5 most confusing rules in WWE

#4 The Freebird Rule

Not as simple as it first appears.

Three person tag teams in professional wrestling date back to the days of The Freebirds and the first incarnation of D-Generation X. They have become more prominent in recent years with teams like The Shield, The Wyatt Family, 3MB and The New Day all gracing our screens. They serve a purpose in the tag-team division and offer something different to the norm.

Because the WWE has not yet embraced an official three-man division like NJPW, the company operates on an arrangement known as the 'Freebird Rule' where any two members of a team can wrestle for the tag-team championships. For example, considering The New Day are the current Smackdown Live tag-team champions, they can decide to defend their belts using any combination of Kofi, Big E and Xavier Woods.

While this rule looks simple enough on paper, the implications of it are a little more complex. Firstly, unless there is some application process fans are not made aware of, there doesn't seem to be an official way to declare who is in a team. We just become used to seeing three or more people together and call them by a particular name. The Wyatt Family, for example, have had numerous members over the years including Braun Strowman and Daniel Bryan but we still called them The Wyatt Family.

Based on this, what is stopping a tag team deciding to add a new member just before a championship match in order to compete for or defend the championships? When a member of a tag team becomes injured in real life, usually the match is called off, but wouldn't it make sense for the healthy competitor to just quickly find a replacement, win the belts and abide by the Freebird rule until their partner is back?

Also, does the rule only apply to three-person teams? What about multi-man factions like Evolution or The Nexus? While Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel held the championships back in 2010, were any of the other 5 members able to compete for the belts? If not, then the rule becomes a little more difficult to follow.