WWE Officially Retires Major Championship

WWE

WWE has officially retired a major championship, with the official website page updated following WrestleMania 41.

The main event of WrestleMania 41 saw John Cena defeat Cody Rhodes for the Undisputed WWE Championship.

This iteration of the championship has an interesting history, with Roman Reigns notably unifying the WWE Championship and Universal Championship after defeating Brock Lesnar for the WWE Title at WrestleMania 38 in 2022.

While Reigns wrestled as the WWE Undisputed Universal Champion, the “Universal” aspect was dropped from the title’s name after Cody Rhodes finished his story and won the gold at WrestleMania 40.

Despite this championship being represented by one belt since June 2023, WWE.com still listed the Universal Championship as an active and separate title from the WWE Championship, with Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes listed as holding both titles.

This has now changed, with the website listing the Universal Championship as “retired.”

You can see a screenshot of the updated page in the tweet below, and how it looked before Rhodes’ Undisputed Championship loss in the tweet before that.

The latter page lists Rhodes’ Universal Championship reign as 378 days long, meaning the company officially recognises Rhodes’ undisputed title reign as the final Universal Championship reign.

The first Universal Champion was crowned at SummerSlam 2016, with Finn Balor defeating Seth Rollins to become the first holder of what was considered to be a world title.

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Here's how the page looked before Cody Rhodes lost the Undisputed WWE Championship 👇 pic.twitter.com/HOMdoxjkfH

— WrestleTalk (@WrestleTalk_TV) April 22, 2025

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• universal
• champion
• Cody Rhodes
• wwe

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