Are the NXT Tag Team Championships Cursed?

Before we proceed, spoiler alert for upcoming NXT tapings. Still with me? Good stuff. The NXT Tag Team Championships are an interesting beast. It could be argued that matches for the tandem titles are frequently among the best in NXT as far as pure in-ring quality goes. The saga of #DIY vs. The Revival is held up as one of the strongest collection of matches in the history of WWE’s tag team division. Cut to recent proceedings and you have the likes of Undisputed Era vs. Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch stealing the show at the latest TakeOver special in Chicago.

After the excitement of Moustache Mountain capturing the gold from Kyle O’Reilly and Roderick Strong on night two of the WWE UK Championship Tournament event – and the subsequent shock to the system of the Undisputed Era winning them back on NXT two days later – they seem to be the titles to have. Adam Cole’s crew of ROH veterans have made the straps feel more prestigious than ever due to the group’s dominance of the product. However, it could be argued that the NXT Tag Team Championship titles are a kiss of death.

When you chart the main roster translation of former champions in NXT, most of them have found tremendous success. Every women’s champ with the exception of Asuka and Ember Moon have captured a title on Raw or SmackDown (and Asuka won the first ever women’s Royal Rumble, a pretty neat consolation prize). Meanwhile, the majority of NXT Champions have had prolonged main roster success, with some capturing world titles, and others cooking up a storm in other divisions. Hell, even Bo Dallas is finally hitting his stride with this whole B-Team angle.

Cast your eye to the tag titles and a very different story emerges. Only two teams that have held gold in NXT have gone on to capture their main roster equivalents: American Alpha, who would split shortly after, and Harper and Rowan, who only managed to pull it off almost five years after the fact.

The list of names to hold the belts paints a depressing picture. Aside from the aforementioned Wyatt Family and the freshly debuted Sanity, only three teams that have held the NXT Tag Team Championship are still together on the main roster. The longest-reigning champs ever in The Ascension, the seemingly directionless Revival, and the absent Authors of Pain. Let’s think about that for a second; The Ascension held the titles for almost a full year and have been lost in jobber town for the majority of their main roster run.

The Revival are two-time champs and had some of the best matches in NXT history, now they’re wheeled out when Raw needs a reliable pair of hands to have a decent tag match. Sure, they beat Roman Reigns and Bobby Lashley this week, but 50/50 booking doesn’t equal roaring success. And while Authors of Pain are technically undefeated on main, that’s more down to the fact that they’ve been seen once on television in the last two months, where they dutifully disposed of jobbers.

It’s recently been revealed that Vince McMahon hates tag team wrestling and it couldn’t be more evident. NXT is the system by which future stars are to be developed and its amazing tag teams have been shafted. How can Monday Night Raw have Bray Wyatt & Matt Hardy as the tag champs when The Revival and the AOP are waiting in the wings? It seems that Raw’s tag team division lacks any kind of discernible depth, despite that fact that some of NXT’s finest pairings have been sent there. While SmackDown has a marginally better division, it’s mostly just been carried by the collective effort of The Usos and The New Day for the better part of a year and a half now.

I said with confidence before the promotion of The Revival that they would break the curse. I said the same about the AOP. It’s got to the point where my faith has depleted. Sanity may have had a hot debut by beating down the brothers Uso, but that’s just one strong week. They might be okay due to being a faction, but let’s not hold our breath. How long before they’re put into comedy skits with New Day? I know it’s a scary thought, but it’s one that we must be prepared for.

Can Undisputed Era finally end this curse? Well, I’m not going to say yes. I will say it’s obvious that WWE are heavily invested at least in Adam Cole. He has all the makings of a Triple H guy and fits the mould of your classic chicken shit heel that Vince McMahon is so fond of. I cannot speak for the futures of reDRagon and Roderick Strong, who may be left behind while their leader goes on to main event glory.

Call me a pessimist, but the evidence is all there in front of us. Of all the titles available in NXT, the tag belts have the worst track record of being converted into a strong main roster spot. I love tag team wrestling and I love the Undisputed Era. Here’s to the future, and here’s hoping we see improved booking for practitioners of the art of the two-on-two contest.