 Superstars with most World Title reigns in WWE History
Winning a World Title is probably the main reason why any wrestler joins a professional wrestling company. As the top prize of every wrestling organization, a victory in a World Title match is seen as the apex of a person wrestling career. Winning a World Title used to be such a hard task in WWE that legends like Roddy Piper, Jake Roberts, Owen Hart and Scott Hall never realized their dream of being called a WWE World Champion.
Ever since its inception back in 190s, WWE has had a total of 4 different World Championships at various stages, with the WWE Title and the Universal Title being the two that WWE has at this moment. World Title reigns are often seen as a way to measure the level the wrestler achieved in the company, and not every superstar get a chance to hold a World Title on more than one occasion. Here are the 10 superstars with most World Title reigns in WWE history.
Note: This list is only based on the World Title reigns under the WWE banner and not any other promotion. Hence, according to this list, Ric Flair and AJ Styles are only two time World Champions and Sting has not held even a single World Title.
#10(Tie) Mankind, Booker T, Jeff Hardy, Kane and Rey Mysterio - 3 Reigns
Starting off this list is a quintet of superstars, all of whom are on everyone's list of the best superstars of all time and have been World Champion under the WWE banner three times each. Even though Mick Foley achieved quite a lot of success during the Attitude Era, the cumulative total of his three WWF title reigns is just 47 days, all from 1999. Never the less, his first WWF Title win on Raw is commonly regarded as one of the biggest wins in the history of Raw.
Just like Mick Foley, Kane managed only three world title throughout his career, which includes one reign each with WWF, ECW and World Heavyweight Title, despite being a main event superstar throughout his career.
While Booker T only won WWE's version of World Heavyweight Title only once in 2006, his last two reigns as WCW World Champion in 2001 also took place under WWE banner, giving him a total of three runs as World Champion.
Forever as popular as he is right now in WWE, Jeff Hardy's only WWE Title win in late 2008 is generally considered among the feel good moments of this century. He followed this win with two small reigns as World Heavyweight Champion in 2009 during that critically acclaimed rivalry with CM Punk.
Even though he was never a credible World Champion, Rey Mysterio did enjoy three World Title reigns under the WWE banner, which includes two World Heavyweight Title wins and a less than a day reign as WWE Champion in 2011.