Opinion: Ranking the effectiveness of all of the Universal Champions
The WWE introduced the Universal Title when they brought back the brand split in July of 2016.
Dean Ambrose had successfully defeated both Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns in a triple threat match, taking the WWE Championship, the top prize in the company at the time, to Smackdown.
Since Raw was left without a top championship, they created a new top title for Raw's wrestlers to chase, the Universal Title.
Since its inception, there have been five men to hold the belt.
Some reigns (no pun intended) have been successful while others were not.
The rankings are more indicative of how the reign affected fans and the wrestlers alike rather than who simply held the belt the longest.
At the bottom of each slide I'll rank the effectiveness on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being not effective at all (poor reign) and 10 being extremely effective (great reign).
Here are the rankings of the five men and six reigns of the men who have held the Universal Championship ranked in order of least successful to most successful.
#6: Goldberg
Goldberg left WWE in 2004 after only one year in the company.
It was thought that he probably would never return due to his unhappiness in his year with WWE.
Things apparently changed and he made his return to WWE in 2016 after 12 years away.
Goldberg has stated in interviews that his main reason for coming back was to be a hero to his son and to children everywhere.
He made his impact when he returned and defeated Brock Lesnar in 1:26 at Survivor Series that year.
It wouldn't be the last match between the two as both would enter and fail in their attempts to win the Royal Rumble in 2017.
Goldy would go on to face and defeat Kevin Owens for the Universal Championship at the Fastlane PPV.
It was primarily so that he and Brock Lesnar could face off for the title at Wrestlemania 33.
Lesnar took the title off a Goldberg that night, starting the first of his two reigns with the red belt.
While some might consider Finn Balor's day reign as champion as the worst Universal Title reign, Goldberg winning the belt was worse.
It was mainly in order to get the belt on Lesnar and close out their feud.
He didn't defend it against anyone else but also never received a rematch for the title.
Sure it was great for those who cared about the nostalgic aspect of him winning a title, but he took it off of someone who had worked his butt of just to get respect in the WWE in Owens.
EFFECTIVENESS METER: 2 - NO DEFENSES AND HE LEFT RIGHT AFTER LOSING IT