Bully Ray On WWE Pushing the Length Of Roman Reigns’ Title Run, Retconning Bob Backlund’s Reign

Bully Ray recently weighed in on Roman Reigns’ run with the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship and how the company is retconning Bob Backlund’s reign to make way. Backlund has historically had one of the longest title reigns as recognized by WWE at 2,135 days. The reign was briefly interrupted by a loss to Antonio Inoki for in November of 1979 for a six-day run until Backland won it back, which technically splits the reign into two at 648 days and 1,470 days. However, WWE has recognized the reign as one full uninterrupted run until recently, when Corey Graves mentioned Inoki’s win on commentary and Michael Cole did not list Backlund’s reign among the longest in history.

Bully Ray opnined about the situation on a recent episode of Busted Open Radio, suggesting that WWE is doing so intentionally in order to push Reigns as approaching the top three longest reigns of all time. You can see highlights below, per Wrestling Inc:

On what WWE is trying to do with Reigns’ title run: “What WWE is trying to do, by recognizing [Antonio Inoki’s WWE Championship win in 1979] is, ‘Hey, we’ve gone back in our archives and upon doing so, we realize that Backlund’s championship run was broken one night in Japan by Antonio Inoki,’thus making it a little easier for Roman to creep up on [Hulk] Hogan and Bruno [Sammartino].”

On Inoki’s win being mentioned on commentary, but not Backlund’s title reign: “It’s very hard for me to buy into Michael Cole making a mistake. He’s a human being, it could’ve happened. But Michael Cole does so much research … he doesn’t make mistakes. The WWE doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes when they are trying to paint a picture of what they want you to believe. There’s a 1% chance that Michael Cole made a mistake.”

On WWE retconning Backlund’s title reign: “On this one, I kinda get it. For years I’ve been going [online] and I’m like, ‘Oh, there’s Bob Backlund’s name, he was my champion when I was growing up.’ I mean I can’t imagine how the staunch Bob Backlund fan feels about it right now about him possibly being ghosted… Can’t [retcon] Bruno, that’s absolute sacrilege, he’s number one. You can’t do it to Hogan, they know the name too well. But if we get rid of Backlund, enough people have forgotten about him already, thus we have Roman creeping up on Hogan and Bruno.”