Former WWE wrestler CM Punk holds the record of the longest reigning WWE champion of the modern era, as he held the WWE championship from November 20, 2011 to January 27, 2013 for a total of 434 days. CM Punk’s nearly 15-month title reign is the sixth longest WWE title reign of all-time, behind Pedro Morales [1,027 days], Bruno Sammartino [1,237 days], Hulk Hogan [1,474 days], Bob Backlund [2,135 days] and Bruno Sammartino again [2,803 days].

With CM Punk exiting the company in an ugly way, WWE doesn’t want to make reference to him as the longest reigning WWE champion of the modern era. As a matter of fact, they don’t even want to reference CM Punk at all, hence why they’re removing all CM Punk signs from their live events, and asking fans who wear CM Punk-related merchandise to their events to either change, or leave.

The belief is that Roman Reigns will walk out of WrestleMania 31 as the new WWE champion, defeating Brock Lesnar. It’s also no secret that WWE wants to make Roman Reigns the next John Cena. Well, the longest reigning WWE champion of the modern era before CM Punk was, in fact, John Cena. After Cena won the WWE championship for the third time in his career, he held the title for 385 days before an injury forced him to relinquish the title. However, at that time, WWE had no plans to have John Cena drop the title any time soon.

Like CM Punk, Brock Lesnar walked out of WWE before his contract had expired back in 2004. Lesnar had just signed a big money extension with WWE, but then decided that he no longer wanted to be a professional wrestler soon thereafter. Just two years earlier, Lesnar had become the youngest WWE champion in history, winning the title when he was just 25 years old. Four months after Lesnar departed from WWE in 2004, WWE wanted to erase Lesnar’s record as the youngest champion in history, so they had Randy Orton win the world heavyweight championship when he was just 24. Now, the two titles Orton and Lesnar won were different, but WWE did portray Orton as the youngest champion ever in the history of the company, replacing Lesnar.

With WWE wanting to make Roman Reigns their next big star, and, for the time being, wanting to erase all of CM Punk’s records, Reigns could be the man to break CM Punk’s record as the longest reigning WWE champion of the modern era, whether fans like it or not, which could be a mistake on WWE’s part, but time will tell.

HE DIDNT FUCKING MURDER HIS FAMILY, WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO PRETEND HE NEVER EXISTED??

Dead chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill

It the warrior and Savage treatment x2. I will try to undercut everything he has done and make his impact a lesser importance. Thing is they probably be able to succeed with that. Maybe not with hardcore fans, but the causal fans they most likely.

So 430+ days of Roman Reigns as champion. Oh joy.

^ If they turn Reigns heel like Punk did in the middle of his title reign(pun intended) and book Roman like TNA did with Lashley, I think it would be a great title reign.

Ok the guy left the company in an ugly way, true. Then again, so did Bret, yet they never stopped referring to him for the next decade, whenever they were able to. (everytime someone used the Sharpshooter for example, or when they referred any of "The Greatest Tag Teams of all time"). They should just let it go and avoid screwing something up, considering CM Punk "may" return in the future, like all others did.

Might as well have it be Cena. They're going to put him over Reigns anyways

^^^ Not if a Reigns is get played to be the new Cena. The reign is gonna be boring as fuck. Which also means next years MITB winner will fail the cash in.

Fuck it, keep it on Lesnar. It's not like they have to think of a storyline for him more than like twice a year anyway

I don't think this will actually happen.

You never know with how Childish Vince and HHH can be.

You could only do this with someone that's massively over anyway...so that's either Cena or Brian, really.

They tried to bury Bryan last year so i dont see them all of a sudden wanting to make him the longest champion in modern history.

How'd they try to bury Daniel Bryan last year? He was in the main storyline for months, he had an awesome feud with Bray Wyatt, he almost won the elimination Chamber match, he had two wrestlemania matches at WM30, won the title and ended the show.

How is that being buried? You wanna know what being buried is, you should go ask the jobbers. Bet you anyone from the company would've loved to be in the spot Daniel Bryan was in. So don't go saying he got buried, because that's just stupid to say. Hell Daniel Bryan was still over as fuck when he was GM the other week.

Tried to bury Bryan? What show were you watching?

Were you not watching how he was portrayed to the casual audience from postSummerslam to after the Royal Rumble?

Mr. Money In The Bank wrote:

How'd they try to bury Daniel Bryan last year? He was in the main storyline for months, he had an awesome feud with Bray Wyatt, he almost won the elimination Chamber match, he had two wrestlemania matches at WM30, won the title and ended the show.

How is that being buried? You wanna know what being buried is, you should go ask the jobbers. Bet you anyone from the company would've loved to be in the spot Daniel Bryan was in. So don't go saying he got buried, because that's just stupid to say. Hell Daniel Bryan was still over as fuck when he was GM the other week.

Jobbers cant be buried, because they're just that....jobbers. They're enhancement talent, they're there to put over the midcard and main event guys above them in the pecking order. 

That being said, you dont have to lose matches all the time to consider it a burial. They tried to pitch to the main audience that Bryan couldnt win the big one, he didnt have it, he was a "B+ player" even though he was doing 3 on 1 handicap matches every week and WINNING. Even then they still had Authority promos trying to kill his momentum. Not to mention he was in 4 straight main events and all of them ended in some kind of controversy. If it werent for the fans rejecting the Batista push, Daniel Bryan more than likely would of never been in the Mania main event. They tried to make him look incredibly weak for a good while there, and it backfired. And dont even get me started on that failed attempt to make him a heel with the Wyatts.

Dead thinks anyone he likes gets buried when they lose any match. He's retarded.

So is anyone who thinks Bryan got "buried".

There was a brief period where the booking seemed to indicate a complete lack of awareness as to how over Bryan was. I don't think the promos were meant to bury Bryan (after all, coming from a hated figure like Triple H they just made people want to see him succeed that much more). However, leaving him out of the rumble and putting him in the Wyatts all felt like moves meant to stall his momentum (presumably for another Sheamus match at WM). However, once the backlash to that hit home, the shift was completely in the opposite direction and he got pushed to the moon.

Daniel Bryan was buried.

By his wife.

She done ruined him.