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The IIconics are now the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions after besting a field of three other teams at WrestleMania 35. On SmackDown, they Peyton Royce and Billie Kay won what was essentially a squash match. In the immediate aftermath, Paige gave a brief interview backstage and commented that she was bringing a tag team to SmackDown next week.
It’s possible that the swerve is in. Though Paige is a woman and she gave her interview immediately after a women’s tag team match, maybe that’s all coincidental to her bringing up a male team like Moustache Mountain from NXT or assembling a pair of under-utilized male talents already on the main roster in a new tandem.
Given the placement of the segment, however, it seems likely Paige will bring up a women’s team, and the simplest answer would be introduce a tag team that is already working as a unit. Kairi Sane and Io Shirai have been such a team on NXT, and spoilers indicate that Sane lost a match at the last NXT TV taping that would bar her from another shot at Shayna Baszler’s title. Could that signal that the Japanese duo is on its way up to the main roster, with the added push of having Paige in their corner?
#3 Paige as the mouthpiece
Kairi Sane and Io Shirai are supremely talented professional wrestlers who have worked nicely as singles performers. In addition to their Japanese roots, they are both noted aerial artists and that has become a particularly exciting element of their act as a duo.
The main limitation that Sane and Shirai face is their English language promos. Whereas Asuka before them was a dominant force in NXT, she has had an inconsistent run on the main roster, and that seems to be at least in part due to her English language capabilities.
Positioning Paige as a manager to do the talking for the team could make a great deal of sense given she’s a familiar, popular face to WWE fans who can’t wrestle on her own anymore. All the more important, she’s good enough on the mic to speak on the pair’s behalf and get them entrenched in meaningful programs sooner than later.
#2 Sane and Shirai win the titles
With the extra push of having Paige in their corner, it is reasonable to think that WWE would go all the way in putting the Women’s Tag Team Championship on Kairi Sane and Io Shirai shortly after their main roster debut.
As the old adage goes, there are times when wrestlers make a belt, and times when belts make wrestlers. This could be a prime example of complementary situation in which a new act and new titles help each other out by giving credibility to the team right out of the gate, and helping the titles via the high level of ring work these women are capable of.
As smaller faces who work a fast paced style, The Sky Pirates would be equipped to work a wide variety of opponents and remain over as underdog faces who can pull off exciting moves.
Moreover, if they were to receive this promotion from NXT, they’d be recently enough removed from developmental to believably work across Raw, SmackDown, and NXT in the spirit that the titles were originally portrayed to represent.
#1 This is why the Boss ‘n’ Hug Connnection lost
Many WWE fans were surprised that Bayley and Sasha Banks dropped the Women’s Tag Team Championships at WrestleMania. After all, they’re a good team, composed of talents who otherwise feel under utilized. Moreover, they’ve been portrayed as friends since before the women’s tag division launched, and thus had an identity as a team.
While the IIconics have been linked throughout their NXT and main roster runs and good on the mic, their in ring skills lag behind, and feel like they’re already bringing the caliber of the women’s tag division down a step.
One possibility for why WWE booked the IIconics to take the titles was to use them as transitional champions. If the Sky Pirates do show up as immediate title contenders, or even champions, it will help for them to go over a heel team in the process.
While they may work the Boss ‘n’ Hug Connection down the road, it would probably be better for their trajectory in terms of getting over with fans to start with this clearer cut face push.
