10 REALLY Long WWE Title Reigns That Didn’t Work

7. Gillberg - Light Heavyweight Champion (448 Days)

Gillberg 600
WWE

There was something fittingly troublesome about about WWE's most on-the-nose parody amassing a record 'streak' similar to the hugely popular original.

Bill Goldberg was a bonafide phenomenon in WCW and just about the last thing Vince McMahon had left to poke fun at as his company surged ahead in the Monday Night Wars with 1998 drawing to close. Duane Gill's slavering repaint winning the Light Heavyweight Title wasn't even rooted in complete farce despite the reign amounting to less than that during his stewardship. His fluke win over then-Champion Christian came during the midst of a miniature push for his J.O.B Squad cronies, but the stable had long disbanded by the time he came to lose the title to restart a division long thought dead by virtue of his reign.

The prize wasn't defended once in in WWE in 1999, an inexcusable statistic considering the Crash TV mentality of the time facilitating 15 separate Tag Team Championship switches elsewhere on the cards. It spoke to Gillberg's inadequacies as a long-standing titleholder, that it in turn dragged the title into the gutter before choice stints with Essa Rios and Dean Malenko briefly returned it to relevance.

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Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation for 10 years. Alongside the production of daily written, audio and video content covering WWE and AEW, he also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot on the UK's wrestling podcast charts with over 10,000 episodes and 70,000,000 total downloads. He also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House!, Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast, and has guested on long-running Sunderland AFC podcast Wise Men Say. With WhatCulture, he has provided in-person coverage of some of the biggest pay-per-views and Premium Live Events in wrestling history, including WrestleMania, Survivor Series, All In & Double Or Nothing in destinations such as New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. He has also been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana, 411Mania and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in music and culture magazines The Crack, Pilot as well as Sunderland AFC's premiere fanzine A Love Supreme. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it every other Saturday at the Stadium Of Light, and at Cribs gigs nationwide.