Opinion: Ranking the effectiveness of all of the Universal Champions

#3: Finn Balor

The win was bittersweet for Balor.

Finn Balor came to the main roster as one of the most popular NXT superstars of all-time.

He was the longest-reigning NXT Champion with a run of 293 days.

Bobby Roode is second with a reign of 203 days.

Since he came to the main roster with so much hype, a lot was expected from Balor.

His status as top dog was confirmed when he went on to face Seth Rollins at Summerslam in 2016 for the right to become the first-ever Universal Champion.

Balor won a back-and-forth match but was seriously injured during the match.

Because of the injury, he was forced to relinquish the belt on Raw the next night.

Since his reign lasted less than a day, people are probably thinking 'why isn't his reign the worst?'

Well, it wasn't for two reasons.

The first being that it marked Vince approving someone under 200 pounds as his primary champion.

Vince is well known for loving muscle-bound wrestlers who are jacked or really big like Ultimate Warrior back in the day.

Trusting a smaller guy with the top prize in the company signaled a possible sign of change for the WWE.

Another reason why his extremely short reign was significant was that he was the poster boy for NXT.

While a lot of things have changed for NXT stars on the main roster, Balor was treated like a star in NXT and one when he first joined Raw.

Perhaps that's what has soured Vince on a lot of NXT call-ups, but for at least once, Vince respected a wrestler that had been groomed down in Triple H's NXT.

NXT is literally where the future of the WWE will come from, so entrusting the belt to a former NXT superstar instead of made man Rollins was a huge sign of potential things to come.

EFFECTIVENESS METER: 6 - DIDN'T DEFEND IT BUT HIS WINNING IT WAS MORE IMPORTANT SYMBOLICALLY.