Youth And The World Championship: How 10 Top Wrestling Companies Book New Stars

3. World Wrestling Entertainment

As ever, WWE makes things tricky owing to a combination of the lineage of their original world title that dates back to 1963, the various 'Eras' that the company has gone through, and the multiple additional World Titles they've had along the way (World Heavyweight, ECW and Universal).

Across the company's history, the average age of a new World Champion (WWE, World Heavyweight and Universal Championships only because no one treated the WWECW Title as a legit World Championship) is 33.

The early pre-Hulkamania days were particularly insightful with two out of eight new champions being over 40 and four being under 30. 54-year-old Vince McMahon’s brief 1999 WWE Championship run bumps the Attitude Era to 33, the Ruthless Aggression era really did set the landscape for years to come with fourteen new World Champions with only one over 40, and the maligned PG Era averaged 32, despite 40-year-old Mark Henry.

As for the heavily-lauded 'New Era' that we are currently in, it has generated ten new main eventers on paper, but that stat includes very established non-WWE names in Finn Bálor, Kevin Owens and AJ Styles and some champions of “mixed” reception in Jinder Mahal and Braun Strowman.