When the brand split occurred in WWE in 2016, RAW and Smackdown each ended up having their own tag team division, as well as their own distinctive titles. The existing WWE Tag Team Championships became the RAW Tag Team titles with the straps becoming red to match the brand colours. Over on Smackdown, a tournament was held to crown the new Smackdown Tag Team Champions, with blue titles to match.
On RAW, The New Day, who was still reigning as tag champions during the brand split, were defeated by the newly formed team of Sheamus and Cesaro. Cesaro and Sheamus were the ones gifted with the new belts. Over on Smackdown, Heath Slater and Rhyno defeated The Usos in a tournament final on Backlash that year to become the inaugural tag champions.
While on paper it would make sense to have the separate brands have their own tag team champions, given that NXT has their own champions as well, the relatively thin talent pool within the tag team divisions of both RAW and Smackdown should give rise to an idea whose time may come again…having one set of men’s tag team titles across WWE’s two major brands.
Let’s look at the state of the tag divisions on each side. Over on RAW, you have the Street Profits, the current champions, and former champions the Viking Raiders as being the only credible and full-time tag teams on Monday nights. There was a smattering of other teams, but Seth Rollins / Buddy Murphy and Austin Theory / Angel Garza’s recent pairings were at best temporarily thrown in together to meet some kind of tag match quota.
Meanwhile, on Smackdown, there was some renewed interest in the tag division when Miz was reunited with a returning John Morrison, and they did end up winning the Smackdown tag championships at Super Showdown in Saudi Arabia. But they ended up losing the titles back to New Day, in a bizarre triple threat match that involved only one member of each team.
If that isn’t a severe indictment of the view of tag team matches from ‘the office’ I’m not sure what is.
There may be some spark in the blue brand’s tag division with the involvement of Lucha House Party (Gran Metalik and Lince Dorado) and the newest additions to Smackdown, the Forgotten Sons from NXT. Putting the belts on the ‘savages’ could give a spark to the division, and give another trios team a chance to carry the division with rumours swirling that the New Day could be split up at some point down the road.
But if we are relying on one team to carry the division on a brand, then that speaks for a bleak future going forward. The Forgotten Sons may end up champions with no challengers on Smackdown, with the New Day currently still down one member and the Usos on the shelves due to an injury.
If there was one unified WWE World Tag Team Champion to compete for across RAW and Smackdown, we could get the Forgotten Sons versus the Raiders or Street Profits, with some other veteran teams like New Day and Miz / Morrison to anchor the roster. Other promising teams like Cedric Alexander / Ricochet, Theory and Garza and this new tandem of Shane Thorne and Brandon Vink.
With the current shallow talent pool in the tag team divisions across both RAW and Smackdown, and due to the COVID 19 pandemic allowing a smaller roster to work on a weekly basis, this may be a time to try consolidating the tag team division under one set of championships to spark more interest in tag team wrestling.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
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