Mercedes Moné is teaming up with ROH Women’s World Champion Athena to challenge Babes of Wrath for the AEW women’s world tag team titles this Saturday (Dec. 27) at the Worlds End pay-per-view.
With AEW’s
brand new women’s tag belts on her mind, the former Sasha Banks explained in the latest edition of Moné Mag how she and Bayley helped convince Vince McMahon to introduce the WWE’s women’s tag team championship. After one year of pitching the idea to McMahon, he finally announced the creation of the belts in a pre-taped segment on Raw where he was dressed as Santa Claus, almost exactly seven years ago.
“Launching the belts at AEW reminds me of Bayley and I fighting for the WWE to create Women’s tag team titles. We were having multiple women’s matches every single week and yet we were not fighting for anything. There was no story. We were just having matches but you need titles in order to fight for something. For a year, every single week, Bayley and I knocked and waited at Vince’s door. It’s giving me goosebumps remembering it but the first time we brought it up, we were just like, Vince, we are legit having these multiple women’s matches every week. Don’t you think the women need to fight for something? There’s men tag men matches every single week. We can’t just be a one woman storyline for the Raw Women’s title or the Smackdown Wan’s title. Just having two girls with titles is limiting us when you have so many women in the back.” To me the matches didn’t make any sense or mean anything. It took Vince a whole year but finally he said yes.
We didn’t find out from Vince in person. I don’t think Vince ever honestly said the word yes—ever. He always said things in his own way, framing them as something he had created. He was the one who made it, and he’s the one who ultimately made it happen. That’s not a lie. We officially found out at Evolution that the tag team titles were being made.
I remember Triple H coming up to me, regarding the belts, and being like, ‘They’re being made. It’s happening.’ Inside I had to say to myself, I’ll wait till it happens because I didn’t want to get my hopes up. And then we had a Christmas pre-taped show for Raw. That’s when it was going to be announced. I purposely missed my flight, going back home to Orlando because I wanted to hear for myself in person Vince say that the women’s tag team titles were happening. I stayed in gorilla to watch a pretape that he did earlier in the day just so I could hear it with my own ears. And when that was said, from Gorilla, tears flew down my face. I just couldn’t believe it.
The moment had finally arrived. All that time, sitting at Vince’s door, walking in his office and him yelling at us, ‘Not now, no! Next week.’ It was all worth it because it’s not just in the WWE that has women’s tag titles, now it’s in AEW, TNA and all over wrestling, and it’s so frigin awesome!”
Do you agree with Mercedes Moné that spending one year of annoying the hell out of Vince McMahon about creating the WWE women’s tag team championship was all worth it? Let me know in the comments below, Cagesiders.
