Josh Alexander becomes longest-reigning IMPACT Wrestling World Champion

Josh Alexander has become the Longest-Reigning IMPACT Wrestling World Champion of All-Time. He claimed the title on April 23rd 2022, at the Rebellion pay-per-view, defeating Moose. He has now been the World Champion for 257 consecutive days, surpassing Bobby Roode’s 256-day World Championship run that started on October 26th 2011.

With his history-making title reign, Josh Alexander has established himself as one of the best pro wrestlers of all-time. It also marks an amazing, improbable and unexpected journey – from overweight, troubled teenager to the pinnacle of the pro wrestling industry, focused on perfection and nothing less. He even endured a serious neck injury along the way that required two vertebrae be fused together. Alexander, 35, made his pro wrestling debut in 2005 and was signed by IMPACT in early-2019. He has been the IMPACT X Division Champion and is a two-time IMPACT World Tag Team Champion as The North, a team that also was record-setting. The North captured the World Tag Team Championship on July 5, 2019, in San Antonio – and they held the titles for a record 380 consecutive days.

Said Chris Sabin, a former World Champion, three-time World Tag Team Champion and record-holding 8-time X Division Champion:

The IMPACT World Championship has a long and prestigious line of champions, and for Josh Alexander to break the record as the longest-reigning champion in company history is not something to be taken lightly. He worked for this, earned it, and deserves it. Congratulations.

There have been 32 wrestlers to hold the IMPACT Wrestling World Championship, dating back to Kurt Angle in 2007. Alexander has been the World Champion for a combined 258 days, including his brief title run after the 2021 Bound For Glory event – and those combined 258 days as World Champion rank Alexander No. 6 all-time. Angle is the leader with a combined 608-days as World Champion in his six title reigns.

During Alexander’s amazing 257-day stretch, he has had 9 televised title matches (against Moose, Tomohiro Ishii, Eric Young, Joe Doering, Alex Shelley, Eddie Edwards, Bobby Fish, Frankie Kazarian and Mike Bailey) – and four of those nine matches are ranked in the top five IMPACT Matches of 2022 on the Cagematch website. And, the classic 60-minute battle, Alexander vs. Bailey, which aired in December, ranked in the top ten Matches of the Year anywhere on the Cagematch website. Alexander had 4 hours and 16 minutes total worth of World Title matches in IMPACT in 2022, with an average World Title match length of 25 minutes, 37 seconds.

Josh Alexander next defends the World Championship against Bully Ray at the Hard To Kill pay-per-view event on Friday January 13th, in Atlanta