10 Signs WWE’s Women’s Revolution Is Dead

WWE have long enjoyed using the makeshift tag team as a storytelling device. “Can they co-exist?” We are asked to speculate the same question over and over as superstars are forced into ill-fitting tandems.

Aside from the mind numbing repetition it creates other problems. If two wrestlers, unable to get along and prone to miscommunication, can beat established tag acts with years of working together then how crap must those teams be? It’s a terrible look for the tag team specialists jobbed out to serve a story.

WWE have solved this problem with its women’s division. The solution? Don’t have any established tag teams at all. They binned off The IIconics and two thirds of The Riott Squad just to be safe. Instead, women are paired off seemingly at random. Occasionally one of these pairings will connect with fans, With Natalya and Tamina the surprise hit at last year’s WrestleMania. So of course, the pair were split in a draft. Natalya now tags with Shayna Baszler whose own odd-couple tag team partner has been released.

Despite the valiant efforts of Sasha Banks and Bayley, WWE’s Women’s Tag Titles have rarely felt like a prize worth fighting for. Instead they’re just something to do. Vince McMahon is famously no fan of tag matches; he resents paying twice the number of workers for one match. It seems with the women the opposite is true. Cram four women into one match and you don’t have to find room for them elsewhere on the card.