So, in case you have not already heard, the women’s division is getting a set of tag titles. This has been rumored for quite some time, and in just over a week, the first ever women’s tag team champions will be crowned inside the 2nd ever women’s Elimination Chamber match. This certainly is a perpetuation of the women’s evolution, but the question must be asked. Will it mean anything in the long run?
First and foremost, I do like the idea of giving the women’s division tag titles. It allows the women not currently involved in the women’s title scene something productive to do. More stories can be told, more characters can be developed, and at the very least, it allows women to add titles to their collection. However, there is one major pitfall of the division that WWE must overcome in order to make the women’s tag titles something meaningful. The depth.
Right now, the Elimination Chamber will be filled by the teams of the Boss N’ Hug Connection (Sasha Banks and Bayley), The Riott Squad, the IIconics, Nia Jax and Tamina, Absolution and Naomi and Carmella. The real established tag teams here are the Riott Squad, Absolution the IIconics and Sasha and Bayley (since they have had a million tag matches as partners over the years). The teams of Naomi/Carmella and Nia Jax/Tamina seem to be more convenient pairings as opposed to actual concrete teams. This was also a problem seen throughout the entire tournament, as I was sort of confused at some of the pairings.
Alicia Fox and Nikki Cross? Wasn’t Nikki a face just the other week? And why are they being called the most unpredictable tag team? Is it because they’ve never tagged before? Alexa Bliss and Mickie James have a history together so I supposed that made sense. However, it did seem like they just needed people to contend for the titles and nothing more. In addition, some tag teams did not even have to qualify. Some just did the old Rumble tactic of “declaring” they were in the match, like Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville.
So seeing as how some tag teams had to qualify in matches to compete and some did not have to, do you know what that tells me? There are not enough serious competitors in the division. Let us take a current look at the breakdown of the current “teams” on both brands. On the RAW side we have, Sasha and Bayley, The Riott Squad, Nia/Tamina, Alexa/Mickie, and Alicia/Nikki. On the Smackdown side, we have Absolution, the IIconics and Naomi/Carmella.
Now, the problems I have with this are similar to the ones that I have with the current tag team divisions. I honestly believed that at the time of the original draft in 2016, all of the tag teams should have been allowed to float between RAW and Smackdown, because otherwise, you run the risk of the tag team divisions on both brands getting stale quickly. This would be doubly so for the women. Why? The roster for the women is exponentially smaller than that of the men. This only leaves a handful of women to challenge for the women’s title. Are the singles superstars in tag teams like Naomi, Carmella, and Nia Jax just going to decide they will be a single star one week and in a tag team the next?
In addition, there does not seem to be a set of guidelines for the titles either. We do not yet know if the tag titles will remain exclusive to the brand that it is on, or if it will be across both brands. If it’s brand-exclusive, then this creates a serious imbalance in not only competition but with the depth of which how many challengers there will be for it. It would make much more sense if the tag titles could be challenged by both RAW and Smackdown teams, but then you may have the conflict of singles stars crossing over on brands as well. Therefore, what would the point have been for the original brand split to begin with?
Only time will tell as to whether or not the women’s tag title will advance the women’s evolution or if it will serve as a prop just for the sake of saying that they have tag titles. With that being said, do you believe that the women’s roster is deepe n
