5 Longest WCW World Title reigns in history
The WCW World Heavyweight Championship began it's lineage way back in January 1991.
On January 11 of that year, "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair defeated Sting to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, which WCW rechristened the WCW World title.
The WCW title was still represented by the NWA World Championship belt and as such, the company claimed the NWA title's lineage to boost the prestige of their new title. However, that all changed on July 1, 1991, when Flair fell out with WCW booker, Jim Herd and left the company, signing on with Vince McMahon's WWE instead.
Flair took the title belt with him and WCW were forced to create a new title belt to represent the WCW World Championship. The "Big Gold" belt returned to WCW screens in 1992, and continued to represent the NWA title which was now regarded as separate title to the WCW title.
In September 1993, WCW left the NWA, and as such the company were forced to rename the belt representing the NWA World title, the WCW International Title.
The title belt confusion was resolved in 1994, when WCW unified the WCW World Title and WCW International Title and the "Big Gold" belt now represented the WCW World Championship.
Between 1991 and the title's unification with the WWE Championship in December 2001, there were 61 reigns in total with 22 different champions. Although, in it's final year of existence, the title seemed to change hands almost every week, making it difficult to keep track of who the champion was.
The title did not last long in WWE, six months in fact from when it debuted on WWE television with Booker T as it's titleholder until Chris Jericho defeated The Rock and unified the strap with the WWE Championship, one month after WWE's WCW Invasion angle ended.
This slideshow looks at the five longest WCW World title reigns in history.
#5. Lex Luger - 1991-1992 (230 days)
Lex Luger is a name rarely mentioned on WWE television in 2019, which is surprising considering he is employed by the company as an advisor on WWE's Wellness Policy and the fact that he was one of the biggest stars of the 1990s.
In truth, Luger's matches in the 90's were not too thrilling and were not a patch on the electrifying bouts he contested in the mid to late 1980s.
Once Luger achieved World Champion status, he effectively began phoning in his in ring performances, knowing he would be a main event level talent, regardless of whether his bouts were entertaining or not.
However, despite this fact, WCW persevered with Luger as champion in 1991-1992 as their successor to longtime figurehead, Ric Flair, who had departed the company for WWE in July of 1991.
Luger's run lasted until SuperBrawl II, when he was defeated by Sting. Luger, followed Flair out of the company following his loss.
Luger's phoned in performances meant his second (and final) WCW World title win, in August of 1997 lasted a mere six days.
However, his first remains the fifth longest WCW World title run in history.