10 Longest Gaps Ever Between WWE World Title Matches

9. John 'Bradshaw' Layfield - 7 Years, 7 Months, 22 Days

JBL Eddie Guerrero Judgment Day 2004
WWE.com

When Bradshaw shed his rough, beer-drinkin' Texan skin to become John 'Bradshaw' Layfield in 2004, the wrestling world was somewhat taken aback. Was the SmackDown main event scene really so shallow as to necessitate the promotion of a journeyman tag team wrestler to the position of top heel?

At Judgment Day 2004, JBL challenged Eddie Guerrero for the WWE Championship in what was one of the bloodiest matches of the modern era. JBL won the match via disqualification, and went on to defeat Eddie for the title at a later date, holding the strap for 280 days before losing to John Cena at WrestleMania 21.

You have to travel back to a very different time and a very different Bradshaw to locate his previous World Title shot. The year was 1996, WWE was the WWF, and JBL was Justin 'Hawk' Bradshaw as he challenged Shawn Michaels for the WWF Championship on an episode of Superstars.

Michaels won the match, and JBL spent the next seven years in the middle of the card working primarily in tag competition alongside Faarooq before getting his career-defining break in 2004.

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Contributor
Contributor

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.