When WWE champions are unavailable for an indeterminate or extended period of time, it’s pretty common for the company to have a tournament to crown new titleholders. In that respect, the announcement that WWE would hold a tourney for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship after Sasha Banks and Naomi abandoned their titles is standard operating procedure.
(Of course the reason for a vacant championship is usually injury, not acute workplace dissatisfaction, but we’ll circle back to that in a bit.)
That would be all well and good if there was a thriving women’s tag team scene in WWE, but the truth is that it’s pretty barren. There are basically two tag teams on both Raw and SmackDown right now: Shayna Baszler and Natalya, who recently failed to win the titles but would be considered by most the No. 1 contenders by default, and Doudrop and Nikki A.S.H., who only recently joined forces and have been portrayed as not quite being on the same page. That’s seriously it.
To fill out a bracket, Bryan Alvarez of Wrestling Observer Live has reported (h/t to WrestlingNews.co) that WWE plans to bring teams from NXT into the mix. That’s good for them, and additional opportunities for up and coming talent are always welcome.
The necessity of this move, however, proves one of Sasha and Naomi’s points, if behind the scenes sources are on the money: WWE has done a terrible job making the Women’s Tag Team Championship meaningful, leaving it up to the titleholders to elevate the belts instead of the other way around. That’s fine when stars like Banks and Naomi are holding them, but problematic when a championship tournament is being held — because in this case, the prize is supposed to be the thing.
WWE hasn’t always been great about promoting or caring about men’s tag team wrestling either, as evidenced by the steady stream of teams that got over in NXT only to die on the vine on the main roster (with a few notable exceptions, like the Street Profits). But the tag team title unification saga between RK-Bro and The Usos had been the main storyline running through Raw and SmackDown for weeks until it paid off this past Monday, so it’s possible, at least, for men’s teams to be in the spotlight.
That simply hasn’t been the case in the women’s division. Without looking, can you even name who are the longest reigning women’s tag team champs? Did you know that Baszler and Nia Jax held the titles for the most combined days? It’s easy to argue that WWE hasn’t had even one championship team that will be remembered forever like legendary men’s tag teams through the years.
What WWE has shown the ability and desire to do is weave compelling narratives around its women’s singles champions. So that leads us to an obvious solution: Ditch the Women’s Tag Team Championship and create more women’s singles titles instead. Give them the equivalent of the Intercontinental and United States Championships to chase, and spend time and energy on them instead of paying lip service to tag team wrestling without giving the fans a reason to care about it.
That sounds better than scrambling to flesh out a tournament bracket to find champions who will have a hard time filling the shoes of the ones who just left.