Roman Reigns v Brock Lesnar: A look back at WWE title unifications ahead of WrestleMania 38

On Sunday April 3, Brock Lesnar will battle Roman Reigns in a title vs. title unification match in the main event of the second night of WrestleMania.

It’s not been made clear exactly what will happen once the WWE Title and Universal Championship are ‘unified’ and whether it’s a tagline just for this massive match, or a permanent plan for one world champion going forward. 

GiveMeSport looks back at the previous occasions when WWE merged their major titles into one outright champion. 

WCW United States Championship into Intercontinental Championship 

2001

At the culmination of the Invasion angle, WWE decided there was no long a need for the United States Championship – a title seen as WCW’s ‘mid-card’ title – and as a further nail in their former competition’s coffin made a unification match at Survivor Series. The night was already the setting for the final blow-off in WWE’s war with The Alliance and included the famous all-star main event that saw Team WWF finally defeat Team Alliance to end the angle. The tone was set, however, earlier in the evening when Intercontinental Champion Edge defeated United States champ Test and win ‘both’ belts. More of a removal than a unification – as the Intercontinental Title remained the name – the US strap stayed on the side-lines until 2003 when Stephanie McMahon reintroduced it as a SmackDown only belt following the brand spilt. 

World Championship Championship and WWE Championship into Undisputed WWE Champioship 

2001 

Having run WCW and The Alliance out of the company at Survivor Series, Ric Flair then took over as Vince McMahon’s storyline equal partner in the company and both wanted one world champion. Therefore, a four-man tournament was set for Vengeance 2001 to crown a new