The 16th champions in the AEW World Tag Team Championship lineage have now been crowned as the titles changed hands on tonight's episode of AEW Dynamite (January 22, 2025) out of the Knoxville Coliseum in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In the opening contest of this episode, The Hurt Syndicate's Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin (accompanied by MVP) defeated Private Party (Zay and Quen) in a largely decisive match.
Of course, Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen fought back as hard as they could, hanging on for a few segments, but ultimately fell victim to a spear from Lashley, who pinned Kassidy to win the titles.
Private Party had won those titles 84 days ago on October 30, 2024 on the Fright Night Dynamite special, upsetting The Young Bucks, who had gone on the third-longest run with the belts so far (192 days - #1 being The Young Bucks at 302 and #2 being Kenny Omega and "Hangman" Adam Page with 228 days).
This is not only the first championship for both Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin in All Elite Wrestling—not shocking, considering how they've only been in the company a few months—but this is actually Lashley’s first tag team title reign in a major promotion. During his runs in WWE and TNA/Impact, Lashley had only ever won a variety of singles titles, while Benjamin is an accomplished tag team wrestler, having won the ROH World Tag Team Championship and WWE/Raw Tag Team Championships twice each alongside Charlie Haas, and another WWE tag team title run with Cedric Alexander in the previous incarnation of this stable, dubbed The Hurt Business.
Check out some clips of the match here:
What do you think of this title change? Who do you think will be the next in line to challenge, if not outright dethrone The Hurt Syndicate for these belts? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!