What were you doing in your twenties? Were you in school, working towards a degree? Or were you working your way up the ranks at your job? Maybe you were discovering the party scene and enjoying the nightlife. Either way, while we’ve experienced a great part of our lives (my twenties were my best time), some of the WWE Superstars were writing history all over again.
The talents have been evolving and constantly changing the game in the Championship contention. With the WWE Championship, we haven’t seen one of today’ talents fall in the youngest category. Not yet anyway, and it can change at the drop of a dime.
In this top five, all the men listed were in their twenties when they captured their first WWF/E Championships. Three of those men were just twenty-six when they won the WWF/E Championship and were separated by months, even days of their age. Let’s take a look at the youngest WWE Champions in history.
5. The Undertaker
Taker captured his first WWF Championship at Survivor Series 1991. He was just twenty-six at the time and was shy of his twenty-seventh birthday when he won the Championship. To be technical (as there are three men who were twenty-six on this list), Taker was twenty-six years, eight months and three days old.
Taker won the Championship from Hulk Hogan thanks to Ric Flair, but would lose it to Hogan six days later at Tuesday in Texas. WWF President Jack Tunney would vacate the title, as both matches had controversial endings. He would then award the Championship to Flair when he won the 1992 Royal Rumble.
4. The Rock
The Rock would win the WWE Championship in controversial fashion at Survivor Series 1998. The “Deadly Games” tournament took place at the fall classic, which was put in place to crown a new WWF Champion as McMahon had stripped Stone Cold Steve Austin of it a month before. The Rock would take on Mankind, who was McMahon’s ally going into the match.
A double turn occurred as The Rock aligned himself with the McMahons, thus creating the notorious Corporation stable. The Rock was twenty-six years, six months and three days old when he won the WWF Championship taking over Taker by two months age-wise.
3. Yokozuna
Yokozuna won the WWF Championship from Bret Hart at WrestleMania IX in 1993 following a path of destruction he would left in his wake. Yokozuna barreled through the roster, leading him to a win in the 1993 Royal Rumble, and thus earning a Championship match at WrestleMania. It was short-lived as Hulk Hogan would come to Hart’s aid and win the Championship himself just minutes later.
Regardless, Yokozuna’s win made him the second youngest WWF Champion at twenty-six years, six months, and two days old. The Rock would miss this record by one day and that was how extremely close in age the wrestlers were when the captured the top prize.
2. Brock Lesnar
Brock Lesnar came onto the scene in 2002 and wasted no time in leaving a path of destruction. His rise to the top culminated at SummerSlam in 2002 when he challenged the Rock for the WWE Championship, which was due to him winning King of the Ring earlier that summer. Lesnar became the youngest WWE Champion, winning the Championship from The Rock at SummerSlam 2002.
He was just twenty-five years old at the time. He also held another record by winning the WWE Championship one hundred and twenty-six days after he debuted for the company. It was only second to Flair, who captured the Championship after one hundred and thirteen days into his debut.
1. Randy Orton
While Orton is in the top five youngest WWE Champions, he is, in fact, the youngest World Heavyweight Champion. Orton faced off against Chris Benoit in 2004 at SummerSlam, winning the Championship at just twenty-four years old.
This lead to Evolution turning on the youngster and Orton would lose the World Heavyweight Championship to Triple H twenty-eight days later. Orton wouldn’t win the WWE Championship until 2007 at twenty-seven, which still counted amongst the youngest of Champions. The irony in all of this was that Orton was the last World Heavyweight Champion when the Championship was retired in 2013.
