10 Shortest WWE World Championship Title Reigns

6. Daniel Bryan

dean ambrose seth rollins
WWE.com

Length of WWE Championship Reign: 5:25

Oh, now we’re getting into the good stuff, the guys who won and then lost their titles in the blink of an eye. Break out the stopwatch!

WrestleMania 30 might have been the culmination of Daniel Bryan’s improbable rise to the top of WWE, but he had a crowning achievement the previous summer, when he toppled John Cena at SummerSlam 2013 to win the WWE Championship. It was an epic moment, with all the fanfare and celebration you’d expect considering how strongly fans had rallied behind him.

And then Randy Orton strode out, Money in the Bank contract in hand. Bryan saw him coming and was ready, but he didn’t factor in special referee Triple H, who dropped Daniel with a Pedigree, allowing Orton to pick up the scraps and pin him just 5-plus minutes after winning the title.

Bryan would win the title back four weeks later, but as you saw earlier, his second reign would only last a day.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.