The greatest championship run in WWE history concluded Sunday night in Philadelphia as Roman Reigns' 1,316 days as undisputed WWE universal champion ended at the hands of Cody Rhodes in a masterfully booked WrestleMania 40 main event.

That may seem like a loaded statement on the surface, especially given The Tribal Chief's limited schedule and defenses during that time, but is low-hanging fruit over which his harshest critics will forever argue, there lies a title that saw a greater impact on WWE as a whole.

Reigns emerged from a self-imposed hiatus amid the global pandemic in 2000 to become the hottest act in the company, a gaslighting villainous champion who manipulated his family, touted his greatness, and carried himself with greater on-screen presence than he ever had as a one-dimensional babyface.

Off-screen, he and Paul Heyman crafted a story surrounding his family, The Bloodline, that involved several different layers and chapters that would ultimately play out throughout his reign atop the WWE mountain and more importantly, make stars out of nearly everyone who entered their stratosphere.

It began with Jey Uso in the fall of 2020, continued with the introduction of Sami Zayn as the Honorary Uce, encapsulated Jimmy Uso and the imposing Solo Sikoa, and would include Kevin Owens and LA Knight, among others.

All the while WWE did extraordinary business, including a landmark $5 billion television rights deal for Monday Night Raw with Netflix, the highest television ratings in years, and its finest work creatively since the Attitude Era of the late 1990s.

"High tides raise all ships," Reigns told Ariel Helwani when describing the monumental roll WWE was on entering WrestleMania 39 and the legitimate main event stars that had been developed via relation to The Bloodline narrative.

He was right. Reigns was the high tide and everyone that ventured into his space was elevated exponentially simply by coming into contact with the top star in the industry.

Look no further than Rhodes, who saw his star enhanced by his first encounter with The Tribal Chief on the WrestleMania stage a year ago, then embarked on a one-year journey back to the main event and a rematch with Reigns that captivated audiences, made him even more beloved than he already was, and even squashed plans for a showdown between The Head of the Table and The People's Champion, The Rock.

To suggest that Reigns as the "big bad" was not at all responsible for any of that would be naivety. He was the heel around whom everything revolved, the Thanos of this story, with the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship his Infinity Gauntlet.

He would not lose the stranglehold he had on the company for nearly four years until someone came along, thwarted his Bloodline cronies, and beat him for it.

That someone, Sunday night in Philadelphia, was Rhodes.

Reigns' iconic run was different than those that preceded him.

Bruno Sammartino, Bob Backlund, Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, Steve Austin, The Rock, and John Cena were all champions of a bygone era and, frankly, did not have the mind of the great Paul Heyman helping to construct their stories to the extent that The Wiseman did with Reigns.

Theirs were not stories that had the sheer number of layers that Reigns' did, nor did they benefit nearly as many Superstars. They were singularly focused on presenting those competitors as the faces of the company, not necessarily concerned with elevating those around them.

For all that is made of Reigns' inconsistent schedule and just how much he worked in any given year, equally as little emphasis is placed on the fact that Sikoa and Jimmy Uso could carry weeks' worth of SmackDown broadcasts and deliver two million viewers consistently merely because of their association with Reigns.

Ditto Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn's ability to challenge The Usos for the tag team titles in the main event of WrestleMania 39 or for Rhodes to repeatedly speak of an unfinished story and remain the most over guy in the company while only coming face-to-face with the man that beat him a year ago one time on television in 2023.

Reigns' success as champion from a business standpoint, and the renewed interest in professional wrestling that it brought with it, was enough to lure The Rock back into the fold. The epic, overarching storyline of The Bloodline became, arguably, the greatest in company history and took fans on a weekly roller coaster ride.

Stars were made, story threads were in abundance, and Reigns' legacy transformed from that of a successful yet painfully flawed headlining babyface to that of a generational heel around whom entire years of television could be planned.

Most importantly, when the time came to finally beat him, doing so would establish a new face of the company and propel WWE into a new era, which was exactly the case Sunday night with the coronation of Rhodes.

Who knows where Reigns goes from here, if he does at all.

Heyman admitted in a March interview with Raj Prashad of Uproxx that Reigns considered himself retired in March of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, with no plans of returning to WWE programming.

Having gone on the reign as champion that he did and leading the company back from the creative doldrums he had inherited as the face of the company, it is unclear what if any long-term future awaits The Tribal Chief.

Regardless of those plans, there is no denying the impact Reigns and his nearly four-year run with the top prize in professional wrestling had on WWE and the industry as a whole, returning it to prominence and leaving it better than he found it.

That is the test of a true all-time great and the hallmark of the greatest championship reign in the 50-plus-year history of WWE.