All Elite Wrestling announced on Wednesday the official brackets for the upcoming AEW Women’s Tag Team division, with a tournmaent to crown the first AEW Women’s World Tag Team Champions.
This is the perfect time for AEW to launch a women’s tag team division for a few reasons. For one, the AEW Men’s Tag Team division is finally flush with talent, contenders, and stories. It’s a well oiled machine at this point with multiple top tag teams, popular tag team champions, and a good hierarchy of talent.
I discussed the tiers of the men’s world tag team division over a year ago about the need of creating new Tier 1 and Tier 2-A teams. I think the return of Jurassic Express, the success of Brodido, and the revitalization of Young Bucks and FTR has helped build that. They also have much stronger teams now with JetSpeed just underneath compared to the forced push of Private Party which led to a disappointing tag team title run snuffed out by Hurt Syndicate. Those days are over. The division is in a very good place now.
With the tag division figured out and there being time between now and the Continental Classic? It’s a good time to launch a brand new division and run a tournament for new championship titles. This time with the women.
I’ll discuss the teams involved in the tournament individually soon, but I want to talk about what it takes to build a good division, and how this will be different from the men.
Building Trust
Unlike the men’s tag team division, there isn’t a great history of women tag teams in North America. We have had great women’s tag teams in Japan going back to the Jumping Bomb Angels and Crush Gals of the 1980s and Las Cachorras Orientales of the 1990s. In North America it’s a bit tougher to talk about who the great women’s tag teams were in ring. TNA Wrestling established their Knockouts Tag Team Division in 2009 and the best known team they launched out of it was The Beautiful People, who needed to bring in Madison Rayne to really carry the wrestling of the team. At one point Eric Young was a Knockout Tag Team Champion. For 478 days. Equality or whatever.
Women often work as solo acts, or only work as a tag team or trios when they are not good enough to work singles matches alone. It’s a great way to hide weaknesses and cut down on how much of a match they have to work. AEW has had a few women’s acts so far that could have been considered tag teams (the longest of which is TayJay who are in the tournament) but it’s going to take a lot of time building some of these women from their solo acts to now being established tag team acts. You want tag teams to be better known as teams than their singles runs.
This isn’t easy to do, and already I’ve seen criticism that too many of the teams feel thrown together and just are strong singles wrestlers. The reality is that this is the way for much of tag team wrestling since the territory days. The “established specifcally as a tag team act” isn’t the default for most tag team divisions. It’s usually a place for solo wrestlers to move into when there’s no room at the top. Still gives them something to fight for.
This will be the AEW Women’s Tag Team division until they can really get some teams identity figured out. And even then, it’s going to be more likely for the two over singles wrestlers to have the best chance to headline the division.
About That Other Tournament…
This won’t be the first time AEW tried a women’s tag team tournament. That would be during the pandemic with the The Deadly Draw, a Women’s Tag Team Cup Tournament.
The Deadly Draw was supposed to be completely random with everyone choosing colours and the matching colours become teams. It wasn’t supposed to be built with known teams or friends working with each other. Of course, AEW abandoned the idea almost immediately.
We were supposed to believe that the Nightmare Sisters in Brandi Rhodes and Allie just randomly got together. That Big Swole lucked out on teaming with her indies partner “Lil’ Swole” Nicole Savoy. That Ivelisse and Diamante, who already worked together before, just lucked out as a team! Sometimes wrestling asks you to stretch your imagination a little too far.
The tournament wasn’t good for AEW. The matches were some of the worst in the company (The Swoles versus Leva Bates and Rache Chanel is one of the worst matches in AEW history) and Diamante and Ivelisse won due to the criticism of it all being a vehicle for Brandi Rhodes to get herself back wrestling on television. Diamante and Ivelisse won the Deadly Draw Cup on October 13, 2020 at Saturday Night Dynamite. They wouldn’t team again until an episode of Dark almost a month later. They did work a few more matches together before Ivelisse once again proved herself unreliable in a major promotion. Brandi and Allie split so Allie could be The Bunny again and Brandi Rhodes could do… whatever.
What lessons could AEW learn from this? Waiting to do women’s tag team wrestling when Brandi Rhodes was no longer in the company was probably first. You can’t do something like this without using your best workers is another. Claiming it was a random draw and things not being random at all was just insulting the viewer. Don’t do that.
It’s nice to see TayJay still together since that terrible tournament, while Penelope Ford returns with a much better tag team partner in Megan Bayne. That’ll be the only remnants of that tournament in 2020.
The Teams
Now to look at the eight tag teams assembled for this tournament. I was convinced for some time they wouldn’t try launching this until they could have Hikaru Shida and Syuri for it, as Shida has been having VISA issues and Syuri got injured in her first AEW match. My hope is they can come in to face whoever wins the tag team championship.
Queen Aminata and Jamie Hayter
Jamie Hayter beat Thekla at AEW WrestleDream 2025, which ended up going against my predictions as being a match to build to a singles title and instead it was about establishing Queen Aminata as Jamie’s tag team partner. Twitter has already affectionately dubbed them “The Rich Aunts”
Who knows if that ends up their official name but what a great duo to put together. Both women hit hard and keep coming. Their styles mesh together brilliantly, even if on the surface the two don’t seem to have much in common except disliking the Triangle of Madness. Love this team.
Sisters of Sin (Skye Blue and Julia Hart)
The Sisters of Sin, part of the Triangle of Madness, have been together for quite some time now. Blue and Hart are very young when it comes to others in AEW, and are still work in progress pro wrestlers. It makes sense to put them in tag team matches, and also makes sense they’d be going up against Queen Aminata and Jamie Hayter. Hayter and Aminata won a tag team match on Dynamite to hand pick their opponents and selected the Sisters of Sin.
When it comes to image, aesthetic, and promos? Sisters of Sin is one of the closest to complete package teams in the division off the get go. I think they could build into something special in the division but where they have things figured out in vibe? They need to be better when the bell rings to win this tournament.
Babes of Wrath (Willow Nightingale and Harley Cameron)
The Babes of Wrath are one of the most popular teams in the division, as Harley is the class clown of AEW and Willow is the first billing in The Conglomeration. I think if things shook out differently, if Willow and Kris finally patched things up? They would have been together for this and would have been the favourites. Their tag team was probably the most popular women’s tag act in 2024.
Willow is definitely the lead in-ring for this team as Harley is going to be taking a lot of beatings as her partner. This team only goes as far as Willow can carry them, which could be very far, but it’s tough when facing two strong women in a tag team like their first round opponents.
Athena and Mercedes Moné
It was surprising to not see this as Athena and her Minion Billie Starkz, who have been an established tag team for years now in Ring of Honor. Athena instead went ahead to pursue Moné as a tag team partner, basically two women’s champions in AEW and ROH coming together to try to become the first AEW Women’s World Tag Team Champions.
My mind immediately goes to these two feuding instead of winning this, but they are also a favourite for this. How can active champions not win this? At the very least, if you want a tournament final with the biggest star power? You’re going to need Moné on one side of the final.
This team doesn’t feel like it’ll last very long, one of the few that doesn’t feel like an established thing, but who knows. It might be Moné adding another title to her already giant collection.
Alex Windsor and Riho
If there ever was a team that felt random like The Deadly Draw was supposed to be? It’s Alex Windsor and Riho. Windsor has however teamed with everyone from Yuka Sakazaki and Sareee in Ring of Honor to Toni Storm back in July. It does seem like Windsor likes teaming with the talent from Japan, and has teamed already once with Riho before to beat Emi Sakura and Mercedes Moné. It makes sense to go ahead and team up once again.
As the least established team of the eight I wonder if this was the spot Hikaru Shida and Syuri were originally going to place in.
Timeless Love Bombs (Toni Storm and Mina Shirakawa)
The favourite of the tournament.
I knew Timeless Toni Storm was losing the AEW Women’s World Championship once word went around they were finally launching this division. You need a top star to launch it and who better than the top women’s star in All Elite Wrestling? While Kenny Omega and Hangman Adam Page weren’t the first AEW Men’s World Tag Team Champions, they were the second, and their team really put the title on the map due to Omega’s star power and Hangman’s rising star. That’s what I see this duo being for the women’s division.
I figure if they are not the winners of it all? They will at least be in the final to face whoever wins the other side of the bracket.
Top Gods (Megan Bayne and Penelope Ford)
If I was giving an underrated award to someone in AEW in 2025? It would be Penelope Ford. She has run with the team with Megan Bayne and has been a great tag team partner for her. Bayne gets to look like a dangerous threat every time they team together while Ford takes most of the beatings from the babyfaces. It’s all about giving the faces a false sense of momentum before Bayne gets the tag and wrecks shit.
I love their heel team and love how they gelled with FTR to eventually become the Top Gods (a play on FTR’s Top Guys) and honestly if I was choosing a tag team I wanted to win based on chemistry, image, style, and giving babyfaces champions to chase? I would be going with Top Gods winning this all.
TayJay (Tay Melo and Anna Jay)
TayJay’s first ever team up was the Deadly Draw back in 2020. They are the longest established women’s tag team in the company, and have worked the most matches together with 17 in tag team matches.
This experience should be good for them against a lot of teams that have only spent this year together, but the bracket is so heavy on their side it’ll be hard for them to overcome the likes of Top Gods. Even if they pulled the victory they’d likely have the Timeless Love Bombs next. It will be a very tough tournament for them to get through, but if they don’t? At least as an established midcard team for the women they should be getting a lot of work in establishing the division down the road.
Going Forward
Whoever wins the AEW Women’s Tag Team Champion? It’ll be good to give them a program they can sink their teeth into immediately. It’ll also be good that these teams don’t just immediately break up after if they don’t win.
It’s also okay if you don’t have always have established teams in this division. This division will be an opportunity for women who have exhausted shots against the champions of the singles divisions to move to the tag team division and create something fresh. So please, do not freak out any time you see two singles stars teaming up and possibly beating an established team. Go look at the history of tag teams in territories.
Whenever I hear people say that doing this is like WWE? They miss the point. The problem with WWE was at one point, guys like Chris Benoit were beating the WWE World Tag Team Champions in handicap matches. That was the problem. Or Braun Strowman winning the tag titles with a child as his tag team partner.
While the best possible tag team division is when you have teams that are established over just two random people together? The Women’s division is brand new. It needs to build to that. As I said, TayJay has the most experience of any other women’s tag team and that experience is still less than 20 2v2 matches. That’s not the kind of experience you can really say establishes you as better than any two other women.
Eventually AEW will build women as teams from the get go and maybe we will get something like an FTR or a Jurassic Express or a Young Bucks for the women. It’s going to take time, and until that happens, the best teams are women using their solo success to transition to tag team success.
As for future teams, I’ve already talked about a team of Syuri and Hikaru Shida. We saw Nixon Newell and Miranda Alize pop up on AEW Collision who could come in as an established fresh team. A dream team to come in for me would be Mizuki and Yuka Sakazaki as the Magical Sugar Rabbits from Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling. Red Velvet and Viva Van have some experience teaming together in CMLL. Maybe a Serena Deeb team with Deonna Purrazzo?
We get our first matches from the division on Wednesday as Queen Aminata and Jamie Hayter face the Sisters of Sin for Fright Night Dynamite. They have not yet established when the finals will be for the tournament.
