Buying a WWE tag team championship belt is harder than it should be, because the company has run two tag titles simultaneously, unified them, retired one, renamed the survivor, split them again by brand, and then swapped the names over.
The result is that "WWE Tag Team Championship" has meant several different physical objects across five decades, and product listings rarely say which one they mean.
This sorts out the lineage and tells you which design belongs to which era. For the practical side of buying belts in pairs, see our guide to tag team title belts.
The 1971 Original
The lineage starts on June 3, 1971, when the World Wide Wrestling Federation established its own world tag team championship. Luke Graham and Tarzan Tyler were the inaugural champions.
The name changed repeatedly as the company did. It became the WWF World Tag Team Championship in 1979 when the promotion was renamed, then the WWF Tag Team Championship in 1983, then took the fuller WWF World Tag Team Championship title as the company went national in the run-up to WrestleMania.
Through all of it the lineage and the champions carried over unbroken. This is the belt of Demolition, the Hart Foundation, the British Bulldogs, the Road Warriors and the Dudley Boyz. If your reference point is the 1980s or 1990s, this is the design you want.
The Records
The original title ran for nearly forty years and produced a substantial record book:
- Most reigns as a team: the Dudley Boyz, with eight.
- Most reigns as an individual: Edge, with twelve across various partners.
- Longest reign: Demolition, at 478 days.
- Shortest reign: Edge and Christian, at under an hour.
- Oldest champion: Ric Flair, at 57 years and 253 days.
- Youngest champion: René Duprée, at 19 years and 182 days.
Edge holding twelve reigns with different partners is a good illustration of how tag titles work differently from singles. A wrestler can accumulate a record with the belt that has nothing to do with a single partnership.
The WCW Unification
WWF bought WCW in March 2001, which brought a second world tag team championship into the company.
Both titles were unified in November 2001. WCW's was retired and WWF's continued, which is the same pattern the singles titles followed. Our guide to the Undisputed Championship belt covers the world title side of that story.
The 2002 Split
Then it got complicated, and this is where most of the confusion originates.
The 2002 brand extension divided the roster between Raw and SmackDown, and each show needed its own championships. The existing tag title became exclusive to Raw and was referred to as the World Tag Team Championship.
A completely new WWE Tag Team Championship was established for SmackDown on October 3, 2002. Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit became the inaugural champions, beating Edge and Rey Mysterio in a tournament final.
So from late 2002 there were two tag team championships running simultaneously, with two separate lineages, two sets of belts, and confusingly similar names.
The 2009 Unification and 2010 Retirement
At WrestleMania 25 on April 5, 2009, Raw's World Tag Team Champions John Morrison and The Miz faced SmackDown's WWE Tag Team Champions Primo and Carlito in a winner-take-all match. Primo and Carlito won.
WWE began treating the two championships as a single set under the name the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship. One team held both, carrying two pairs of belts, which is four belts between two people. It looked as unwieldy as it sounds.
The arrangement lasted until August 16, 2010, when the original 1971-lineage World Tag Team Championship was retired in favour of continuing the newer title. The Hart Dynasty, David Hart Smith and Tyson Kidd, were the final champions.
So the belt with thirty-nine years of history was the one that got decommissioned, and the eight-year-old title survived. That is the second time this has happened in WWE, the first being the women's division, where a 1956 title was absorbed into a 2008 one.
The 2016 Colour Split
The brand split returned in 2016, and the surviving tag title was renamed the Raw Tag Team Championship. A new SmackDown Tag Team Championship was created alongside it.
The design change is the useful part for a buyer. The Raw version replaced the original bronze centre plate with an identical silver one, and swapped the black leather strap for red to match the brand. The SmackDown version used blue.
That is a genuinely smart piece of design economy. Rather than commissioning two separate belt designs, WWE used one design and distinguished the titles by strap colour alone. Same tooling, two identities.
It is the same principle the WBC uses in boxing, and it is directly borrowable if you run more than one division. Our guide to the WBC championship belt covers the colour-as-identity idea in more depth.
The Modern Naming Confusion
More recently WWE has swapped the names between the brands again, with the Raw titles taking the World Tag Team Championship name and the SmackDown pair becoming the WWE Tag Team Championships, alongside further design revisions.
The practical advice here is simple and slightly unsatisfying: do not trust the name on a product listing. Check the reference images.
Specifically, look at:
- Strap colour. Black suggests the pre-2016 lineage. Red and blue indicate the brand-split era.
- Plate colour. Bronze versus silver distinguishes the pre-2016 and post-2016 versions of otherwise similar designs.
- Centre plate shape. The 1980s and 1990s designs are visibly different from anything modern.
If you want a specific era, those three things will identify it faster than any product title will.
Which Era Should You Buy?
There is no correct answer, only the one matching your era.
- The classic WWF design suits anyone whose memories run through the 1980s and 1990s. It has the deepest history and it is the version most people picture. We produce it as the WWF World Tag Team Championship.
- The brand-split versions suit modern viewers, and the choice between Raw and SmackDown mostly comes down to which show you watch.
- The WCW tag titles are the alternative if the Monday Night Wars are your period, either the WCW World Tag Team title replica or, for stables, the WCW six-man tag team belts.
Whichever you choose, the fundamentals are the same as any belt: plate thickness, engraving depth, plating evenness, strap material and weight. Our breakdown of championship belt materials and craftsmanship covers each.
The one addition on tag belts is that the pair must match each other, which is a production question rather than a design one. Order both together and ask how the maker handles a matched run.
Start a custom design with our custom belt builder, or contact us for a quote.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was the WWE tag team championship created?
The original lineage was established on June 3, 1971 by the World Wide Wrestling Federation, with Luke Graham and Tarzan Tyler as inaugural champions. A second title was created for SmackDown in October 2002.
Why are there two WWE tag team championships?
The 2002 brand extension split the roster between Raw and SmackDown, and each show needed its own titles. They were unified in 2009 and the original was retired in 2010, then split again in 2016 when the brand extension returned.
What is the difference between the Raw and SmackDown tag titles?
Since 2016 the two have largely shared a centre plate design and been distinguished by strap colour, red for Raw and blue for SmackDown. The names have been swapped between brands more recently, so check reference images rather than relying on the title.
Who held the WWE tag team championship the longest?
Demolition, with a 478-day reign, on the original 1971-lineage title.
Which WWE tag team belt design is the most popular?
The classic WWF World Tag Team Championship from the 1980s and 1990s is the most requested, largely because it covers the era with the strongest tag division and the most recognisable teams.
Conclusion
WWE's tag team title history is a genuine mess: two titles, one unification, one retirement, one revival, and a name swap. But the underlying object is straightforward once you know what you are looking at.
Identify the era by strap colour and plate colour rather than by the product name, and remember that whatever you buy comes as a pair that needs to match.
Read our guide to buying tag team belts as a pair, or explore custom belt options if you want a set of your own.
