Rarely will you ever hear of a WWE fan saying that there is a problem with having too much talent on the roster, but this is exactly what is happening with the tag team division right now. Even with three different divisions on Raw, SmackDown and NXT, management is still having trouble giving everyone adequate attention.
Raw's tag title scene was dominated by The New Day for the back half of 2015 and all of 2016. Most of their reign happened before WWE even introduced a second set of championships for SmackDown, so the situation was even worse before the brand extension.
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There wouldn't be an issue if WWE had a bunch of mediocre tag teams, but the level of talent is as high as it has ever been, and it has led to a major overcrowding problem.
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Teams who deserve a run with the titles are jobbing, and the duos who need time to build momentum before earning a title shot aren't even being given time on television.The Raw division is made up of Cesaro and Sheamus, The New Day, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, Enzo and Cass, Golden Truth and The Shining Stars.
If you count Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho or Rusev and Jinder Mahal, the red brand has a total of eight different tag teams.
SmackDown has American Alpha, The Hype Bros, The Vaudevillains, The Ascension, Rhyno and Heath Slater, The Wyatt Family, The Usos and Breezango. That's another eight teams in need of screen time.
Even NXT is getting crowded with DIY, The Revival, Authors of Pain, TM-61, The Bollywood Boyz and Sanity all vying for as much time as they can get. With only one hour to go around each week, most teams are lucky if they appear more than once in a month, let alone get a match on a TakeOver special.
With over 20 active tag teams, WWE simply doesn't have the capacity to give them all the attention they deserve.
Anderson and Gallows should have at least one tag title reign under their belts by now, and the same thing can be said about many other teams. Even Enzo and Cass, one of the most popular duos in all of professional wrestling, are yet to win gold in WWE.
A simple solution to this problem would be to disband a few teams, but then the issue becomes finding ways to use even more people as singles stars than WWE has to deal with right now. It's a double-edged sword.
Management tried giving The New Day something to do with a storyline involving Titus O'Neil, but it has been little more than all three members embarrassing O'Neil every time he tries to join their group or oppose one of them in the ring.
Other duos aren't so lucky. The number of times The Vaudevillains, Breezango, The Ascension and The Usos have appeared on television over the past few months can be counted on one hand.
The times these teams have actually made appearances, they’ve been involved in filler segments or matches that involve most of the other teams as well, simply as a way to give everyone a little bit of screen time. This kind of a solution doesn’t do much to help the teams either.
WWE has five hours of Raw and SmackDown every week. The only solution to the overcrowding problem in the tag team division is to find more effective ways to use that time so that a few more non-title feuds can be added to support the high number of teams.
While two groups fight for the titles, WWE should have two more fighting for the next spot in line to challenge the champions and another non-title storyline for two teams who have nothing more than a personal beef to settle with each other.
WWE wastes valuable minutes with unnecessary video packages and recaps of events which happened earlier in the same show. These things, even though they can help drive a story, can be significantly cut down to create more time for Superstars to actually perform.
Having too much talent to choose from is the best kind of problem WWE can have, but it's still a problem. If management can't find a way to use more of the Superstars on its roster, we may see more people follow in Cody Rhodes' footsteps and take their talents to the indy circuit.
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