Strapping your severely-underutilized tag team championship titles onto the waists of your two of the biggest stars, male or female, definitely helps with said titles’ visibility, I will admit. Putting the obvious aside, I’m glad that the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships are still being booked like a big deal.

On Monday’s edition of “WWE Raw” from Dusseldorf, current WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Rhea Ripley and IYO SKY opened the show, and in a move that is rare for a wrestling episode of Triple H’s creation, we featured eight whole women in the coveted opening spot, and put six female competitors to work in a high-intensity, high-energy tag team match as a direct result of it later in the night. The Judgement Day’s Liv Morgan and Roxanne Perez, The Kabuki Warriors’ Asuka and Kairi Sane, and Bayley and Lyra Valkyria are all gunning for RHIYO’s gold. RHIYO’s gold: the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships. We have a member of the Four Horsewoman, multiple previous world championships, and the figures of tomorrow’s WWE all gunning for the titles that were once considered a booking afterthought, were once considered the most wasteful titles in the company, and the titles that, until recently, never scored higher than a 5.00/10 rating on Cagematch.net. All of a sudden, the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships are something to envy, something to covet, something to fight over. That is incredible.

RHIYO’s success is not a flash in the pan. Pairing Ripley and SKY together in such an organic and well-performing tag team took weeks of consistent build, where Ripley and SKY were faced with problems both regarding and outside of the tag titles themselves, only to solve those problems together. Putting the titles on RHIYO required The Kabuki Warriors to legitimize them as consistently-defended titles, not just accessories to be traded off to the company’s newest tag team of the month. Now, RHIYO hold the responsibility of making these titles even more meaningful, and by allowing Morgan — someone with deep, deep history with Ripley — to be one half of their first challengers? They could’ve just given The Kabuki Warriors a rematch, and I’d argue that Bayley and Valkyria are more over than Morgan and Perez. No, WWE is — in a shocking turn of events — putting intention and thoughtfulness into the booking of these titles. RHIYO’s insane popularity helps with the titles’ visibility, yes, but WWE is doing its part to bring substance to them, and outside of them.

We haven’t seen such influential WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions since Bayley and Sasha Banks, back in the Thunderdome. RHIYO are just getting started, but mark my words, they will surpass that bar, and set it even higher.

Written by Angeline Phu