20 Biggest Myths WWE Tells About Its History

8. Bob Backlund's Lengthy Reign

The Myth: Bob Backlund’s first WWE title reign was the second-longest in history.

The Truth: Everyone’s favorite living Howdy Doody officially reigned from 20 February, 1979 to 26 December, 1983. Within that span, however, a lot of fishy stuff happened.

Backlund was defeated by Antonio Inoki in Tokushima, Japan, and he lost a subsequent rematch 6 days later. However, the title was vacated following that match.

Despite losing TWICE to Inoki in one week, Backlund defeated Bobby Duncum in a Texas Death Match to regain the championship. Apparently a tiny baby Vince Russo booked this, I don't know.

WWE doesn't recognize Inoki’s reign on the grounds that he vacated the title, but that's asinine; brother vacated it after winning the REMATCH under sketchy circumstances, but that doesn't erase his squeaky clean win over Opie the night before.

Like, when Daniel Bryan beat Randy Orton and the title was subsequently held in Abeyance™, that didn't mean Randy Orton was never champion.

And so, if we bisect Bobby B’s reign to account for all this foofarah, his longest clocks in at 1,470 days, just four days short of Hulk Hogan’s.