Countless wrestlers have won titles on their debuts, but it’s rare that companies hand the top prizes to anyone that early on. It does happen though, and others don’t actually have to wait as long as you might remember. There’s a ton of variety here, but there are some ground rules to go over first.
Firstly, only TV matches were taken into account when thrashing out who won World Titles the quickest. House show loops weren’t taken into consideration, and neither were pre or post-television dark matches. Yep, only the matches workers had that made air have been counted towards their totals.
Next, only a wrestler’s first reign with a belt was taken into account. So, for example, Roman Reigns returning to win the Universal strap at Payback 2020 was technically his first bout back (and under a new character), but it doesn’t count because he’d held the gold before. Also, workers closer to the beginning of their runs with a promotion were generally favoured.
That’s key too; jumps between AEW > WWE or WWE > TNA classed as hard resets for someone. They began a new match count before grabbing the bigger titles by switching employers, basically.
OK, enough with the rules. You’ll be surprised by some of the names included!
Number Of TV Matches:Â 29
The Great Khali won the old version of WWE’s World Heavyweight Title on his 29th televised match with the company. His first came against Funaki on the 21 April 2006 SmackDown. After that, the giant had to wait until the 20 July 2007 episode to win the then-vacant belt in a 20-man Battle Royal (already featuring Shannon Moore, for some reason).
Most of Khali’s matches around this time were basic squashes, but he also worked extensively with The Undertaker on house show loops. Bet ‘The Deadman’ was positively thrilled about that one. Poor guy was probably getting flashbacks to Giant Gonzalez in 1993.
It was actually a slight surprise that Khali ranked so low on this list.