Why The WWE Women’s Tag Division Was Never A Success

WhatCulture

If you think new champs will revitalise division, you haven't been paying attention.

Transcript

00:00 Right, let us just be honest for one second, because mostly due to the powers that be,

00:04 ever since the Women's Tag Team Championships did become a thing in 2019, they haven't

00:09 really been utilised in the best possible fashion.

00:12 And that has nothing to do with those who wear the gold around their waist, but much

00:16 like the men's tag division, if you get into some kind of wrestling duo in WWE, you're

00:22 always going to get treated as second fiddle.

00:23 It has now hit a massive iceberg given that the current champs Naomi and Sasha Banks have

00:27 walked out of the company and it has led some people to say that the Women's Tag Team

00:32 Division has failed.

00:34 Why is why.

00:38 I shall divide this into a handy list of reasons, because why not, it is YouTube.

00:46 And at the very bottom of all of this is the Hug N Boss connection.

00:50 Because Sasha Banks and Bayley are so damn passionate about what they do, they wheeled

00:54 these titles into existence, they looked around the wrestling landscape and said "hey, why

00:59 can't we have some Women's Tag Team Championships on the show?"

01:03 And given that they were then crowned the first ever champions, they decided they were

01:07 going to take it and do what they could.

01:08 Now it certainly made more sense back then, because WWE had a much deeper roster, and

01:12 we'll talk about that in just one second, because essentially you had bodies you could

01:16 just put together and go "ta-da, we've made a tag team".

01:19 What happened is that they won these titles in February, and then they lost them two months

01:25 later in April.

01:26 This was at WrestleMania, so I suppose that these had some gravitas, but it went to the

01:29 IIconics and we all remember what happened when Billie Kay and Peyton Royce did with

01:33 them.

01:34 It was like, well, I didn't see that coming.

01:36 That didn't tie into the story at all.

01:38 Now look, I thought the IIconics were great, but the problem here is that you could have

01:42 kept these on Sasha Banks and Bayley for up to a year, and then one, people have gone

01:47 "wow, I should care about these things", but also two, when they did lose, then you'd

01:51 be like "oh, I can't believe it, that's 12 months of my life".

01:55 So doing it this way was just a bit meh.

01:56 That's what people did, they went meh.

01:58 Because it didn't really give them any kind of emotional connection, which brings us into

02:01 point two, the use of NXT.

02:04 So another thing we were told after these things were born, is that they could be defended

02:08 on Raw, they could be defended on Smackdown, and they could be defended down in NXT.

02:13 Do you know how many times this actually happened in WWE's developmental brand?

02:18 Three times in two years.

02:19 Now this seems crazy, because it was in the middle of WWE having a ratings war with AEW,

02:24 so why wouldn't you want to get some of your major stars and put them on NXT?

02:29 And the absolute confusing part is the third time we did this, afterwards William Regal

02:34 went "you know what, I don't want none of that shenanigans, we're just going to make

02:37 our own tag team titles".

02:39 So do you know what it did to the original pair?

02:42 It diminished them once again.

02:43 And again, no you don't do this every week because it's the law of diminishing returns,

02:46 but you would have got such a good symbiotic relationship here.

02:50 That's right, I'm using the big words.

02:51 Because one, it would have bolstered NXT, but also two, it would have allowed you to

02:56 have done a bunch of crazy unique things with a set of championships that you weren't doing

03:01 with the other championships, and then blah blah blah, makes these ones feel specialer.

03:05 I know special isn't a word, but dammit I am just ranting and raving, which actually

03:09 brings us to our next point, the fact that at one stage we had Shayna Baszler and Nia

03:15 Jax as our champions, and do you know what Nia Jax was more interested in?

03:21 Reggie.

03:22 I mean seriously, those two just lost and lost and lost and lost because Nia would be

03:26 going "Reg, I love you" and I get that WWE does this kind of silly stuff all the time,

03:31 but we were still in a period where we were trying to establish these two titles as things

03:35 that we should care about, but now we were being told "ignore that, ignore this wrestling

03:41 prize, we want you to look at this relationship".

03:43 So we had actually decided that distractions were more important, which brings us to another

03:48 problem - the fact that there weren't many ideas.

03:51 Because it started well, because these belts got defended on three straight PPVs, but in

03:55 the 39 PPVs or Premium Live events that followed, they only turned up on 11 if we don't count

04:02 the kick off show.

04:03 And we don't because WWE doesn't, so why should we?

04:05 So there's an appearance ratio of less than 30%, and while I totally agree you don't have

04:09 to defend these things week in, week out or month in, month out, that wasn't what was

04:14 going on here, and actually what was happening is that WWE would wake up one day and go "oh

04:19 no, I forgot about it again".

04:20 So when you have that coupled with the fact that they barely got on Raw and Smackdown

04:23 either, every single fan just goes "why would I invest any time into them, I'm just going

04:29 to be disappointed".

04:30 And I want to make it clear once more, this wasn't down to the wrestlers, you have to

04:34 be given a good concept to begin with.

04:37 We just didn't.

04:38 I mean, after the IIconics had won them, they had a few matches that week and then they

04:42 vanished for a month.

04:43 Nobody mentioned them and nobody told us where they'd gone.

04:46 They then came back, they had two matches, and they were gone again.

04:50 Randomly then in July they held onto their belts via count out, and then three weeks

04:54 later they finally dropped them, which meant all of this was a four month period and there

05:01 was nothing to talk about.

05:02 It was this inconsistency that hurt so much, and also probably what wound up Sasha Banks

05:06 and Naomi.

05:07 Because they had been told "look, we know you're the tag team champions, but Bianca

05:10 Belair is going to take on Naomi, and Sasha Banks, you're going to take on Ronda Rousey,

05:14 and then you're both going to lose.

05:16 And also we've looked at the calendar, and no, we don't really know what we want to do

05:19 with the tag team titles".

05:20 And you could easily get away with that, of course, in fact they'd probably be some good

05:23 matches, but it's just more cracks in the armour.

05:26 For example, do you remember when Eva Marie and Doudrop were a tag team for two weeks

05:31 before they started to fall out?

05:34 We also just fell off a cliff when Shotzi and Nox got called up, became the number one

05:38 contenders and never got their title match.

05:41 And I'm pretty sure that Carmella and Zelina Vega also had a run, but seriously, do you

05:47 remember anything from it?

05:48 No, we were never given the chance.

05:50 Because sadly all we ever did when it came to this area is beat everybody over the head

05:56 with a stick and ask the question, how can these two people coexist?

06:00 And the answer is yes, they can coexist, and I know this because I'm looking at them and

06:04 they're standing next to each other, and one of them isn't being sucked into the abyss,

06:07 so they are existing within the same universe.

06:10 But this was the ongoing story between Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler, especially, and it

06:16 never went anywhere.

06:17 Sometimes they fell out, then they were friends again, then they fell out, then they were

06:19 friends again.

06:20 Sometimes they just looked at each other as if they were a cat.

06:23 The whole thing was built on this and we didn't have an endgame for it, so it meant nothing.

06:28 Really though, aside from the fact that management has never really been into this, the roster

06:32 at the moment is so sparse I don't understand how you'd have a women's tag team division

06:36 anyway.

06:37 Even on the men's side we put Randy Orton and Riddle together because we needed some

06:40 extra bodies that side, and they are still attending to singles duties.

06:43 It's even more ridiculous back on the women's, because nearly every single team who have

06:48 won the thing was just thrown together randomly.

06:52 Like we have this tournament coming up soon to crown new champions, and who's going to

06:57 be in it?

06:58 It's going to be like a two round tournament, and even then, somebody is probably going

07:03 to have to join another team just so we can get the thing done.

07:05 And don't get me wrong either, this can easily be saved, it just needs a little bit of TLC,

07:09 and what we really should do, given that Raw and Smackdown are always boring ideas, is

07:13 look at RK-Bro and say "wow, they had really good chemistry, we felt it from the fans,

07:18 and we went all in with it, why don't we go do that with a couple of women too?"

07:23 So ultimately we probably shouldn't have got rid of Mickie James, or Chelsea Green, or

07:27 Sarah Logan, or Ruby Riott, or Ember Moon, or Nia Jax, or the IIconics, I mean we could

07:33 actually do this all day.

07:35 It kind of feels like that may have been a little bit of a mistake and we should invite

07:37 them back.

07:38 And what do I know?

07:39 Absolutely nothing.

07:40 But I do not want us to give up on this.

07:44 Tag Team Wrestling can be brilliant when it's done right, and when it's given a little bit

07:48 of something something in order to let it fly.

07:51 If we could just do that WWE, I would appreciate it.

07:55 Thank you very much.

07:56 Now please do leave a comment below and let us know what you think about all of this.

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08:14 My name is Simon Whatculture, thank you for joining me as always in this.

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