How AEW Are Ruining Their Tag Team Division

AEW has been riding high with a long-term TV extension for Dynamite and another show on the horizon. One of the big reasons for their success has been their incredibly strong Tag Team Division. At least it was until Chris Jericho’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Rager at Sea Second Wave.

Broadcasting live from the boat, Dynamite featured a match between Kenny Omega and ‘Hangman’ Adam Page against SoCal Uncensored’s Frankie Kazarian and Scorpio Sky. SCU were AEW’s inaugural Tag Team Champions, a great choice among an incredible field of talent. When you’ve got teams like The Young Bucks, Private Party and The Lucha Brothers around, being the first with the belts says a lot about the company’s confidence in you. It would have been fair to assume the next team to hold the belts would have come from that incredible talent pool.

Unfortunately, that was not the case.

The team of Page and Omega defeated SCU and became the second tag team to hold the belts. Keeping in mind that separately they are two of the best in the business today, having them become a relatively impromptu team and make them champions to further a storyline undercuts the entire division. It’s something WWE would do.

The rumor has always been that Vince McMahon doesn’t have a lot of love for tag teams. As such, the division does not get much focus on either Raw or SmackDown. There are great teams on both brands, but the championships are frequently used as props in the storylines of singles competitors.

Need an example? Just look at the last few times Seth Rollins held the Raw Tag Team Championships. Seth currently runs a faction that includes himself, Buddy Murphy and AOP. Rollins and Murphy wrestled one match as a tag team and became champions. The same thing happened when Seth and Braun Strowman teamed up one time. Both victories were purely for storyline purposes, leaving actual tag teams out in the cold.

To make matters worse, Seth is partnered with the AOP who have far more right to be the Raw Tag Team Champions than he and Murphy do.

Ultimately, Page and Omega being the champions is not a story about the Tag Team Division. It is a story about the internal strife of The Elite, which is being put ahead of the legit tag teams in AEW.

In the segment after their victory, Page kept trying to talk and was repeatedly cut off by Omega. Unintentionally, of course, but rude nonetheless. Then, The Young Bucks showed up and made things a little worse. The end result was Adam Page quipping that he was surprised they won the championships before The Young Bucks did.

Adam Page kind of hit the nail on the head with that one.

The Young Bucks are one of the greatest tag teams in the world. They’ve won multiple championships in several companies, including Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling. Wrestling Observer Newsletter named them the Tag Team of the Year for five consecutive years starting in 2014 and ending in 2018. Despite their worldwide success and accolades, they somehow find themselves on the outside looking in when it comes to chasing the gold in the AEW Tag Team Division.

Part of the problem is that The Young Bucks are members of AEW’s management alongside Cody Rhodes. They probably don’t want to appear to be booking themselves too well and abusing their authority, so they’ve been careful to put championships on other wrestlers. The problem is that these are three of the best talents in the business. They should be champions.

The breakdown in The Elite is becoming a huge story in AEW. Page seems to be largely unsatisfied with the group and is slowly moving away from them. Omega appears the main one trying to appease Page, playing peacemaker between him and The Young Bucks. This story is likely to end up with Page and Omega defending their the AEW Tag Team Championships against The Young Bucks. Who comes out of this storyline as a face and as a heel remains to be seen.

The biggest losers in this storyline are the rest of the teams in the Tag Team Division. They have all been left twisting in the wind, not knowing when their next shot is coming. As long as the belts are tied up in the growing Elite civil war, it’s unlikely that they will change hands.

The smartest thing AEW could do at this point would be move the belts to an actual tag team, like Santana and Ortiz. The growing feud between members of The Elite does not require championship gold to make it interesting or viable. Kenny Omega should be chasing Chris Jericho’s AEW World Championship, not trying to stop his friends from fighting. Adam Page probably has some important cowboy *ahem* stuff to do.

If they continue down this path, AEW risks casting their Tag Team Division as an afterthought the same way WWE has. Fans hoped that AEW was better than that. Then again, look at their Women’s Division.