SmackDown Tag Team Championship

SmackDown Tag Team Champions, The Bludgeon Brothers

The WWE SmackDown Tag Team Championship is a professional wrestling world tag-team championship created and promoted by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE on the SmackDown brand. It is the eighth overall male tag-team championship to have existed in the WWE. The title is one of two tag-team championships for WWE's main roster, along with the Raw Tag Team Championship on the Raw brand. The current champions are The Bludgeon Brothers (Harper and Rowan), who are in their first reign as a team, and individually, a second reign for Harper.

Unveiled on the August 23, 2016 episode of *SmackDown Live*, it was created to be the counterpart title to the then-WWE Tag Team Championship, which became exclusive to Raw as a result of the 2016 WWE draft. That title was subsequently renamed after the crowning of the inaugural SmackDown Tag Team Champions, Heath Slater and Rhyno.

## History

Following the reintroduction of the WWE brand extension and subsequent draft on July 19, 2016, then-WWE Tag Team Champions The New Daywere drafted to Raw, leaving SmackDown without a tag-team championship. Over the course of the following month, SmackDown general manager Daniel Bryan stated that he wanted to build up the tag-team division before introducing a championship. Immediately following SummerSlam on the August 23, 2016 episode of *SmackDown Live*, Bryan and SmackDown commissioner Shane McMahon introduced the SmackDown Tag Team Championship (Raw's title was subsequently renamed). An eight-team tournament was then scheduled to determine the inaugural champions, culminating in a final match at Backlash on September 11, 2016. The team of Heath Slater and Rhyno defeated The Usos in the tournament final to become the inaugural champions.

When unveiled, the championship belt design was nearly identical to the Raw Tag Team Championship, with the differences being that the leather straps were blue as opposed to the former's original black with a different stitching pattern, and the plates were silver as opposed to the former's original bronze. The Raw Tag Team Championship belt design was updated on December 19, 2016, with silver plates on red straps to bring both sets of titles more in line with each other.

## Reigns

As of July 2, 2018, overall there have been 9 reigns between 6 teams. The team of Heath Slater and Rhyno were the inaugural champions. The Usos (Jey and Jimmy Uso) hold multiple records with the championship: they have the most reigns at three and are the longest-reigning champions at 182 days (183 as recognized by WWE) for their third reign; they have the longest combined reign at 329 days (331 days as recognized by WWE), and they are tied with The Wyatt Family (Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper, and Randy Orton) for having the shortest reign at 23 days (24 days as recognized by WWE for both teams). The oldest champion is Rhyno, winning the title at 40 years old, while the youngest is Jason Jordan when he won it at 28.

The Bludgeon Brothers (Harper and Rowan) are the current champions in their first reign as a team and Harper's second reign individually. They defeated The Usos (Jey and Jimmy Uso) and The New Day's Big E and Kofi Kingston on April 8, 2018, in a triple-threat tag-team match at WrestleMania 34 in New Orleans, Louisiana.