The confusing lineage of the RAW Tag Team titles
 

You know what can be confusing for fans who just started watching the WWE?

The lineage of the RAW Tag Team Championship.

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They were created in 2002 as the WWE Tag Team Championship and were exclusive to the Smackdown roster...

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...in order to compete against the RAW exclusive World Tag Team Championship (previously known as the WWF Tag Team Championship, and the WWE Tag Team Championship after the company renamed in May of 2002)

http://www.wwe.com/f/styles/wwe_16_9...ampionship.png

Who were the champions at the time?

Well, The Un-Americans - Christian and Lance Storm* held the "tag team titles" (World Tag Team Championship) on RAW.

http://www.stormwrestling.com/images/wwe5.jpg

What about the newly minted WWE Tag Team titles? Who were the inaugural champions?


None other than "2017 WWE Hall of Fame inductee and the only olympic gold medalist in the history of the WWE" - Kurt Angle and "The Rabid Wolverine" Chris Benoit!

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In November of 2008, the team of "John Morrison and The Miz" became the first ECW superstars to win the Smackdown exclusive WWE Tag Team Championship.

http://wrestlinggimmickbios.weebly.c...544896.jpg?452

Their reign as champions would come to an end in July of 2008 as the belts would "return" to Smackdown with Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder.

http://www.wwe.com/f/photo/image/201...008jg_0126.jpg

In September of 2008, Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins would lose the belts to Carlito and Primo Colon.

http://www.allwrestlingsuperstars.co...r-primo-11.jpg

The WWE Tag Team Champions Carlito and Primo would go on to face the World Tag Team Champions John Morrison and The Miz at the pre-show of Wrestlemania 25 in a title unification match.

http://www.accelerator3359.com/Wrest...s/colonmiz.jpg

The Colons would create history and become the first ever Unified Tag Team Champions.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...7edc25b56a.jpg

Future winners of the Unified Tag Team titles would be recognized as both the WWE Tag Team Champions and the World Tag Team Champions.

The last team to be recognized as the Unified Tag Team Champions was The Hart Dynasty.

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In August of 2010, Bret Hart presented a brand new set of belts to The Hart Dynasty.

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Subsequently, the World Tag Team Championship was retired and The Hart Dynasty were simply recognized as the WWE Tag Team Champions.

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After the 2016 draft, WWE Tag Team Champions The New Day were recognized as the RAW Tag Team Champions with the creation of the new Smackdown Tag Team Championship.

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BONUS!

The first WWE Tag Team Champions to compete on Monday Night RAW were none other than the team of Brian Kendrick and Paul London.

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Wait, so in that title history, was it that Kurt Hawkins that tagged with Zack Ryder?

Also, surprised WWE hasn't acknowledged the monumental accolade of Kurt Angle gaining and defending the tag team championships by himself. Seems like they'd include that in his HoF package. But in that pic, why is he awkwardly holding a trophy and standing next to Stephanie?

Knew this was gonna be a thread by GD when I saw on the main forum page

Also *Lance Storm

You are thinking way too much, nobody cares about this shit.

I'm kind of a belt nerd too, but once they decided they were gonna ignore/not care about linaiage it became pretty much pointless to try and make sense of it

Just glad the classic teams aren't tainted by the Red and Blue Belts. Felt the same way when the Divas Title was the only woman's championship. The girls in the brand were not worthy to be associated with Moolah. Sherri, Madusa, Lita, Trish, Molly, Victoria etc.

Not to be that guy or anything but the then-WWF was renamed to WWE in May 2002, not April.

You're not a good guy, you're not a bad guy but you are that guy.

Yes, it's Edgehead Curt from c.2007-2008 who recently returned. He and Ryder made their debuts as The Major Brothers before becoming Edge's doppelgangers, The Edgeheads on December 21, 2007 @ Armageddon 2007 by helping him win the World Heavyweight Championship v. Batista and Undertaker in a triple-threat.

You two should maybe have sex with each other's butts until you both die.

Stop hating ABT, the DAMN man is just spitting facts.

You could do this for pretty much any title. Title lineages in WWE are convoluted as shit.

Doesn't seem that complicated.

SD created new tag titles for the first brand split, brand split ended and titles were unified. New brand split happened, and again SD didn't have tag titles so they created new ones. One day they will be unified with the RAW tag championships.

It's no different than how the big gold belt was re introduced in RAW when they didn't have a world champion. Once again this time around they were without a world title, so they created a new one.

Just saw that and :smh:

Shut the fuck up.

You're correct, my friend.

I am fascinated by wrestling titles and their lineages.

When I restarted watching the WWE (after a very Long hiatus) in 2003, sometime around Goldberg's debut, I was utterly confused by the championships on both the shows. I did my research online and got a general idea of how things were.

The most confusing for me at the time was the World Heavyweight Championship (represented by the Big Gold belt). While it shared the lineage of the old NWA World Heavyweight Championship and the WCW Championship (renamed as the World Championship after The Alliance was vanquished), it did not share the title history. It was extremely confusing and the documentary DVD didn't help much.

WWE pretty much went back and forth on the Big Gold belt's lineage and usually for storyline reasons. If they care about a feud or a wrestler, the belt suddenly got treated a lot more prestigious while other times it got treated as just a regular RAW/Smackdown title.

Think the WWE belt still holds the real WCW/NWA lineage since the World belt given to Triple H was just Big Gold in design only and WWE belt never got split into 2 titles.

Wiki says the belts' lineage actually goes back to June 3, 1971 and lists Luke Graham and Tarzan Tyler as the inaugural WWWF tag team champs, beating Dick the Bruiser and The Shiek if that helps any.

You're confusing this article with this.

Ah, I see...I just figured you were talking about the World Tag Team Championships. My mistake.