10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About the Universal Championship
6. It Was Barely Defended On TV
The Universal Championship was supposed to be the centrepiece of WWE’s flagship show, but for long stretches, it was barely even there.
Brock Lesnar’s reign from 2017 to 2018 lasted over 500 days, yet he showed up so infrequently that fans started wondering if WWE had just forgotten about the belt entirely. Raw’s supposed top prize was missing from television for weeks at a time, leaving full-time stars to battle over secondary titles while the Universal Championship felt more like a prop than an actual championship.
WWE justified this by calling Lesnar a special attraction, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating. The same issue popped up again with Goldberg and Roman Reigns, both of whom had reduced schedules that left the title collecting dust. In 2023, the belt was defended just five times, and after being unified with the WWE Championship, it left a massive gap at the top of WWE’s biggest shows.
For a championship that was meant to define an era, it spent an awful lot of time off-screen... something WWE would rather you didn't think about.