If you think new champs will revitalise division, you haven't been paying attention.
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00:00Right, let us just be honest for one second, because mostly due to the powers that be,
00:04ever since the Women's Tag Team Championships did become a thing in 2019, they haven't
00:09really been utilised in the best possible fashion.
00:12And that has nothing to do with those who wear the gold around their waist, but much
00:16like the men's tag division, if you get into some kind of wrestling duo in WWE, you're
00:22always going to get treated as second fiddle.
00:23It has now hit a massive iceberg given that the current champs Naomi and Sasha Banks have
00:27walked out of the company, and it has led some people to say that the Women's Tag Team
00:32Division has failed.
00:34Why is why.
00:38I shall divide this into a handy list of reasons, because why not, it is YouTube, and at the
00:47very bottom of all of this is the hug and boss connection.
00:50Because Sasha Banks and Bayley are so damn passionate about what they do, they wheeled
00:54these titles into existence.
00:56They looked around the wrestling landscape and said, hey, why can't we have some Women's
01:00Tag Team Championships on the show?
01:03And given that they were then crowned the first ever champions, they decided they were
01:07going to take it and do what they could.
01:08Now it certainly made more sense back then, because WWE had a much deeper roster, and
01:12we'll talk about that in just one second, because essentially you had bodies you could
01:16just put together and go, ta-da, we've made a tag team.
01:20What happened is that they won these titles in February, and then they lost them two months
01:25later in April.
01:26It wasn't WrestleMania, so I suppose at least it had some gravitas, but it went to the IIconics,
01:30and we all remember what happened when Billie Kay and Peyton Royce did with them.
01:33It was like, well, I didn't see that coming.
01:36That didn't tie into the story at all.
01:38Now look, I thought the IIconics were great, but the problem here is that you could have
01:42kept these on Sasha Banks and Bayley for up to a year, and then one, people have gone,
01:47wow, I should care about these things, but also two, when they did lose, then you'd be
01:51like, oh, I can't believe it, that's 12 months of my life.
01:54So doing it this way was just a bit meh.
01:56That's what people did, they went meh, because it didn't really give them any kind of emotional
02:00connection, which brings us into point two, the use of NXT.
02:04So another thing we were told after these things were born is that they could be defended
02:08on Raw, they could be defended on Smackdown, and they could be defended down in NXT.
02:12Do you know how many times this actually happened in WWE's developmental brand?
02:18Three times in two years.
02:19Now this seems crazy, because it was in the middle of WWE having a ratings war with AEW,
02:24so why wouldn't you want to get some of your major stars and put them on NXT, and the absolute
02:29confusing part is the third time we did this, afterwards William Regal went, you know what,
02:34I don't want none of that shenanigans, we're just going to make our own tag team titles.
02:39So do you know what it did to the original pair?
02:42It diminished them once again.
02:43And again, no, you don't do this every week, because it's the law of diminishing returns,
02:46but you would have got such a good symbiotic relationship here.
02:50That's right, I'm using the big words, because one, it would have bolstered NXT, but also
02:54two, it would have allowed you to have done a bunch of crazy unique things with a set
02:59of championships that you weren't doing with the other championships, and then blah, blah,
03:03blah, makes these ones feel specialer.
03:05I know specialer isn't a word, but dammit, I am just ranting and raving, which actually
03:09brings us to our next point, the fact that at one stage, we had Shayna Baszler and Nia
03:15Jax as our champions, and do you know what Nia Jax was more interested in?
03:20Reggie.
03:21I mean, seriously, those two just lost and lost and lost and lost, because Nia would
03:25be going, Reg, I love you, and I get that WWE does this kind of silly stuff all the
03:30time, but we were still in a period where, once again, we were trying to establish these
03:35two titles as things that we should care about, but now we were being told, no, ignore that,
03:40ignore this wrestling prize, we want you to look at this relationship.
03:43So we had actually decided that distractions were more important, which brings us to another
03:48problem, the fact that there weren't many ideas.
03:51Because it started well, because these belts got defended on three straight pay-per-views,
03:55but in the 39 pay-per-views or premium live events that followed, they only turned up
04:01on 11 if we don't count the kick-off show, and we don't because WWE doesn't, so why
04:05should we?
04:06So there's an appearance ratio of less than 30%, and while I totally agree, you don't
04:09have to defend these things week in, week out, or month in, month out, that wasn't
04:14what was going on here, and actually what was happening is that WWE would wake up one
04:18day and go, oh, I forgot about it again.
04:20So when you have that, coupled with the fact that they barely got on Raw and Smackdown
04:23either, every single fan just goes, well, why would I invest any time into them?
04:28I'm just going to be disappointed, and I want to make it clear once more, this wasn't
04:33down to the wrestlers, you have to be given a good concept to begin with, we just didn't.
04:38I mean, after the IIconics had won them, they had a few matches that week, and then they
04:42vanished for a month, and nobody mentioned them, and nobody told us where they'd gone,
04:46they then came back, they had two matches, and they were gone again.
04:50Randomly then in July they held onto their belts via count out, and then three weeks
04:54later they finally dropped them, which meant all of this was a four month period, and there
05:01was nothing to talk about.
05:02It was this inconsistency that hurt so much, and also probably what wound up Sasha Banks
05:06and Naomi.
05:07Because they had been told, look, we know you're the tag team champions, but Bianca
05:10Belair is going to take on Naomi, and Sasha Banks, you're going to take on Ronda Rousey,
05:14and then you're both going to lose.
05:16And also we've looked at the calendar, and no, we don't really know what we want to
05:19do with the tag team titles.
05:20And you can easily get away with that, of course, in fact there'd probably be some
05:23good matches, but it's just more cracks in the armour.
05:26For example, do you remember when Eva Marie and Doudrop were a tag team for two weeks?
05:32Before they started to fall out.
05:34We also just fell off a cliff when Shotzi and Nox got called up, became the number one
05:38contenders and never got their title match, and I'm pretty sure that Carmella and Zelina
05:43Vega also had a run, but seriously, do you remember anything from it?
05:48No?
05:49We were never given the chance.
05:50Because sadly, all we ever did when it came to this area is beat everybody over the head
05:56with a stick and ask the question, how can these two people co-exist?
06:00And the answer is yes, they can co-exist, and I know this because I'm looking at them
06:03and they're standing next to each other, and one of them isn't being sucked into the abyss,
06:07so they are existing within the same universe, but this was the ongoing story between Nia
06:12Jax and Shayna Baszler, especially, and it never went anywhere.
06:17Sometimes they fell out, then they were friends again, then they fell out, then they were
06:19friends again.
06:20Sometimes they just looked at each other as if they were a cat.
06:23The whole thing was built on this, and we didn't have an endgame for it, so it meant
06:28nothing.
06:29Really though, aside from the fact that management has never really been into this, the roster
06:32at the moment is so sparse, I don't understand how you'd have a women's tag team division
06:36anyway.
06:37Even on the men's side, we put Randy Orton and Riddle together because we needed some
06:40extra bodies that side, and they are still attending to singles duties.
06:43It's even more ridiculous back on the women's, because nearly every single team who have
06:48won the thing was just thrown together randomly.
06:52Like we have this tournament coming up soon to crown new champions, and who's going to
06:57be in it?
06:58It's going to be like a two round tournament, and even then, somebody is probably going
07:03to have to join another team just so we can get the thing done.
07:05And don't get me wrong either, this can easily be saved, it just needs a little bit of TLC,
07:09and what we really should do, given that Raw and Smackdown are always borrowing ideas,
07:13is look at RK-Bro and say, wow, they had really good chemistry, we felt it from the fans,
07:18and we went all in with it, why don't we go do that with a couple of women too?
07:23So ultimately, we probably shouldn't have got rid of Mickie James, or Chelsea Green,
07:27or Sarah Logan, or Ruby Riott, or Ember Moon, or Nia Jax, or the IIconics, I mean we could
07:33actually do this all day.
07:34It kind of feels like that may have been a little bit of a mistake, and we should invite
07:38them back.
07:39And what do I know?
07:40Absolutely nothing, but I do not want us to give up on this.
07:44Tag Team Wrestling can be brilliant when it's done right, and when it's given a little bit
07:48of something something in order to let it fly.
07:51If we could just do that WWE, I would appreciate it, thank you very much.
07:56Now please do leave a comment below and let us know what you think about all of this,
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08:14My name is Simon Wotculture, thank you for joining me as always in this.