Cody Rhodes won the Undisputed WWE Championship back at WrestleMania and has since defended the title against AJ Styles twice and Logan Paul in Saudi Arabia. The American Nightmare has had frequent title defenses so far.
Rhodes was in six-man tag team action at Money in the Bank earlier this month which means that the last time he defended the title was at Clash at the Castle back on June 15th in Scotland.
Rhodes has now gone 36 days without defending his championship, which means that he is in breach of the historic WWE rule that states full-time champions must defend their title every 30 days.
The Authority enforced this rule with Daniel Bryan back in 2014 when he was the world champion while Naomi was also forced to give up the women’s championship in February 2017 when she was out of action for less than two months.
Most recently, Rhea Ripley was injured in April and made her return at the beginning of July, but was still forced to relinquish her title which proves that WWE enforces the rule of a champion defending their title for a certain time frame.
There are a number of arguments for Roman Reigns and the fact that he rarely defended the world championship and even for Brock Lesnar, but part-time superstars are not held to the same rules.
The company was aware that he was part-time when he won the championship and so wasn’t able to defend as much as a full-time star. This argument has been the basis of many full-time stars who were looking to dethrone Roman Reigns, but Cody Rhodes was the only one to do it.
Rhodes could be forced to defend the title over the next few weeks ahead of SummerSlam, or the company could be happy for him to wait until The Biggest Party of the Summer, where he faces Solo Sikoa.
