WCW Tag Team Championship

The WCW Tag Team Championship was the name the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) used for the former WCW World Tag Team Championship during 2001. The WWF began using the title on its own programming in June 2001 and retired it that November, so the name covered a span of roughly five months.

The lineage is much older than the name. Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) created the title on January 29, 1975, as its own version of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) World Tag Team Championship.

Several NWA members promoted separate world tag team titles at the time, so this one was known as the Mid-Atlantic version, and Gene Anderson and Ole Anderson, who wrestled as the Minnesota Wrecking Crew, were the first champions.

Turner Broadcasting acquired Jim Crockett Promotions in November 1988 and continued the wrestling operation as World Championship Wrestling (WCW). The title kept its NWA name for two more years, and WCW renamed it the WCW World Tag Team Championship in January 1991 as the company withdrew from the National Wrestling Alliance.

The WWF purchased WCW’s assets in March 2001. Sean O’Haire and Chuck Palumbo were champions at the time, having won the title at Sin on January 14, 2001, and they retained it on the final episode of Nitro on March 26, 2001.

Both wrestlers signed with the WWF, carried the championship with them, and remained recognized as champions. The WWF shortened the name to the WCW Tag Team Championship once it began defending the title on its own shows.

From that point until November, the WWF recognized two sets of tag team champions at the same time, because the WCW title ran alongside the company’s existing WWF Tag Team Championship.

The title was used as part of the Invasion storyline, in which wrestlers from WCW and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) formed an on-air group called The Alliance and feuded with the WWF roster.

O’Haire and Palumbo lost the championship to The Undertaker and Kane on the August 9, 2001 episode of SmackDown, and at SummerSlam on August 19, 2001, The Undertaker and Kane also won the WWF Tag Team Championship from Diamond Dallas Page and Kanyon in a steel cage match, which placed both tag team titles on the same team.

Booker T and Test took the WCW title on the September 25, 2001 episode of SmackDown, and it changed hands several more times that fall among teams on both sides of the storyline.

Survivor Series on November 18, 2001, in Greensboro, North Carolina, brought the Invasion storyline to a close, and the WWF retired the WCW title as part of that ending. WCW Tag Team Champions the Dudley Boyz defeated WWF Tag Team Champions the Hardy Boyz in a steel cage match that unified the two championships.

The Dudley Boyz (Bubba Ray Dudley and D-Von Dudley) are recognized as the final champions, and the WWF Tag Team Championship continued on its own from that point.

Across the full lineage from 1975 to 2001, Harlem Heat hold the record for team reigns with ten, and Booker T holds the record for individual reigns with eleven. The longest single reign belongs to Doom, the team of Butch Reed and Ron Simmons, at 282 days.