It has been over two years since WWE established its Women’s Tag Team Championship. The title had potential. Since its launch, however, the title reigns have been uneven, and the championship’s value has diminished. Indeed, the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship increasingly feels like a failed experiment.
The WrestleMania Debacle
Here’s an interesting factoid coming out of WrestleMania 37. Between the Tag Team Turmoil Match on Night One and Shayna Baszler and Nia Jax defending their titles against Natalya and Tamina on Night Two, the Women’s Tag Team Championship ultimately got more time dedicated to it than any other title. This observation is paired with the general consensus that the two women’s tag matches were the weakest matches of WrestleMania this year.
In the end, the Tag Team Turmoil Match in particular felt analogous to a battle royal—squeezing as many faces onto the card as possible. Unfortunately, the format exposed the limitations of the division, featuring mostly makeshift teams that didn’t have a long-term story behind them, not to mention offering lackluster performances on the whole. These poor showings were in stark contrast to a standout Night One main event between Sasha Banks and Bianca Belair, and a solid outing between Rhea Ripley and Asuka the next night. As such, what might have been a two-part showcase for the Women’s Tag Team Championship became, if anything, a demonstration of why the title is superfluous.
Hardly Any Permanent Tag Teams
WWE women’s tag team division started out with a number of natural pairings, like The IIconics who had already functioned as a de facto tag team, and Sasha Banks and Bayley capitalizing on their combined real life and on-screen friendship to rule the roost. Since then, women’s tag teams like Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross or The Kabuki Warriors have tended to launch and fizzle as soon as they’re in and out of the title picture. Yes, Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler have been together for ten months, but almost all of that time has been spent reigning as tag team champions after being rivals who were thrown together. Indeed, The Riott Squad is about the only current women’s tag team in WWE that claim any kind of longevity or true team identity without the titles in hand.
WWE has a history of treating its men’s tag titles in a similar fashion, but has at least tended to have long standing teams like New Day and The Usos to anchor the division. The women’s ranks are missing teams like that for which fans immediately associate the partners with each other and feel invested.
Wasting Shayna Baszler
Shayna Baszler had a superb run in NXT that included two Women’s Championship reigns that spanned over 500 days. That run included her main eventing Survivor Series, defeating Becky Lynch and Bayley. From there, The Queen of Spades properly debuted on Raw, crushed the field in an Elimination Chamber Match, and posed a credible threat to Lynch’s title.
Since that point, however, Baszler’s main roster efforts have been defined by teaming with Nia Jax. There’s some merit to the concept, given Baszler is a credible submission specialist and bully heel, paired with Jax as a giant. However, with hardly any cohesive teams to feud against, their longstanding dominance over the division rings hollow.
One might argue WWE has been protecting Baszler, given that she hasn’t been losing many matches or getting lost in the shuffle. However, she has proven chemistry with Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair alike, and its borderline criminal we haven’t seen a proper one-on-one feud between The Submission Magician and Asuka.
Hardly Any Classic Matches
While WrestleMania 37 displayed the worst of the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship, there’s also the uncomfortable truth that the division has hardly had any great matches to hang its hat on since its inception. One could reasonably argue were only two particularly memorable matches with this title on the line. The first was the Elimination Chamber Match that crowned the first champions—a solid but not exactly spectacular bout. The second was the TLC 2019 main event that pitted The Kabuki Warriors against Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair, which was a good match, but generally received as a disappointment considering the collection of talent involved.
With the exception of the 24/7 Championship, which is all but acknowledged as a comedic title, no main roster title has so little by way of showcase matches to make it feel important.
The Cross-Brand Conundrum
On one hand, having the Women’s Championship defended across divisions made sense so as to not spread any single roster too thin. In contrast to the more robust men’s rosters on Raw and SmackDown, which each tend to have thirty or more active names at a time, the women’s rosters each have tended to have ten-to-fifteen active talents. Create a women’s tag team division of even four regular tag teams, and it would only leave around five women to compete over the singles title, let alone serve as enhancement talent.
Having these titles defended across brands has created inconsistencies in representation, though. The Women’s Tag Team Championship has mostly gravitated toward Raw, and it has felt a bit contrived when it does crossover to SmackDown, and especially NXT (before the black and gold brand got its own version of the title). Moreover, while teams like Sasha Banks and Bayley arguably did have enough star power to justify spanning brands, hardly any other championship team has had that kind of juice, such that it’s difficult to buy into the title truly being prestigious enough to justify spanning brands.
It may not be too late for WWE to change courses for its Women’s Tag Team Championship. Indeed, the fact that the company added separate titles for NXT may symbolize that they’ll be building more proper women’s tandems in developmental, and that the division might have a brighter future. These first two years of the title’s existence have not inspired confidence, though. It’s not the talents, but rather WWE’s creative choices that are to blame.