Women’s Tag Team wrestling is dead.
Well, to be fair, was it ever truly alive? I’m sure you can name several great WWE women’s tag team matches. The problem with women’s tag team wrestling isn’t the talent. It’s the clear lack of interest that creative has with creating a strong division altogether. The company just destroyed four women’s tag teams.
- Katana Chance and Kayden Carter
- Shayna Baszler and Zoey Stark
- Chemical X (Gigi Dolan, Shotzi, and Tatum Paxley)
- Meta Girls (Jakara Jackson and Lash Legend)
Technically speaking Damage CTRL is done because Dakota Kai is gone, but Kairi Sane and Asuka are still on the roster so the faction isn’t dead just yet. Hell, let’s throw in Isla Dawn & Alba Fyre making it five teams. Now when you look at these names then it may not be a big deal.
Chance & Carter, Baszler & Stark, and Fyre & Dawn were on the main roster for quite some time and simply put, none of these women were over. But this is where I say women’s tag team wrestling is dead. All six of these women are talented and I know people can point out good/great matches involving all of these women.
But the problem with professional wrestling is in order to thrive in the business then being a great wrestler isn’t enough. Character and Story drive professional wrestling. AJ Styles said in his interview with Chris Van Vliet that wrestling is about creating memorable moments for the audience.
Can you name a memorable moment involving these teams?
Sure, you can bring up a terrible RAW segment that highlighted that Carter and Chance were party girls. Or Fyre and Dawn were witches who cursed the belts, but none of these six women had a great moment. In order to have a great moment, you need a good story. Of course, great moments come from matches as well, but it's not enough to have great matches in wrestling.
In all of WWE’s existence, the WWE’s women’s tag team division has not had a great story. There’s just matches. Usually, the challengers are determined by a number one contender’s match. Then the tag teams face off in singles matches until their eventual showdown. That’s it. What’s worse is that this “division” doesn’t even have an undercard. If a tag team isn’t fighting for the belts then they’re most likely in catering.
I’m sorry, but that’s not a division.
A division should be a lively roster featuring different groups with unique personalities in the lower, mid-card, and upper card. That means while Liv & Raquel are busy defending their titles against a set of challengers, the lower card should be building new teams that establish their act. This reliance on number one contender’s matches has been a lazy crutch in wrestling these days.
Chance & Carter could’ve feuded with Baszler & Stark. Just give them a compelling reason to do so. Same thing with Dawn & Fyre. And if WWE can’t figure out a way to add stakes to these non-title feuds then why are these writers on your team? Clearly, they don’t know how to tell a story since they can’t figure out how to craft one for the tag team division.
WWE has never put that much effort into crafting a compelling story for the women’s tag team division. Heck, I struggle to even come up with an interesting story for the tag titles. The WWE Women’s Tag Team titles feel like a consolation prize to put these women on television.
It’s packed with a bunch of random teams put together at the last minute. Then, when a team finally seems to settle in a groove within the division then the company decides to break them up. At what point will WWE finally start to take the tag team division seriously?
WWE has six hours of television (not including NXT) and they’re struggling to fill most of that content on the blue brand with compelling stories. They can show the division some more love by actually trying to develop characters and stories. But WWE just doesn’t seem that interested in doing so. And that’s not surprising given the way they treat the men’s tag team division.
Sure, there’s more depth within that division. Plus, unlike the women, there’s strong signs of life for the future with numerous tag teams in NXT. But look at what happened with the New Day. These two had incredible heat when they first turned. Instead of building them up by giving Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston secondary feuds, they half-ass a Rey Mysterio and Dragon Lee rivalry that killed most of their heat. I love tag team wrestling. There’s a unique way of telling a story in tag teams that you can’t do in the singles division.
Why is it so hard for WWE to make genuine tag team stories?
Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever get the answer to that question. WWE needs to sit down and think about the future of the women’s tag team division. With the inclusion of mid-card titles, it’s going to be harder for the company to randomly pair two wrestlers together to make a full division. I genuinely hope that the future is brighter for the division.
If the company has no interest in actually building a division with multiple teams, with diverse personalities, and fun stories, then maybe it’s best to pull the plug on it and just focus on the singles titles.