10 Longest Reigning IWGP Heavyweight Champions Ever

8. Tatsumi Fujinami - 306 Days

Tatsumi Fujinami IWGP
njpwworld.com

On 4 March 1991, WWE Hall of Famer Tatsumi Fujinami achieved the first goal on what became a real slice of history just 17 days later. On that night in Hiroshima, Fujinami defeated Big Van Vader to win his fourth IWGP Heavyweight Championship before going on to defeat Ric Flair in Tokyo on 21 March to become the first man to hold the IWGP and NWA world titles at the same time.

Fujinami would lose the NWA strap back to 'The Nature Boy' less than two months later but nine months passed before the IWGP title could be ripped from his grasp. For 306 days, Tatsumi Fujinami was on top of the mountain, eventually dropping the belt to Riki Choshu on 4 January 1992.

Fujinami only defended the title twice in those nine months and on both occasions the challenger was Masahiro Chono. The innovator of the Dragon Sleeper won the title on two more occasions before becoming president of New Japan in 1999, a post he held for five years before being ousted in 2005. He left the company altogether in 2006.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.