Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Women’s Tag-Team Championships. This time last year at Elimination Chamber Sasha Banks and Bayley became the inaugural champions defeating Fire and Desire, Tamina and Nia Jax, The IIconics, The Riott Squad and Naomi and Carmella in the process.
However, despite the initial excitement in their creation the history of the WWE Women’s Tag-Team Championships have been lacklustre at best.
The theory behind the titles is great, in that the holders are inter-brand champions who can float across the three brands and challenge whomever they please. However, this concept has never really been fully explored. For example, out of the fifteen, yes fifteen matches that have involved the championships, we have only seen the titles defended once on NXT, twice on SmackDown Live, four times on RAW and eight times on PPV.
There was much fanfare when Banks and Bayley won the titles with the duo promising to bring prestige to the championships but they lost the titles in only their second defence at WrestleMania 35 to The IIconics.
Peyton Royce and Billie Kay held the championships for a record-setting 120-days despite only defending them on four occasions, one being a 90-second squash match. Unfortunately, it was this title-reign from which the championships never really recovered. Many believed that putting the new titles on such an unproven team weakened the championships.
Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross were next in line for the championships and brought a new and refreshing emphasis to the titles with their interesting and entertaining “odd-couple” dynamic. The duo would defend the titles four times over a 62-day reign.
The Kabuki Warriors, Asuka and Sane are the longest-reigning champions and have been the title holders with the most prestige but the titles have taken a backseat as of late while Asuka and Becky Lynch reignited their feud for the RAW Women’s Championship. Hopefully, now that the Lynch feud is over we will get to see a new focus and interest in the championships and the division as whole.
A year on and we still only have four regular tag-teams in the entire company. These consist of The IIconics, who haven’t been on TV in months, Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross, Fire and Desire, and The Kabuki Warriors none of whom have wrestled as teams in weeks.
The wealth of talent at WWE’s disposal in the women’s division is unprecedented and yet the company seems hesitant to place any of the underutilized talents together as a team and put some serious effort into the women’s tag-team division. For example, a few names that pop into my head that would make great tag-teams are Lacey Evans and Dana Brooke, Deonna Purrazzo and Chelsea Green, Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan, to name but a few. All six women would benefit hugely from a new, refreshed and revived push for the WWE Women’s Tag-Team Championships.
As we are now on the road to WrestleMania there should be plenty of buzz centred around the women’s tag-team championships, but we are seven weeks into 2020 and yet to see a match featuring the titles. The concussion suffered by Kairi Sane at TLC has certainly played into that decision but to not even provide a solid group of teams that are wanting to challenge for the titles only exasperates their plight.
What is most frustrating about the situation is that the answer is simple. WWE needs to create a number of strong and viable tag-teams that actually want to challenge and hold the titles and out of the two active teams, none seem to care.
My suggestion is the creation of a new team, such as Evans and Brooke, frustrated by the lack of opportunity, join together to become serious challengers and competition for the Kabuki Warriors’ gold. We then get two teams who care about the titles and want to fight for them. This could be then be continued and repeated a number of times giving talent the opportunity for screen time and championships.
Whatever the direction of the division something needs to be done and fast because right now the titles are rather meaningless despite being on one of the most entertaining and legitimate tag-teams in recent memory. Let’s hope things improve drastically between now and WrestleMania because if we don’t I doubt we’ll be seeing a second anniversary for the WWE Women’s Tag-Team Championships.
What do you think should be done to make more out the titles and the division? Let us know in the comments below.
