This past weekend, WWE held its biggest event of the year, WrestleMania 40. The show saw a ton of great action and moments, including the split of the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships. We saw everything from debuts to new champions being crowned, to just overall fantastic matches. It all culminated when Cody Rhodes finally finished his story, winning the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship against Roman Reigns.
However, another big story that came out of WrestleMania had to do with tag team wrestling, more precisely, WWE’s tag team division. In the six-pack ladder match, The Judgement Day (Damian Priest & Finn Balor) put their Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships on the line against six other teams.
The likes of The Awesome Truth (The Miz & R-Truth), A-Town Down Under (Grayson Waller & Austin Theory), New Catch Republic (Tyler Bate & Pete Dunne), and The New Day (Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods) all vied for an opportunity to call themselves champions. Ultimately, the tag team titles were split with A-Town Down Under winning the SmackDown Tag Titles, and The Awesome Truth winning the Raw Tag Titles. So, was this the right move?
Was it the right choice for WWE to split the WWE Tag Team Championships?
In May of 2022, Jimmy & Jey Uso would go on to unify the Raw and SmackDown Tag Team Championships, forming the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships. They did so by defeating the Raw Tag Team Champions, RK-Bro. Since then WWE had one set of titles for their entire tag team division.
Around the time, that worked. WWE’s tag team division was not what it is today back then. In a division led by The Usos & RK-Bro, there wasn’t much depth. It wasn’t until Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn began teaming up that The Usos had a viable option who could take the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships off of them.
However, fast forward to today, the tag division in the WWE has improved tenfold. To say the WWE tag team division is flourishing, would be an understatement. With an abundance of teams to choose from, splitting the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions was a no-brainer.
On the Raw side of things, currently, The Awesome Truth sits atop the tag team mountain. However, the depth of the tag division has grown so much. For example, Alpha Academy, Imperium, The Judgement Day, and The New Day all prove to be viable challengers for The Awesome Truth’s tag team championships.
The same can be said for SmackDown. Sitting atop the SmackDown tag team division is A-Town Down Under. The depth they have has grown a ton as well. For example, Authors of Pain, The Street Profits, Legado Del Fantasma, Latino World Order, and The Bloodline (Jimmy Uso & Solo Sikoa) can all show to be viable challengers for the SmackDown tag team championships.
All in all, it’s easy to understand why they decided to unify the Raw and SmackDown Tag Team Championships. However, this is a different time, and more importantly a different era. The tag team scene in WWE is hot right now and one set of titles just wouldn’t cut it. In the end, splitting the WWE Tag Team Championships at WrestleMania 40 was the right thing to do.
