With 2022 now in the history books, fans are filled up with memories from what were 12 insanely fun months of professional wrestling, to say the least.
Throughout the year, many historic title reigns concluded... while some began anew. However, there were reigns that could barely be remembered by the fans, now that the year is over. No matter if it's WWE, All Elite Wrestling, New Japan Pro Wrestling, or Impact Wrestling, they've all had underwhelming title reigns this past year, that many wrestling fans may have simply forgotten about. Let's take a look at a few of those championship tenures.
"The All Mighty" Bobby Lashley had among the most dominant runs in all of WWE in 2021, when he reigned as the WWE Champion for most of the year. Unfortunately, his reign in 2022 proved to be the complete opposite.
At that year's Royal Rumble premium live event, Lashley shocked the world when he defeated Brock Lesnar to win the most prestigious prize in the industry. Even though the victory came after the assist from Paul Heyman and Roman Reigns, it seemed as if Bobby was once again destined for a lengthy title reign. However, he lost the belt back to Lesnar during the following month's Elimination Chamber, after being pulled mid-match due to a real-life concussion.
Speaking of Brock, WWE's resident beast has had a pair of immensely forgettable world title reigns in this past year. First, he surprisingly won the WWE Championship at the Day 1 PLE, after his scheduled bout with Roman Reigns for the WWE Universal Championship had to be scrapped at the last moment, due to the champion testing positive for COVID-19.
Lesnar lost the title a few weeks later to Bobby Lashley, only to win it back at the following month's Elimination Chamber, as previously mentioned. The former UFC Champion's second title reign of the year didn't last long as well, as he once again lost the strap at WrestleMania 38 to the Head of the Table in a title-versus-title match.
After reigning as the AEW World Tag Team Champions for the majority of 2021, there were zero plans for the Young Bucks to win the gold again in 2022. However, following Jeff Hardy's DUI suspension from All Elite Wrestling, Nick & Matt Jackson saw themselves as the promotion's first-ever two-time tag champs, as they defeat a Boy & His Dinosaur (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) at Road Rager 2022.
Their time as champions was very brief, as the duo dropped the titles to Swerve In Our Glory (Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland) just four weeks later, in a three-way tag match also consisting of Puh-Puh-Puh-Powerstarks (Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Hobbs) of Team Taz.
After the NXT UK Champion Ilja Dragunov had to relinquish his title during the summer, due to an injury, a tournament was immediately announced to crown the new champion. The eventual winner was Tyler Bate, who was also the inaugural champion back in 2016.
However, following WWE's decision to shut down NXT UK {in lieu of the upcoming NXT Europe} the company made him appear on NXT 2.0 as the champion, while the NXT UK tapings of him winning the title had yet to air. This was done to rush the announcement for Bate versus Bron Breakker at the World's Collide event, where the latter won to unify his NXT Championship with the NXT UK title.
Even though the working relationship between Impact Wrestling and AEW is nowhere near to the point it was in 2021, the companies still see talent briefly jumping around. Such is also the case of Frankie Kazarian, who has been appearing for the Anthem-owned promotion from time to time.
At the Bound for Glory 2022 PPV, Kazarian defeated "Speedball" Mike Bailey to begin his fifth reign with the X-Division Championship. However, the reign didn't last long, as Kaz would announce on an October episode of Impact Wrestling that he'll be invoking Option C, resulting in him relinquishing the belt, in order to challenge "Walking Weapon" Josh Alexander for his Impact World Heavyweight championship... in which he was unsuccessful.
In February 2022, the inaugural Finn Balor defeated Damian Priest to win his first-ever WWE United States Championship. However, his run barely saw him or the title getting booked, to the point where the title was not even featured at WrestleMania.
After weeks of a lack of opponents, the inaugural WWE Universal champion lost his title to Austin Theory on the April 18th episode of WWE Raw. The run neither helped Finn nor the belt and the Irish star soon turned on the fans, later joining {then taking over} Judgment Day.
While Seiya Sanada's time in New Japan Pro Wrestling {since his debut in 2016} has seen him having multiple breakout performances, the Los Ingobernables De Japon member has always been overshadowed by the likes of Evil, Tetsuya Naito and Shingo Takagi. This changed in 2022, when the star defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi to win the IWGP US Championship at the New Year's Golden Series.
However, luck, unfortunately, was not on Sanada's side... as he had to relinquish the title just 49 days later, due to an orbital fracture he had suffered during his New Japan Cup bout against Will Ospreay.
Similar to 2021 when he made his triumphant return to professional wrestling, CM Punk was once again the talk of the town in 2022... but this time, it was for all the wrong reasons.
At the 2022 Double or Nothing PPV, Punk won the AEW World Heavyweight Championship off "Hangman" Adam Page in what was indeed a feel-good moment. However, just days later, it was revealed that the Straight-Edge Superstar had suffered a broken toe and would be out of action. He returned a few weeks later, but lost his title within minutes to the interim champion Jon Moxley. Punk did defeat Moxley at All Out to recapture his title, but that reign also ended immediately, due to the two-time champion suffering torn triceps and getting suspended, due to his brawl with The Elite.
After Tony Khan bought Ring of Honor earlier in the year, fans were surprised by the announcement that the legendary Minoru Suzuki will be challenging for the ROH World Television Title at the Supercard of Honor PPV. At the event, Suzuki picked up a short victory over Rhett Titus to win his first title of the historic promotion.
However, Minoru would lose the belt just over a week later to Samoa Joe on AEW Dynamite, in what was a dream match for many.
At this point, it seems insane to think that at the start of 2022, Cody Rhodes was not only in AEW... but was also a three-time TNT Champion in his final reign.
Rhodes won the title at the end of 2021 at the Rampage Holiday Bash special, but was soon sidelined due to testing positive for COVID-19. After returning, the Son of the Son of a Plumber faced the interim champion, Sammy Guevara, in a title unification ladder match and lost to the young star, as he headed for WWE.
Source: the Sportster
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