In December 2018, the
WWE Women's Tag Team Championship was established as the sole
women's tag team championship for
WWE, shared across the
Raw,
SmackDown, and
NXT brands, and the inaugural champions were crowned in February 2019. Two years later, on the March 3, 2021, episode of
NXT,
Dakota Kai and
Raquel González, who had earned a title opportunity for winning the first-ever Women's
Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, faced reigning WWE Women's Tag Team Champions
Nia Jax and
Shayna Baszler (whose home brand was Raw). After the referee had been knocked out during the match,
Adam Pearce, who was the WWE official of Raw and SmackDown at the time, sent down a second referee to declare Kai had submitted to Baszler, although Kai was not the legal woman. This led to a backstage argument between Pearce and then-NXT General Manager
William Regal. The following week on the March 10 episode, Regal introduced the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship and awarded the titles to Kai and González due to winning the Dusty Classic; the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship subsequently became no longer available to NXT. Their reign would not last long, as that same night, they defended the titles against the runner ups of the tournament,
Ember Moon and
Shotzi Blackheart, who defeated Kai and González to win the championship. As a result of the
2023 WWE Draft, reigning NXT Women's Tag Team Champions
Alba Fyre and
Isla Dawn were drafted to SmackDown and took the titles with them, claiming they would defend the title across all three brands, although they never did and only had non-title matches on
SmackDown. On the June 9 episode, as they were about to have an in-ring interview, Fyre and Dawn were interrupted by reigning WWE Women's Tag Team Champions
Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler, who challenged Fyre and Dawn to a
championship unification match, which was accepted and scheduled for the June 23 episode of
SmackDown. Rousey and Baszler won to become the undisputed WWE Women's Tag Team Champions, thus making the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship available to NXT again. The NXT Women's Tag Team Championship was subsequently retired in the process, with Dawn and Fyre recognized as the final champions. According to
Fightful, the unification match was planned to happen right after the draft, but due to various injuries within the division, it got delayed.
Fightful also noted there had been confusion regarding the original creation of the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship, as the company already had the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship and there were not many women's tag teams in the division. Furthermore, it was noted that the plan after the unification was that the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship would appear on NXT programming "when needed", which was the original plan for the title. ==Belt design==