Retired WWE rule to be brought back: It’s time for mandatory 30-day title defences to return

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Throughout WWE’s history they have always picked and chosen when to enforce their imaginary “rules” on television, and there’s often no rhyme or reason for it.

Case in point Chelsea Green’s broken orbital bone injury. Nick Aldis threatened to strip Green of the Interim WWE Women’s Title if she couldn’t get medically cleared to compete within a 30-day period; ignoring that Rhea Ripley has been out of action with a knee injury since the beginning of June but is still considered the WWE Women’s Champion.

One of the rules that was once enforced back in the day was a 30-day mandatory title defense for every champion in WWE.

This again wasn’t followed by WWE all the time – and was seemingly scrapped once Brock Lesnar began vanishing off TV for months at a time during the 2010s – but for a while it served a purpose in ensuring that champions were actively defending their gold, even if it was only on house shows.

Too often in recent years has WWE allowed champions to go months at a time without putting their titles on the line, with 2026 providing several examples of this to point towards.

WWE’s mishandling of their top Women’s Champions in 2026

Jade Cargill held the WWE Women’s Championship for 169 days between November 2025 and April 2026, yet only defended it successfully once before dropping the gold to Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania 42.

Speaking of WrestleMania 42, Liv Morgan defeated Stephanie Vaquer for the Women’s World Championship at the same show; a deserved win on the grandest stage for one of WWE’s best performers in recent years. However, WWE completely let her down when it came to her actual run as champion.

With Vaquer out injured after WrestleMania, Morgan went almost four months without defending her title, and had zero interested parties in the title for much of that time.

After finally defending it for the first time at SummerSlam against IYO SKY, Morgan racked up another two wins as champion before dropping the gold back to Vaquer in Chile at a live event on September 12.

The return of Vaquer and Becky Lynch helped reinvigorate the Women’s World Title picture, but WWE didn’t have to wait for them to be back to care about their title; they had plenty of talent at their disposal for months before that.

WWE World Tag Team Titles: The worst offender

The worst offender consistently over the past few years however, has been the WWE World Tag Team Championships.

Across two reigns with the titles between 2024-2025, The Judgment Day’s Finn Balor and JD McDonagh defended them five times in 287 days.

Before Judgment Day’s second reign, The New Day held the gold for 72 days and defended them twice. Same were The Usos who managed two defenses in 91 days.

Current champions The Vision (Austin Theory & Bron Breakker) have, in almost three months racked up a total of zero title defenses.

This is a new low for the belts and only further exemplifies just how much of an afterthought tag team wrestling is to WWE right now.

While a 30-day mandatory title defense would prevent these scenarios from happening, it obviously only would if it’s actually enforced by WWE.

Ultimately WWE shouldn’t need imaginary rules to ensure that their titles remain relevant, even if it is just once a month in a two minute match, does it really take that much creative energy to ensure that these titles aren’t gathering dust?

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