Qualifiers for RAW Women Tag Teams for EC but SmackDown Teams are directly announced?

At last year’s Christmas, Vince McMahon announced the return of women tag team titles in WWE. Then earlier this month, Alexa Bliss provided the information that the inaugural WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions will be determined inside the Elimination Chamber at the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view on Sunday, February 17th.

The contest will feature three teams from Raw and three teams from SmackDown. Nia Jax & Tamina earned their way into the match with a victory over Alexa Bliss & Mickie James on Raw the night after the Royal Rumble event. Later that night, Liv Morgan & Sarah Logan joined them in the contest by taking down Natalya & Dana Brooke. In next week’s advertised match, Sasha Banks and Bayley will compete against a new Tag Team in Alicia Fox and Nikki Cross.

But while RAW teams have to qualify for this Elimination Chamber Match, it seems SmackDown teams just have to announce themselves for the match as the same was done by the tag team of Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville. The reason for this ‘discrimination’ between RAW and SmackDown might be due to less number of female tag teams in SmackDown roaster.

At present, there are a total of 12 female superstars and only two established Tag Teams in SmackDown roaster in the Iiconnics and team of Rose and Deville. Out of the rest 8 superstars, Asuka, Becky and Charlotte Flair are involved in Women’s title storyline and it is hard to see any of them being involved in tag team action. Lana is currently shown injured in the storyline, which leaves us with only 4 women and it would not have been possible to make 4 more women tag teams(even after promoting some stars from NXT and 205 live rosters).

Hence, it was not possible to hold qualifying tournament from SmackDown roaster like it was done on RAW which has many established teams already in place. And this might also be the reason that the championship will finally be won by a RAW Tag Team (in all possibility by Sasha and Bayley) so that there will be enough challengers to be involved in different storylines.