20 Days That Changed WWE Forever
And wrestling would never be the same...
It's been more than 54 years since the company now known as WWE was officially born. Though Roderick "Jess" McMahon and Toots Mondt had promoted NWA shows in the New York area under the Capitol Wrestling Corporation brand, it was in 1963 when McMahon's son, Vincent James, teamed with Mondt to officially break off and form their own promotion.
Buddy Rogers, a major draw in the northeast, lost the NWA World Heavyweight Championship to Lou Thesz on 24 January 1963, but the match was controversial - it was a one-fall bout in a time when most championship matches were contested under two-out-of-three falls rules. That gave McMahon and Mondt some legitimacy in recognizing Rogers as the champion of the promotion they founded, the World Wide Wrestling Federation.
Since then, the company has changed champions over a hundred times, changed names a few times, and changed owners once - but it's also risen to become the most dominant pro wrestling organization in the history of the sport. While it's been 54 years, it wasn't always a gradual process.
Some days brought far more development to the company - and to wrestling on the whole - than others...
20. 17 May 1963 - Bruno Sammartino Wins The WWWF Championship
According to WWE's official canon, Buddy Rogers won the WWWF Championship on 25 April 1963, winning a tournament in Rio de Janeiro. No such tournament ever took place, of course, and Rogers was champion because of his NWA Title reign and his ability as a draw. Still, his title reign didn't last long - less than a month later, he defended the belt against a 27-year-old rising star named Bruno Sammartino.
The match only lasted 48 seconds. Rogers claimed for the rest of his life that he had suffered a heart attack a week prior and had to leave the hospital to compete. Sammartino and others questioned the claims. Regardless, Sammartino overwhelmed Rogers on 17 May 1963 to win the title and become the company's first true superstar.
During Sammartino's reign - which lasted for seven years and eight months - he sold out Madison Square Garden on myriad occasions and established a formula for the way the WWWF did business; namely, with a babyface champion on top and numerous heel challengers chasing him.