10 Fastest Pushes In WWE History

In the WWE—according to storylines, at least—winning a world title is the absolute pinnacle of a wrestler’s career.

But for Finn Bálor, if he wins the WWE Universal Championship at SummerSlam, he’ll have achieved that milestone within just 27 days of his main roster debut. Granted, he’s been grafting away in developmental for the better part of two years. But in terms of his full WWE career, it’ll mark one of the quickest rises in company history.

Or will it?

Winning a top-tier title within the space of a month certainly sounds likes one of the fastest pushes we’ve ever seen, but how does it rank amongst its predecessors? And which of these rises to the top of the mountain have been the absolute quickest in WWE history?

Well, before we answer that, we need set some ground rules. While there’s no objective definition for what constitutes a “push” in wrestling, the time between a wrestler’s on-screen debut and their maiden world title win is as good a gauge as any. And let’s say that we can include re-debuts, so that those returning under a different guise are also up for consideration.

Under these criteria, there’s surprisingly no room for Goldberg and his 174-day journey to the gold, or Brock Lesnar’s 160-day rampage to the title. Instead, there are some rather less-than-expected findings, as we count down ten of the fastest trips to the top in WWE history.

There was always going to be at least one Samoan on this list. This may not have been the one you expected, but it’s a Samoan nonetheless.

Yokozuna’s first appearance in the WWE came at a WWF Superstars taping, way back in October 1992. There, he squashed (rather literally) an unfortunate Bill Jordan in less than two minutes. And within six short months, he’d find himself celebrating, albeit briefly, his first WWE Championship victory after beating Bret Hart at WrestleMania IX.

Now, if we were to go by the date that the Superstars taping was filmed, Lesnar would have beaten Yokozuna to 10th spot on this list. However, the show didn’t air for a good few weeks, and for the purposes of this list, we’ll be using a wrestler’s TV debut where possible, since this marks their official “unveiling,” if you will.

So by the time we got our first glimpse of the gargantuan Yokozuna on 31 October 1992, it would be just 155 days before he won the gold on 4 April 1993.

Being pushed so soon clearly didn’t affect Yokozuna too badly, though, as he was back on top just a few months later after securing a second WWF Championship.