Are Interim Titles Really Titles in Professional Wrestling and Do They Devalue the Main Title?

Professional wrestling has always lived in a delicate tension between athletic legitimacy and dramatic artifice. Titles are the sport’s sacred objects—repositories of prestige, continuity, and fan investment. To hold a championship is to carry the story of a company on your shoulders. But in the modern era, that sacred weight has been complicated by a new creation: the interim title.

An interim championship, at least in theory, exists to bridge the gap when a champion cannot compete. The injured, absent, or otherwise unavailable titleholder keeps the crown in name, while a substitute champion keeps the division alive. When the reigning champion returns, a unification bout restores order. The concept borrows its realism from combat sports like boxing and the UFC, where fighters’ physical limitations can freeze an entire division. In wrestling, though, the decision is never medical—it’s narrative. And that distinction changes everything.

The AEW Experiment

No company has explored the interim model more aggressively than All Elite Wrestling. When CM Punk broke his foot in 2022, Tony Khan refused to vacate the AEW World Championship. Instead, the company crowned Jon Moxley as interim champion after his victory over Hiroshi Tanahashi at Forbidden Door. For months, Moxley carried the promotion, delivering electric main events and anchoring storylines in Punk’s absence. When Punk returned, AEW promoted their showdown as a unification match, presenting both belts on screen like rival sovereigns.

For fans, it was compelling theater—but also a question of legitimacy. Was Moxley the real champion or a narrative caretaker? Punk’s subsequent injury and suspension only deepened the ambiguity. AEW’s women’s division faced a similar predicament when Thunder Rosa’s back injury sidelined her during her reign. Toni Storm’s interim run was later retroactively declared official, a quiet rewriting of history that left many confused about lineage and prestige. The correction was logical but messy—an acknowledgment that “interim” had failed to serve its purpose.

Placeholder or Prize?

The heart of the debate lies in meaning. What does it mean to be an interim champion in a scripted sport? Wrestling thrives on the illusion of hierarchy—one definitive champion, one mountaintop. The interim label implies transience, an admission that someone else holds the true crown. Supporters argue that interim belts protect narrative flow and allow wrestlers to stay active rather than waiting months for an absent titleholder’s return. Critics counter that they dilute the very concept of championship distinction, transforming belts into temporary props rather than enduring symbols.

The contradiction is sharpest when the interim champion outshines the injured titleholder. Moxley’s intensity and consistency made him, to many, the emotional core of AEW during Punk’s absence. His reign felt authentic, his matches decisive. But because the belt said “interim,” it always carried an asterisk. In a business built on perception, that single word undermined the grandeur of his run.

Wrestling’s Historical Alternatives

Historically, wrestling approached such dilemmas differently. The NWA, WWF, and WCW simply vacated titles when champions were unable to defend. Vacancies created narrative urgency—a tournament, a gauntlet, a comeback. When Shawn Michaels relinquished the WWF Championship in 1997 or Finn Bálor surrendered the Universal Title in 2016, the act felt ceremonial and tragic, not bureaucratic. Fans understood that the belt itself remained untarnished; it waited to be earned again.

Interim titles, by contrast, introduce bureaucracy into myth. They preserve a sense of continuity at the expense of clarity. Unlike legitimate sports, where rankings and injuries dictate procedure, professional wrestling has the freedom to weave absences into storyline fabric. When a company chooses instead to mimic sports regulation, it risks sacrificing emotional cohesion for pseudo-realism.

The Problem of Title Inflation

Beyond legitimacy, interim titles contribute to a growing problem across modern wrestling: title inflation. Between AEW’s expanding roster of belts—the World, International, Continental, TNT, TBS, and Trios titles—and other promotions’ regional and crossover championships, the symbolic hierarchy is crowded. Adding interim belts further fragments the narrative. If two people can claim to be world champion at once, how can either feel definitive?

WWE’s approach reveals a philosophical contrast. After two decades of brand splits, unifications, and redesigns, the company has largely avoided interim champions altogether. Instead, titles are vacated, and tournaments restore order. It’s a conservative model, but one that protects the singular mystique of a “world” championship. AEW’s embrace of the interim system, while innovative, has occasionally blurred that mystique in the name of realism.

When It Works—and When It Doesn’t

This isn’t to say interim championships cannot work. When deployed carefully, they can heighten anticipation and underscore rivalries rooted in legitimacy. The unification match between Punk and Moxley felt monumental because both men had credible claims to supremacy. The narrative tension—who truly carried the company—was organic. But that drama only pays off if the unification comes swiftly and decisively. When injuries linger or creative plans shift, interim titles become narrative cul-de-sacs: storylines that exist solely to wait out real life.

Interim belts succeed when treated as serious championships with meaningful defenses and clear expiration. They fail when left unresolved, retroactively rewritten, or overshadowed by confusion. The difference lies in discipline.

The Verdict: Tools, Not Crowns

So, are interim titles “real” titles? In the material sense—yes. They are sanctioned, defended, and often earn their holders television main events and fan adoration. But in the symbolic economy of wrestling, they remain incomplete. A world title is supposed to embody finality: the end of a chase, the summit of the mountain. An interim belt admits that the summit is somewhere else, occupied by someone who isn’t present.

That doesn’t mean the concept should vanish. It means promotions must wield it with care, remembering that wrestling’s greatest power is belief. Belief in the champion. Belief in the story. Belief that what happens in the ring, scripted though it may be, matters.

Interim titles can protect that belief or puncture it depending on how the story is told. The danger isn’t that they’re unreal; it’s that they remind us too much that wrestling is.