The Country That Churned Out The Most WWE Champions Is No Surprise

Having been around the wrestling landscape in one form or another since 1953, it won't be shocking to hear that WWE has had a lot of World Champions over the course of their history. How many have there been exactly? A quick search shows there have been 148 WWE Champions since Buddy Roberts became the first champion in 1963, but the number grows when factoring in the two incarnations of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship and the WWE Universal Championship into the equation. All told, 98 wrestlers that have combined to have 223 reigns of one of the four WWE World Championships over the past 72 years, with the only shock being that there haven't been even more.

What will not be a shock is that the country to produce the most WWE World Champions is none other than the country that has been the home of WWE since its inception. Indeed, of the 98 WWE World Champions over the course of history, only 18 of these wrestlers were born outside of the United States. For those of you who are not the greatest at doing math, that means that 80 of the World Champions in WWE history are from the US, which rounds up to 82% when you break out the calculator. Again, given WWE is a United States based promotion, and a promotion that for a long time didn't stretch beyond its borders, it shouldn't come as a total shock that United States wrestlers make up the bulk of performers to hold WWE's top prizes.

Despite that, the record books show that the few foreigners to actually win WWE World Championships more often than not set the standard for title reigns. The first WWE Universal Champion in the title's short history was none other than Irish wrestler Finn Balor, while the second champion was none other than Canadian wrestler Kevin Owens. Of the five champions of the current incarnation of the WWE World Heavyweight Title, two of the reigns have been from Scottish wrestler Drew McIntyre, and Austrian wrestler GUNTHER. Meanwhile, the most reigns in the history of the original WWE World Heavyweight Championship belongs to Edge, aka AEW's Adam Copeland, with 7. And of the longest title reigns in the history of the WWE Title, two of them are from wrestlers born outside the US, including Puerto Rican wrestler Pedro Morales, who's 1,027 reign as champion has allowed him to remain 5th on the all-time combined title reigns list, despite winning the WWE Championship only once.

And of course, the biggest records of them all remain held by the late-Bruno Sammartino, another foreign wrestler. Though Sammartino eventually became an American citizen, he was born in Italy, immigrating to the United States after he and his family survived World War II and the German occupation. In fact, many considered Sammartino's popularity with Italian Americans as a catalyst for making him one of the biggest stars of the early days of wrestling. Whatever it was, Sammartino's two reigns as WWE Champion in the 1960s and 1970s remain the benchmark for the champion, even after Roman Reigns' historic reign in the early 2020s. All told, Sammartino spent 4,040 days as champion, 1,855 days more than Hulk Hogan's six combined reigns, and his first reign remains the longest reign of WWE Championship ever, at 2,803 days.