WWE Tag Team Championship

WWE (formerly the WWF, WWWF, and its predecessor, Capitol Wrestling) has maintained at least one primary tag team championship since 1958 (except for a two year interim between 1967 and 1969). Whenever brand division has been implemented, separate primary tag team titles have been created or allocated for each brand.

Overview of titles

History

The New Day are two-time Raw Tag Team Champions and two-time SmackDown Tag Team Champions; their second reign as Raw Tag Team Champions is the longest reign for any primary tag team championship in WWE history at 483 days

Capitol Wrestling set up its first tag team championship, the United States Tag Team Championship in 1958. When Capitol seceded from the National Wrestling Alliance in 1963 and became the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), the championship became the WWWF United States Tag Team Championship. In 1967, WWWF World Heavyweight Champion Bruno Sammartino teamed with Spiros Arion to win the belts. Due to Sammartino being the world champion, the team vacated the tag titles which were then abandoned.^[1]

For two years, the WWWF had no tag team championship until The Rising Suns (Toru Tanaka and Mitsu Arakawa) arrived in the promotion in September 1969 with the WWWF International Tag Team Championship which they claimed to have won in a tournament in Tokyo in June of that year. This became the WWWF's tag team title until 1971, mostly being held by The Mongols.^[2] When they left the WWWF, taking the titles with them, the promotion established their own original world tag team championship, the WWWF World Tag Team Championship. In 1979, the promotion became the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and the tag titles were shortened to WWF Tag Team Championship until 1983 when they were renamed WWF World Tag Team Championship.

By 1988, wrestling magazine Pro Wrestling Illustrated was calling for the establishment of a secondary WWF Intercontinental Tag Team Championship (modelled on the WCW United States Tag Team Championship) due to the glut of tag team competition in the promotion.^[3] This never took place, but in 1991, WWF-affiliated promotion UWF Japan introduced the WWF Intercontinental Tag Team Championship, claimed by the team of Perro Aguayo and Gran Hamada. This title was abandoned when the affilaition ended that same year.^[4] Similarly, back in May 1985, Tatsumi Fujinami and Kengo Kimura beat Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis in a tournament final in Japan for a revival of the old International Tag Team Title of 1969-1971, only for the title to be abandoned again when New Japan and the WWF fell out in October

In 2001, the WWF bought rival company WCW, acquiring the WCW World Tag Team Championship, among other titles, which was defended on WWF programming until that year's Survivor Series, where the WCW World Tag Team Championship was unified into the WWF World Tag Team Championship.^[5]

After WWF's initial brand extension in the spring of 2002 and the renaming of the company as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the tag titles became the WWE Tag Team Championship and champions Billy and Chuck were drafted to the SmackDown brand. That following summer, however, The Un-Americans (Christian and Lance Storm) defeated Billy and Chuck for the titles, moving the championship to the Raw brand where it was renamed World Tag Team Championship, effectively leaving the SmackDown brand without a tag team title. As a result, then-SmackDown General Manager Stephanie McMahon introduced a new WWE Tag Team Championship and commissioned it to be the tag team title for the SmackDown brand.^[6]

Both titles were unified in 2009 and were collectively referred to as the "Unified WWE Tag Team Championship" while officially remaining independently active until the World Tag Team Championship was formally decommissioned in 2010,^[5][6] leaving the newer title as WWE's only tag team championship. As a result of the 2016 draft, the championship became exclusive to Raw and was renamed the Raw Tag Team Championship, and SmackDown created the SmackDown Tag Team Championship as a counterpart title.^[7] In addition, WWE's developmental brand NXT established its own Tag Team Championship in January 2013. The Raw, SmackDown, and NXT tag team titles are WWE's three currently active tag team championships. Another tag team championship, the United Kingdom Tag Team Championship, is set to debut in 2018 for WWE's new NXT UK brand.

Championships

Longest championship reigns with a primary title

The New Day, Demolition, The Fabulous Kangaroos, The Mongols, and The Ascension all retain the specific records for each of their respective titles held. At present, The Usos hold the specific record for the SmackDown Tag Team Championship at 182 days for their third reign.

References