Shayna Baszler Wants To Create Strong Women's Tag Team Division In WWE

Since returning to WWE programming in May and winning the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships, Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler have been running roughshod over "Raw" and "Smackdown." Most recently, the prolific MMA fighters unified their titles with the NXT Women's Tag Team Championships by defeating Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn this week. But as hard as it is to believe, "The Baddest Woman On The Planet" and "The Submission Magician" have altruistic intentions for their dominance of the women's tag division.

In an interview with "WrestleRant," Baszler shed some light on her and her partner's motivation behind their desire to transition from singles stars to a cohesive unit. 

"It's a thing we've wanted and it's not just about winning these titles," Baszler said. "It's about shining a spotlight on the tag division and creating a real tag division, not just a bunch of opportunistic girls that partner together to try to jump into this story. We want a tag division. And if there's one thing this past year that we've learned it's that, [like] with the Usos and Kevin and Sami, you can have that be a main focused story and it not take away from the singles title stories at all. In fact, it enhanced them. The same can happen for the women and there's no reason with all the talent we have in the locker room that it isn't that way... It's the most talented women's locker room in wrestling."

"The Queen of Spades" went on to expand on the idea that forming a tag team means the end of a singles career. She specifically pointed out the reigning Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn as examples, as well as former champions Jimmy and Jey Uso, but we've been seeing it a lot more in WWE and beyond. The New Day and The Judgment Day are also teams with singles success. So considering that she and Rousey have had spectacular success on their own, they want to prove that sort of storytelling is possible for the women's locker room.

"I think [there's] been a sort of perpetuated myth," she continued. "I don't know that anyone says it out loud, but if you're in a tag team you can't go after a singles title. Nobody wants to be in a tag team because everybody wants a singles title of course. But like I said, there's no reason they can't be just as important or be involved in that same story. The men's division does it and we have the talent to do it in the women's division too. That's what we're ready to show."

Now that the tag titles are unified, it is possible for the champions to compete on all three WWE brands, a feat that Baszler has done effectively in the past. With their opponent pool greatly expanded, it becomes much easier for her and Rousey to tell compelling stories throughout their division.