The longest WCW Television Championship reign of the modern era by far, Steve Austin won the belt from Bobby Eaton on June 3rd 1991. His run would last for 329 days, before being ended by Barry Windham almost a year later in a two out of three falls match. This was long, long before the man became known as Stone Cold and changed the wrestling business of course. During his record breaking run as champion Austin would join the Dangerous Alliance, led by Paul E. Dangerously (or Paul Heyman, to you and I). In many ways, Austin in 1991 was perfect for the Television title. He was a top quality in-ring worker who carried with him a natural toughness (not unlike Arn Anderson), but was possibly lacking in character chops and crowd support for the upper echelons of the card. If we were to take into account the entire history of the belt, from 1974 to 2000, the record for the longest reign is held by Anderson's Four Horseman stablemate, Tully Blanchard, at 353 days. Austin's 329 day run would come in at fourth on the all-time list. Still, holding a title for such a long time in the television era of professional wrestling is nothing to be sniffed at.
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.
