One of the longest-lasting and most prolific styles of professional wrestling is tag team wrestling. Two wrestlers team together and with the focus not just on one person, they can split the workload and also perform some incredible moves that a single person wouldn’t be able to do. Countless promotions like AEW, WWE, and AAA to name a few, have amazing tag team divisions that can often steal the show.
Not factoring in anything like trios/six-man tag team belts, and rather just looking at belts held among two performers. 2023 is a great year for wrestling and there are countless promotions that fans can look at. So let’s rank them all and see what every major promotion around the world has and decide which company has the best and worst-looking tag team championships actively going.
16 Raw & SmackDown Tag Team Championships
Starting with a tie for the last-place spot. The Raw Tag Team Championships hold the lineage from previous titles, but the current design was introduced with the 2016 brand split while SmackDown created their own version and painted the strap blue instead of red.
Minus the silver plate and colored straps, the original design was created when the World and WWE Tag Team Titles were unified in 2010 starting as a bronze plate and black strap. Most fans agree that these belts are not the best looking and have often begged for changes to be made. Currently, they are the longest-tenured belt design, including the bronze design, in the WWE.
15 IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Championships
The IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Titles were introduced in August 1998 with Shinjiro Otani and Tatsuhito Takaiwa becoming the inaugural champions at a New Japan event in Osaka, Japan. The titles have a historic and long lineage with such legends as Jushin Liger, The Great Sasuke, and Taka Michinoku all holding the belts.
Now with these titles being this low, by no means is it implying that they look bad, quite opposite as they are decent belts, but the competition is strong with the following titles.
14 IWGP Tag Team Championships
Dating back much farther than its Jr. Heavyweight counterpart, the IWGP Tag Team Championships debuted in December 1985 with Kengo Kimura and Tatsumi Fujinami being crowned as the inaugural holders. These belts have traveled across the globe with promotions like All Elite Wrestling and Impact Wrestling holding matches for them.
Again as stated with the Jr. Tag titles, these are far from awful looking and a good close-up image like the above really shows the detail. Previous designs do rank higher among most fans and just look more pleasing to the eye.
13 GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championships
Established in July 2003, KENTA and Naomichi Marufuji became the first-ever champions when they defeated Jushin Liger and Takehiro Murahama in the finals of a tournament to decide the inaugural champs. Much like NJPW, Pro Wrestling Noah has a Junior and Heavyweight division for their belts, with the Junior title having a weight limit of 220 lbs.
The design for these belts are identical to their Heavyweight counterpart, but actually changed over time. The titles started off as gold belts with blue text for the GHC logo and the words Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champions, however with time, the belts have faded into a more silver look.
12 GHC Tag Team Championships
Created in October 2001 with Vader and 2 Cold Scorpio beating Jun Akiyama and Akitoshi Saito in another tournament final to crown champions. Similar to the younger Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championships, the GHC Tag Team titles did not start off looking like they do now.
Over time the gold on these belts started to fade and instead show the silver underneath them, but instead of blue font for the wording on the belt, these use a black font instead.
11 AAA World Tag Team Championships
Another relatively young championship, the AAA World Tag Team titles was introduced in March 2007 with Dark Cuervo and Dark Ozz becoming the first champions. Interestingly these aren’t the first AAA Tag Titles as they had a previous version that was often called the AAA/IWC World Tag Team Championships, represented by the old NWA Pacific Northwest Tag Team belts.
These belts hold their own lineage and instead, just take the name of the old belts. Despite being so young, the look of the belts gives off a more vintage look, similar to a lot of championships in Mexican wrestling promotions. Like the IWGP titles, these have been used in companies other than AAA, like AEW and Pro Wrestling Noah.
10 NJPW Strong Openweight Tag Team Championships
One of the newest belts created right now, the NJPW Strong Openweight Tag Team titles were created in July 2022. So far only 4 different teams have held the belts with names like The Motor City Machine Guns, Aussie Open, and Bishamon being former champions.
The design is a replica of the NJPW Strong Openweight Championship but with blue text and a blue strap instead of a black one. The newly introduced NJPW Strong Women’s Championship features this same design as well but with a lavender strap.
9 CMLL World Tag Team Championships
Established in March 1993, Dr. Wagner Jr. and his partner El Canek were crowned the inaugural champions after defeating Vampiro and Pierroth Jr. in the finals of a 16-team tournament. Countless historic luchadors have held these belts including Silver King, Atlantis, and El Hijo del Santo.
The design is similar to a majority of the belts under the CMLL banner such as their World Heavyweight and World Light Heavyweight Championships, just featuring different text to signify the differences between titles.
8 AAA World Mixed Tag Team Championships
With a history dating back to June 2003, the AAA World Mixed Tag Team Championships are the only mixed-tag titles used by a major promotion.
The titles gained a lot of American viewers when Sammy Guevara and his wife Tay Conti/Melo captured the belts and brought them out on AEW television. Famous holders of the belt include Gran Apache, who held the belt separately with both of his daughters Faby and Mari Apache.
7 NXT Tag Team Championships
Arriving in January 2013, not long after WWE rebranded their developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling into NXT. The inaugural champions were Adrian Neville, now PAC, and his partner Oliver Grey.
The belts received a massive redesign along with the other NXT Championships at NXT TakeOver: Orlando in 2017. The previous design was a bit more unique however as they weren’t identical to each other as the black and gold coloring were swapped.
6 Impact World Tag Team Championships
Only arriving in May 2007, the Impact World Tag Team Championships have featured multiple different redesigns to fit with the theme of the promotion throughout its many changes. The current design was revealed in 2018 at the Redemption show that year, but it has been tweaked a little to have red coloring instead of the original blue.
Some of the most significant reigns with these titles include Beer Money Inc. The North, and The Motor City Machine Guns atop many other tag teams. With AEW having working relationships with a handful of different promotions, these belts have been defended on Dynamite before when the Good Brothers retained over The Dark Order.
5 AEW World Tag Team Championships
Speaking of All Elite Wrestling, their main tag team championships debuted in October 2019 when SoCal Uncensored beat The Lucha Bros to become the first-ever champions. Since then names like The Lucha Bros, The Young Bucks, and FTR have captured the belts.
The belts themselves are simplistic enough while still looking good with a dash of color from the blue globe resting on the middle plate. Not many changes have been made except the current belts now having a AEW logo in the center plate instead of being flush with the rest of the material.
4 Ring Of Honor World Tag Team Championships
After Ring of Honor was purchased by AEW founder Tony Khan, all the promotion’s belts would start to receive updates to them to fit the new look of the show. The current design came after Mark Briscoe decided to vacate the titles after the untimely passing of his brother Jay Briscoe.
The Lucha Bros. captured the titles at Supercard of Honor and were the first to hold the current design. Everything is made to be like an updated version of the second design of the titles. The side plates also feature a tribute to Jay Briscoe as he and his brother held the belts 13 times for a total of 1,485 days.
3 Goddess Of Stardom Championships
Starting in August 2011, all women’s Japanese promotion Stardom introduced their tag team titles called The Goddess of Stardom Championship. The first champions were Yoko Bito and Yuzuki Aikawa when they won the finals of the 2011 Goddesses of Stardom Tag League.
Legendary Joshi wrestlers such as Io Shirai, Jungle Kyona, and Mayu Iwatani have held the belts. They also are one of the titles that still feature the old Stardom logo and have yet to be updated.
2 Impact Knockouts World Tag Team Championships
Starting back in August 2009 as the TNA Knockouts Tag Team Championships, the titles’ most significant champions are actually a mixed team of ODB and Eric Young. The titles were deactivated in 2013 due to Eric Young not being a Knockout competitor.
They were reintroduced on Impact when Madison Rayne announced their revival at Bound for Glory 2020. Now with a name change to fit the company rebranding from TNA to Impact Wrestling, they still hold the lineage of the original belts with an updated look.
1 WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships
Debuting December 2018, WWE reintroduced the idea of having a tag team championship for their women’s division, a belt that hadn’t been around since 1989 due to a lack of women’s competitors on the WWE roster at that time.
The new belt has its own lineage with names like Sasha Banks, Asuka, and Rhea Ripley being former holders. The titles have received some criticism due to the depth of the division and the seeming carelessness of storylines and consistent teams.
