10 Longest Gaps Ever Between WWE World Title Matches

5. The Rock - 10 Years, 5 Months, 2 Days

The Rock CM Punk Royal Rumble 2013
WWE.com

2002 was also the year in which The Rock competed in what for all the world seemed as though was going to be his final World Championship match in WWE.

In the main event of one of the greatest SummerSlams in history, The Rock lost his title and passed the torch to The Next Big Thing at the time, Brock Lesnar. Rocky subsequently swanned off to Hollywood to become the biggest box office star in western cinema.

The Rock returned to the squared circle at WrestleMania XXVIII to defeat John Cena in a Once in a Lifetime match. It was so successful it necessitated a repeat. But how to make the biggest match in professional wrestling even bigger? The answer was to insert the WWE Championship into the mix, and to do so Rocky had to win the title from CM Punk at the 2013 Royal Rumble.

That match meant that the man known to his loved ones as Dwayne Johnson went almost 10 and a half years between WWE Championship matches, losing to a Paul Heyman Guy in 2002 before defeating a Paul Heyman Guy in 2013. The Rock keeps himself in such great shape, with his 4AM gym calls, that a return to the ring in 2023 isn't impossible.

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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.