WWE: Keeping The IIconics off tv is not iconic

WWE have been doing a disservice to their Women’s Tag Team Champions by keeping The IIconics off television this past week.

One of the most shocking moments to take place this year during WrestleMania 35 was seeing The IIconics win the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships. It’s too bad their reign has been underwhelming to say the least.

Ever since they won the titles, Billie Kay and Peyton Royce have failed to win virtually all of their matches. Apart from successfully defending their titles against two enhancement talents on the post-Mania edition of SmackDown Live, the champs have lost both tag matches and singles matches. It doesn’t matter whether they’re on the blue brand or the red one. The Aussies have consistently ended their matches by taking an L.

Yet, the biggest L they have taken yet would come this week. This L doesn’t start with the letter L, but it certainly features it: irrelevance.

This week, neither Billie Kay or Peyton Royce were featured on either main roster program. Not the red brand nor the blue brand. Oddly enough, they popped up in front of the live crowd in dark segments that wound up being YouTube exclusives, but beyond that, the tag champs were nowhere in sight unless you happened to have an internet connection.

Instead, they were on Main Event, WWE Network exclusive show that few fans watch and where most wrestlers go to wrestle when WWE has no plans for them on Raw. The IIconics have been featured on the last couple episodes. Mind you, they won both matches – a tag match against Tamina and Alicia Fox, then a singles match against Nikki Cross for Peyton – so kudos to them for racking Ws for once. Still, the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions deserve better.

Many critics were disappointed to see The IIconics win the titles at Mania. Not because of The IIconics themselves – they’ve put in stellar heel work on the main roster for the past year – but because the Boss ‘N’ Hug Connection had only just became the inaugural champions. In a short amount of time, Sasha Banks and Bayley managed to make those titles feel important. They did so by scouting other brands – i.e. NXT – and having a handful of strong title defenses against game competition.

The IIconics have had the titles almost just as long as Boss ‘N’ Hug had them and haven’t been nearly as memorable. Which is a shame because these two had potential for a strong reign if WWE would just book them properly. Instead, WWE booked them to lose all of their matches. This past week, they opted not to book them at all, which is even worse.

What WWE is doing with The IIconics isn’t iconic at all. It both stifles and wastes their true potential. When they debuted on the main roster last year, they quietly rose to prominence as one of the most entertaining heel duos on WWE television. WWE just have to, well, put them on television. Especially now that they’re champions. If you’re not going to book your champions, then why put the titles on them to begin with? Why dampen Boss ‘N’ Hug’s momentum, inadvertently convincing Sasha to take her ball and go home?

Not booking The IIconics on television is disappointing enough, but not booking their Women’s Tag Team Champions mere months after introducing the titles is doing a disservice to The IIconics, the women’s tag division and frankly, the women’s division as a whole.