WWE doesn’t care about tag teams (at least not on RAW)
WWE’s recent booking of the RAW tag team division, including the champions, reaffirmed the company’s feelings about it.
Last night on RAW, Braun Strowman defeated RAW Tag Team Champion Sheamus in a singles match. He did the same thing to “The Celtic Warrior’s” championship partner Cesaro the week prior. These matches were part of WWE’s semi-lazy build to Strowman–and a partner of his choice–challenging Sheamus and Cesaro for their titles at WrestleMania. “The Monster Among Men” earned the title shot when he single-handedly won a tag team battle royal two weeks ago.
Strowman tossing around hoards of grown men isn’t surprising. It’s kinda his thing (along with lifting automobiles). Sadly, WWE’s treatment of their tag team division surprises me even less.
The company didn’t think that even one of the teams that Strowman brushed aside like lint on a sports coat was worth protecting. Not Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows. Not The Revival. None of them. Shockingly, those teams fail to garner a reaction when they come out for a match (not really).
The booking of that battle royal and the Tag Team Champions validates what many fans already believe: that WWE doesn’t care that much about the tag team division.
Did WWE ever care all that much?
Of course, most ardent fans could argue that WWE has never truly cared that much about tag teams. After all, the company has only had two pay-per-view main events contested for some version of the WWE Tag Team Championship (Fully Loaded 1998 and TLC 2009) in its long history. Even during the beloved tag team renaissance in 2000, duos were occasionally used as cannon fodder for the big name singles stars. The difference, of course, was that WWE didn’t overtly go out of their way to define down all of their teams as jokes the way they do now (at least on RAW).
Some of these tandems should mean so much more. WWE could have presented Gallows and Anderson as a hard-hitting, unpredictable team. But Vince McMahon probably thought they were “boring”, so he and the creative team put them in terrible comedy segments and had them lose title match after title match to The New Day, evaporating their mystique.
The Revival were arguably the best team in the company in terms of cohesion and psychology. But for Vince, a fun throwback team means “uninteresting wrasslers” in his mind, so they became crash test dummies for DX. Heck, the company could have done something with The Titus Brand other than making them yet another “comedy” team. WWE depresses their value and is then shocked when these teams come out to crickets later on. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that WWE has created time and time again.
Not all bad?
WWE’s tag team division isn’t a complete lost cause. Over on SmackDown Live, The Usos and The New Day had one of the best rivalries in 2017 that culminated inside Hell in the Cell last fall. WWE has recently used that history to kickstart The Bludgeon Brothers’ push, and it’s worked so far. The company has protected all three teams and as a result, they feel more important than any team on RAW does.
If WWE wants to put Strowman in a tag team, that’s fine. If the company feels that those other RAW teams aren’t worth the time, that’s fine too. But WWE should avoid using future teams as traffic cones for the singles stars to run over. The Usos and The New Day–along with countless other teams from the past and the present–have shown fans how compelling and dramatic tag team wrestling can be over the years. If WWE gets over their singular focus, maybe they can see it too.