WWE Monday Night Raw: The 10 for February 18, 2019
7. Tag team (not) wrestling!
The other team holding gold on the Raw brand also had a few moments in the sun on Monday night, with our (sort-of) inaugural WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Sasha Banks and Bayley (a.k.a. The Boss ‘n’ Hug Connection) coming to the ring to celebrate their victory at Elimination Chamber.
Still emotional from the night before — and understandably so, given the gravity of what Banks and Bayley have achieved and how long it took to achieve it, and also because these are two women who love being professional wrestlers — the pair vowed to be fighting champions, willing to defend against any teams, be them from Raw, SmackDown, or NXT. The pair also made it clear that their longtime friendship and the trials it has faced over the years, and the last 12 months in particular, has strengthened their bond.
Nia Jax and Tamina provide the interruption and while Jax brings up a good point (any time Banks is a champion, she loses the title upon her first defense of it), it’s overshadowed by the heels’ weak attempt at attacking the tag champs. Bayley and Banks fought them off via light swatting.
The intrigue lies in a few points laid out in this segment. For one, it was known that the Women’s Tag Team Champions would be floating between Raw and SmackDown, but adding NXT into the mix could mean a lot more brand-hopping is on the way. For the other, Jax reminding Bayley and Banks of Banks’ shaky championship history could plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the Boss ‘n’ Hug Connection, leaving them vulnerable to would-be contenders. And third, it’s clear that Jax and Tamina want to be the first to get a title shot.
It is a shame, though, that Banks and Bayley had to wait this long for these tag titles to be established and instead had to wade through such messy storylines last year, including the will-they-won’t-they of a feud that went nowhere and having to attend therapy together. None of what happened in the past 12 months, beyond further galvanization of their friendship, was all that necessary to get to this moment. At least WWE finally let them get here, but it did force us all to walk an overlong and sometimes stupid path.