Somewhat unthinkable happened on this week’s Smackdown. Daniel Bryan became the new WWE Champion in a surprising turn of events. He defeated AJ Styles via clean pinfall sending the pro-wrestling fans to a frenzy. We hoped Styles’ title reign to continue by any means to keep the match with Brock Lesnar intact.
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But now the match is out of the card all of a sudden as one of the brightest title reigns came to a sudden end. Here’re are some interesting statistics about the historic championship reign that AJ Styles had. (Info courtesy wwfoldschool.com)
• AJ Styles held the WWE Championship for 371 days. It is the longest reign with the most prestigious title since the brand split happened back in 2016.
• CM Punk holds the longest WWE Title reign of the modern era holding it for 434 days. AJ Styles failed to break it but he surpassed his predecessor in a combined way. CM Punk held this title twice for 463 days. But the Phenomenal One has 511 days as a two-time champion’s tenure.
• AJ Styles stands 12th in the list of champions that enjoyed most combined days as WWF/E Champion in the history. First 11 names are as follows,
• Bruno Sammartino (4,040 days)
• Hulk Hogan (2,185 days)
• Bob Backlund (2,138 days)
• John Cena (1,257 days)
• Pedro Morales (1,027 days)
• Randy Orton (660 days)
• Bret Hart (655 days)
• Triple H (610 days)
• Brock Lesnar (578 days)
• “Stone Cold” Steve Austin (530 days)
• Randy Savage (520 days)
• AJ Styles won the WWE Championship on Smackdown prior to Survivor Series, last year. Eventually, he lost the title in the same capacity on Smackdown, this year.
• The biggest backlog in this title reign is that AJ Styles never main-evented a dual-branded PPV. He was last on the card only in two WWE PPVs: Clash Of Champions 2017 & FastLane 2018. Both of these were Smackdown-exclusive shows but not dual-brand shows.
• https://youtu.be/mEc3KFd6zxA
• ‘The face that runs the place’ was not a dual-brand headliner even in his first reign as a WWE Champion back in 2016.
• AJ Styles defeated Jinder Mahal to win the WWE Championship in November 2017 to change the match card at Survivor Series. Daniel Bryan defeated AJ Styles this year to change the match card of this year’s Survivor Series. Incidentally, Brock Lesnar is the opponent on both the occasions.
• AJ Styles was the WWE Champion in the last two Survivor Series PPV events. He was going to enter the dual-brand show with the title for the third consecutive occasion until Daniel Bryan defeated him on this week’s Smackdown.
• In his WWE career, AJ Styles entered 17 PPV events as the WWE Champion. 13 out of those happened during his second tenure as the champion.
• In the modern era, Styles’ 371-day reign is on number 9 in the list of single longest WWF/E Title reigns of all time. It is in the 3rd place on the list of single longest WWE Title reigns of the modern era, too.
