It is a sad state of the WWE that they haven’t focused on the WWE Tag Team Division for the past couple of years. Last year of 2010, the WWE Tag-Team Championship Title has changed hands 6 times. So far this year of 2011, the WWE Tag-Team Championship Title has changed hands 5 times. In the last two years, the promoted NXT wrestlers collectively have held of the titles the most. Though professional wrestling is a scripted sporting event and the winners are predetermined, not every wrestler is given the honor to hold the title. To hold the title put’s a tag-team in the same category of The Hart Foundation, The Rockers, The British Bulldogs, The Hardy Boys, Edge and Christian, The Dudley Boys and other great tag-teams of the WWE. But for the past two years, the prestige of the Tag-Team Titles has lost its luster.
Though the multiple holders of the tag-team belts still defended the title to the best of their performing ability, the over-all WWE tag-team division has played second fiddle to everything else in the WWE. Very little storylines were written which centered on the belts. The ones holding the belt were usually tied to a faction, specifically the Nexus and the Corre factions, so the tag-teams bare spoke a word and rarely vocalized that they were the best tag-team around. The negative impact in all of this is that it made the tag-team belts became just mere jewelry instead of the symbolic meaning of being a champion.
I remember a time when tag-teams of the WWE aggressively pursued the Tag-Team Championship belts. These teams were not mere “put-together” teams just to form a tag-team, but instead, they were wrestling partners who had great chemistry tagging in-and-out of the ring. They played the role that no one was better than them. They held the titles high and protected it from anyone who dared snatch it from them. But now, it’s not like that. Very rarely do we see the teams brag about being the champions. Very rarely do we see them walk with the swag of champions. Oh how far we come from those great days of when the titles meant something.
There are many arguments as to why it’s like that, and there are many arguments on how to fix it. The bottom-line is this: the WWE has to make a conscious decision to focus on these belts. Is it possible to say that there is no time on TV to create a story for the tag-team division? Impossible! For every 60 minutes of TV programming, approximately 20 minutes are allotted for sponsors. The following chart breaks down the total number of minutes of pure WWE Programming:
Number of Active Titles in the WWE:
1 - WWE Heavyweight Championship Title
1 - World Heavyweight Championship Title
3 - Intercontinental Championship Title
4 - US Championship Title
5 - WWE Tag-Team Championship Title
6 - Divas Championship Title.
6 Titles/Division Storyline plus 1 Non-Title storyline divided by 210 minutes (210/7) equals a possible 30 minutes per storyline. Theoretically, there is no reason for the WWE to NOT raise the level of the Tag-Team Division. Even if each division storyline is given a solid 20-minutes each week (since 10 minutes could be used to promote other events), it is still enough time for promo and actual wrestling.
The WWE roster is stacked, so there’s more than enough wrestlers to form teams for the Tag-Team Division. Plus, current hall of famers like Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, and possibly future Hall of Famer Edge proves that being in a tag-team can elevate you to main event status. Now only if the WWE just can sit back and realize that they can return the tag team division to its prominence if they wanted to. All we can do is wait and hope that the WWE see’s what we see. Hopefully it will all work out in the end.
Thanks for reading this blog. Like always, I’d love to read your comments.
