As I was doom scrolling before going to sleep, I came across a video clip of Dustin Rhodes and what appeared to be two members of the Von Erich family, winning the Ring of Honor Six-Man Tag championships at some Ring of Honor show. I wouldn’t know which one, because ever since Tony Khan bought the entire promotion, it hasn’t held my interest beyond the one Final Battle show I went to a few years ago, and fuck if I’m going to pay actual money to see a TK production.
The thing is, up until seeing this title change, I had no idea that the ROH Six-Man championship was still in existence. I was under the impression that in an attempt to reduce the sheer volume of blets in AEW/ROH, that when the Bang Bang Gang* defeated The Acclaimed and “unified” the ROH Six-Man blets with the AEW Trios blets, six blets would be reduced to three.
*The amount of turrible that this name is, is unprecedented, and even in a carny, smarky bubble that AEW and their fans exist in, this stands out as that bad
Naturally, instead they ended up with nine total blets to cart around, as Jay White, Colten and Austin Gunn would lug around each an ROH Six-Man blet, the gaudy pink-strapped Acclaimed-version Trios blet, as well as the OG black, blue and gold AEW Trios blet. There exists enough physical blets in AEW and ROH combined for every single talent that appears on screen to have one.
Anyway though, the whole point of a unified championship is the consolidate the number of titles, to increase the prestige of a singular championship, and despite the fact that there were at one point nine blets to signify the Unified Trios championship, the reality is that the Acclaimed-pink blets and the ROH Six-Man blets should have been taken off television.
Recently, whether it was legitimate or kayfabe, Jay White was injured, and taken off television; I’m hoping it was the latter, and that an injury angle is what was needed in order to break Jay White away from the Gunns and Juice Robinson, so that a guy that hasn’t been even a full year removed from being the IWGP World Champion can actually reset his trajectory in AEW, instead of being like Kazuchika Okada and being used at a fraction of his true capabilities and instead stashed with C-tier talents and meaningless television segments.
As a result of White being out, the Bang Bang Gang was stripped of the Unified Trios championship, and forced to fight The Patriarchy for the right to win them back. And with their top worker out, Christian and his cronies would pick up the win, the titles, and hopefully he will elevate the Trios blets as well as he had elevated the TNT championship.
The thing is, what everyone failed to mention, and/or I was never made aware of because I don’t pay that much attention to AEW/ROH, is that the ROH Six-Man championship was un-unified just like that, and it wasn’t until I saw Dustin Rhodes and the Von Erichs winning them did I even learn that they were even active championships again.
Look, I’m fine with championships being resurrected when the need arises, but the thing with this convoluted journey of Six-Man/Trios championships is that it all happened within the span of a calendar year and basically ended up in the same place in which it started:
- August 2023: The Acclaimed win the AEW Trios Championship
- January 2024: Jay White and the Gunns win the ROH Six-Man Championship
- April 2024: Bang Bang Gang defeats The Acclaimed, becomes the Unified Trios Champions
- July 2024: On account of Jay White’s injury, Bang Bang Gang are stripped of the Unified Trios Championship; unmentioned, the unification is severed, and both sets of championships are rendered vacant
- July 20, 2024: Christian and the Patriarchy win the AEW Trios Championship
- July 27, 2024: Dustin Rhodes and the Von Erichs win the ROH Six-Man Championship
AEW/ROH doesn’t need 35 championship blets floating around, and yet they had the opportunity to pare down for the sake of the others, but instead they added more, and when they had a second chance to consolidate again, they only reduced out the custom-variants of the Acclaimed, and ended up with two different six-man titles in the end.
What all this amounts to is the sheer frivolity and unimportance of six-man tag team wrestling, if their championships are going to be monkeyed around with and passed around like a blunt at a rap concert.
It’s funny, because the WWE often got flack for their dismissive attitude towards tag team wrestling, to the point where when AEW came into existence, they made it a high priority point to emphasize tag team wrestling, because of the Young Bucks and FTR. But whereas the WWE shit on tag team wrestling, AEW apparently has decided to basically create a six-man tag division, so that they could have something to shit on as well.
