Most of the time, when a WWE wrestler wins a championship, they only hold that one title, as defending their belt becomes their top priority, and trying to multitask would be a very difficult challenge.

However, there have been exceptions to this rule, and there have been occasions when wrestlers have held multiple titles simultaneously. Sometimes it could be a genuine lengthy reign for both of their belts, while other times, one or both of them is a short stint meant to progress a storyline.

Some double champions became that way because of a title unification match, and would end up holding multiple belts at once. Today, we’re going to look at the best wrestlers to accomplish this rare feat.

Unified championship reigns will be allowed on the list if they were represented by two physical belts. If one belt was immediately retired, like the Intercontinental Championship after its unification with the World Heavyweight Championship, in 2002, it will not be included. Wrestlers who immediately relinquished one title after winning another, like the Ultimate Warrior in 1990, will also not be featured.

9

Stone Cold Steve Austin

Gimme A Hell Yeah!

If you want to know why many, including me, consider Stone Cold Steve Austin to be the greatest wrestling superstar of all time, there are several reasons. One aspect that I think gets overlooked, though, is the fact that he is the first wrestler in history to hold multiple championships simultaneously on three separate occasions.

The first of these three instances happened in 1997, when Stone Cold won the tag titles with Dude Love by beating Owen Hart and the British Bulldog after Austin’s previous tag partner, Shawn Michaels, got suspended, then won the Intercontinental Championship off of Owen at Summerslam 1997. Fans who watched knew that Stone Cold was well on his way to superstardom when it happened.

The second reign happened a year later, when Austin, the reigning WWF Champion, won the tag titles with The Undertaker. This reign would not last long, but the fact that it happened meant that people who watched knew the Texas Rattlesnake was the biggest superstar wrestling had to offer.

Perhaps his most memorable reign came in 2001, when he and Triple H, as the Two-Man Power Trip, won the WWF Tag Team Titles while the two were WWF and Intercontinental Champions, respectively.

Even if you are not a fan of Stone Cold’s heel run from that year, you knew that the Two-Man Power Trip was a force to be reckoned with, and could have been more so had Triple H not gotten injured shortly afterwards.

8

The Miz

The Rise Of The Awesome One

When The Miz broke off from his tag partnership with John Morrison in 2009, the consensus was that it would be Morrison who would excel as the next top babyface on SmackDown while The Miz would linger as a midcard heel for life. Not only had The Miz proven to be Morrison’s equal throughout the rest of the year, but 2010 would prove that he was truly the breakout star of the duo.

While The Miz in 2010 is best remembered for his Money in the Bank victory and subsequent cash-in on Randy Orton that November, many fans, including myself, first saw something truly special about him when he became the only person in WWE history to carry three belts simultaneously.

Having already held the United States Championship since that fall, he would team up with The Big Show to form the partnership Show-Miz, hot on the heels of the success of the giant’s partnership with Chris Jericho the previous year. It was in this role that The Miz shined at what he does best: being an obnoxious and arrogant reality show has-been, defying everyone’s low expectations of him.

The Miz’s time with the three belts didn’t last that long. He’d lose the tag titles to the Hart Dynasty in April and then drop his United States title to Bret Hart during his brief in-ring comeback from that year. However, that brief stint as a triple champion truly set him up for greatness later that year, and throughout his decade-and-a-half with the company since.

7

John Cena

The Tag Team Champ Is Here!

John Cena’s runs with Tag Team championships have historically been very short, and famously, have always been with wrestlers he was feuding with at the time. Much of that can be traced back to his first run with the tag titles in 2007, when he won them with Shawn Michaels during the middle of Cena’s year-long run with the WWE Championship.

While the two worked surprisingly well as a team for the next two months, fans could always feel a sense of tension in the air. Michaels’ true ambition was to take the WWE Championship off Cena, and audiences were wondering if the Heatbreak Kid would turn his back on Cena to send him a message.

That would, surprisingly, never happen, and the two were tag team champions by the time they faced off at WrestleMania. Cena successfully defended his title against Michaels, but unfortunately, their luck as a unit ran out the next night on Raw after losing a battle royal thanks to HBK super-kicking his own partner out of the match.

This felt like more of a way to get Cena, WWE’s golden boy at the time, into the history books as a double champion than anything else, which is why it’s not higher up on the list. Still, it made for some entertaining television that inspired WWE to retry this story with other Cena rivals, to less success.

6

Becky Lynch

She’s The Man

No wrestler in WWE quite captured the public’s adoration in the late 2010s like Becky Lynch. She became the first female wrestler to reach popularity heights on par with the biggest male superstars, hence her nickname “The Man,” and nowhere was that more apparent than the night she became Becky Two-Belts.

Seeing Becky hold both the Raw and SmackDown women’s championships to close out the first women’s WrestleMania main event was truly a sight to behold, and if there was any doubt she was the biggest star in WWE, male or female, those were put to rest that night. That’s not even getting into the match and the build-up itself, which was one of the best in the history of women’s wrestling.

A match-up between Lynch and Ronda Rousey had become a dream match for WWE fans by the beginning of 2019, basically being seen by fans as a modern women’s version of Steve Austin vs. Mike Tyson, but with both actually wrestling this time.

Charlotte Flair’s entrance into the match shook things up further, especially when she won the SmackDown Women’s Title, ensuring both would be on the line that night.

The rest of her time holding both belts was fairly underwhelming, given that she dropped the SmackDown Women’s Title back to Flair a month later. Still, just because of how that night in New Jersey forever cemented her place in WWE history, I do think The Man is deserving of a spot on this list.

5

Daniel Bryan

YES! He Can

The unification of the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships in 2013 resulted in a brief one-year period during which wrestlers held both titles simultaneously. While 2014 was far from the best year for the championship, it played an important role in one of the greatest storylines in WWE history: Daniel Bryan’s “Yes” Movement.

Despite Bryan’s shock victory over John Cena at Summerslam 2013, he would immediately get screwed out of the title by Triple H, setting up clashes between the underdog from Aberdeen and The Game’s new heel faction, The Authority. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon would constantly scheme to keep the title away from Bryan and on their golden boy, Randy Orton.

However, the Yes movement would refuse to die, and after fans voiced their outrage at his exclusion from the Royal Rumble and the company rolling out the red carpet for Batista, WWE relented. Bryan would first take out Triple H in the opening match at WrestleMania, and punch his ticket to the main event where he’d topple both Orton and Batista for the belts in a euphoric conclusion to his story.

Like Becky Lynch, the biggest problem with Bryan’s reign is that it wasn’t particularly great outside of the initial victory, as it led to an underwhelming feud with Kane, followed by an injury that resulted in him being stripped of the belt. Still, Bryan’s victory and celebration in New Orleans is such a feel-good moment that I had to put him on the list for that alone.

4

Seth Rollins

The Architect Builds His Resume

Seth Rollins has been a WWE double champion on multiple occasions throughout his career. However, it was his first stint, when he held both the WWE and United States Championships simultaneously in 2015, that earned him a spot on this list.

It was well known at the time that Roman Reigns was the one WWE saw as the main-event breakout star of The Shield. But because fan reception towards Reigns in 2015 was less than positive, the company decided to give Seth Rollins the first bite at the main event apple.

He first won the WWE Championship by cashing in his Money in the Bank contract at WrestleMania 31 in what was dubbed “the heist of the century”. Later, he took the United States Championship off of John Cena at that year’s SummerSlam thanks to a surprise attack by talk show legend Jon Stewart.

Rollins would drop the US Title back to Cena a month later at Night of Champions, but he would successfully defend his WWE Championship against Sting in the latter’s second and final WWE match.

Even if he didn’t get everything he wanted that night, just having the opportunity to go after two living legends of the past and present proved why Rollins was a future legend himself.

3

Kurt Angle

Oh, It’s True!

In 1999 and 2000, the WWF briefly held the Eurocontinental Championship, a period when the Intercontinental and European Championships were held by the same wrestler and often defended together in a single match. Much of this period has been forgotten, with one notable exception, as it was the first taste of championship gold by one of the greatest stars of all time.

Only a few months after his debut at the end of 1999, Kurt Angle would capture the European Championship, and later that month, he was the Intercontinental Champion. This also meant that the Olympic hero would be heading into his first WrestleMania holding and defending two belts at once.

Luck was not in Angle’s favor that night, as he would end up losing both of his titles that night in a two-fall Triple Threat match despite not being on the receiving end of either fall, and he would not regain either of them back ever again. That being said, he didn’t really need them anymore, as it freed him up to chase a much bigger prize later that year: the WWF championship.

This early episode of Angle’s career is basically a footnote in the legacy of the Pittsburgh-born grappler, and it probably wouldn’t show up on a list of his top 10 moments. That being said, given how it basically signaled to fans that this rookie would be one of WWE’s premier stars over the next several years, it’s definitely earned its spot on this list.

2

Chris Jericho

Breaking The Walls Down

When the WWF acquired WCW in 2001, many of the latter organization’s wrestlers transitioned to the former company, kickstarting the Invasion storyline, and they brought WCW’s numerous titles with them. Once the angle ended, however, the company had to cut down on some of their excess titles, and what better way to do so than unifying them?

The biggest of the bunch, of course, ended up being the unification of the WWF and WCW World Championships at Vengeance 2001. A four-man tournament between Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Kurt Angle, and Chris Jericho, and it would be Y2J who stood tall after being the Brahma Bull and the Rattlesnake in one night, making him the self-proclaimed “first Undisputed WWF Champion” in history.​​

Jericho was the perfect man to unify the titles, given that he had history with both companies at that point, and it was a much-needed career boost for someone who was not quite at the main-event level for his first two years in the WWF. The rest of his reign was underwhelming, with him losing the titles to Triple H at WrestleMania X-8, and he would not win another world title in WWE until 2008.

Jericho is on this list for one reason, and that is that his historic victory that night in 2001 was a perfect metaphor for WWE becoming the undisputed king of professional wrestling ever since WCW’s buyout. And while challengers to the throne like TNA and AEW have emerged in the coming years, nobody has been able to topple the king.

1

Roman Reigns

Acknowledge Him

There was never really any doubt who would get the number one slot on this list. While many wrestlers have held multiple championships at once, only one can say that he held both of WWE’s active world championships for two whole years, and that is, of course, the Tribal Chief himself, Roman Reigns.

At Payback 2020, Reigns, coming back from a hiatus due to health concerns, would quickly take the Universal Championship off of Braun Strowman. For the next year and a half, the now-heel Big Dog would be on an unstoppable rampage, with all of it leading up to his encounter with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 38, in which he took the WWE Championship off the Beast Incarnate.

Roman would continue to carry both the WWE and Universal Championships wherever he went, and would put both titles on the line whenever he wrestled. For two whole years, nobody was able to stop him, which is why it was such an amazing moment watching Cody Rhodes “finish the story” at WrestleMania 40, leading to the permanent retirement of the Universal Championship.

Not only is Reigns totally deserving of being the greatest double champion WWE has ever had, but he is very much in the conversation for having the best title reign in WWE history.