At a WWE Live Event in early May, the face of WWE and the company’s undisputed champion, Roman Reigns, made a strange and cryptic announcement, telling the Trenton, New Jersey crowd, “I’ve been here a couple of times in the past 10 years. I’m starting to work into a new phase in my career, and I honestly don’t know if I’ll be back here again. If that’s the case, I just wanna say thank you for all these years of support.”

The internet lit up with speculation. What did Reigns mean? Was he retiring, keen to follow his cousin The Rock to Hollywood? Was he just thinking of taking a lighter schedule, giving up live events while still appearing on TV? Or was Reigns on the verge of taking a hiatus? Whatever happens next, what is clear is that WWE fans might have to prepare themselves for another part-time champion. We’ve grown used to it in the Brock Lesnar era, but it was heavily criticized. Can WWE do it again?

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WWE’s Recent History Is Littered With Part-Time Champions

There was a time, not too long ago, when the WWE Championships were defended every week, sometimes every night, taken from city to city with the company’s brutal house show schedule. There’s an argument to be made that having the main titles defended so often devalues them a bit, taking away some of their mystique. In recent years WWE has countered this by going in the opposite direction, giving popular but older names the world championship and having them rarely defend it.

Goldberg has done this. The Rock did it when he returned almost a decade ago. The worst offender (or defender) has of course been Brock Lesnar. It was among the worst criticisms WWE has received over the last several years. Time after time WWE would give Lesnar the WWE Championship, only for him to disappear and rarely show up with it until it was WrestleMania or SummerSlam season. In one example, during Lesnar’s 504-day reign in 2017, he defended the belt a total of 11 times. It devalued the belt and the company’s talent, saying that the belt didn’t matter enough to be seen, and no one else was worthy of winning it.

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WWE Depends On Roman Reigns

For years, Vince McMahon shoved the idea of Roman Reigns down our throats, insisting that he was next in line to be the face of WWE, a natural progression that would move on from John Cena’s dominance. While he had the look and the potential, the Reigns fans were presented with was dull, and thus rejected. In 2020, we finally got the Reigns we wanted as a badass heel. Reigns showed that he didn’t need to be a face to be the face. His work as the Tribal Chief captivated audiences. Even his biggest haters seemed to come around and embrace the new direction.

For over a year-and-a-half, Reigns has ruled WWE as SmackDown’s Universal Champion. Other champions come and go on Raw, from Drew McIntyre to Bobby Lashley to Lesnar, but Reigns is a constant. He is his era’s John Cena. Roman Reigns is WWE. That can work when everything is firing on all cylinders as everything with Reigns has been doing, but what then happens when the one you have put everything in suddenly needs a break?

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WWE Has Backed Itself Into A Corner By Unifying The Championships

A precarious situation has been made worse by giving Reigns the WWE Championship as well. Now both brands will have a part-time champion. The natural decision to make, if Reigns is simply needing time off, would be to have him lose the belts. His act is starting to get a little stale anyway. To have him drop the titles to Drew McIntyre or Cody Rhodes would be huge.

WWE seems set on their hopes for a Reigns vs Rock match at WrestleMania 39. We all know it’ll be for the championship, even when it doesn’t need to be. Common sense says to have Reigns drop the title for a while, win it back perhaps around Royal Rumble, and keep the potential WrestleMania match the same. WWE has backed itself into a corner in more ways than one, though. There’s also the streak to think about. The company surely wants it to be a part of any potential Rock storyline. To have The Rock be the one to beat Reigns when no one else couldn’t is a much bigger payoff.

So what to do until then? Are we ready for month after month of a part-time champion who rarely appears, who rarely defends his championships? WWE has shown that the Intercontinental and US Championships mean nothing to them, so if the Undisputed Championship is gone too, what titles are we supposed to care about? As of late the only titles that get any attention are the Raw and SmackDown Tag Team Championships. It’s been a fun storyline between RKBro and The Bloodline, but you can’t build a whole company around it. WWE needs a present world champion. That’s what gets fans invested. Believe that.