Raw (WWE brand)
Raw is a brand of the U.S. based professional wrestling promotion WWE. The brand was first established on March 25, 2002, with a draft on "Monday Night Raw" and went into effect one week later on April 1. The brand split was discontinued in August 2011, but was brought back in July 2016. Wrestlers assigned to the Raw brand wrestle predominantly on the "Raw" television program as well as "Main Event", the seasonal "Mixed Match Challenge", and Raw branded or co-branded pay-per-view events and WWE Network events. During the first brand split, they also competed on "Heat" and on "ECW" under a talent exchange program.
WWE Tag Team Championship
In 2001, the WWF bought rival company WCW, acquiring the WCW World Tag Team Championship, among other titles, which was defended on WWF programming until that year's Survivor Series, where the WCW World Tag Team Championship was unified into the WWF World Tag Team Championship.
After WWF's initial brand extension in the spring of 2002 and the renaming of the company as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the tag titles became the WWE Tag Team Championship and champions Billy and Chuck were drafted to the SmackDown brand. That following summer, however, The Un-Americans (Christian and Lance Storm) defeated Billy and Chuck for the titles, moving the championship to the Raw brand where it was renamed World Tag Team Championship, effectively leaving the SmackDown brand without a tag team title. As a result, then-SmackDown General Manager Stephanie McMahon introduced a new WWE Tag Team Championship and commissioned it to be the tag team title for the SmackDown brand.
Both titles were unified in 2009 and were collectively referred to as the "Unified WWE Tag Team Championship" while officially remaining independently active until the World Tag Team Championship was formally decommissioned in 2010, leaving the newer title as WWE's only tag team championship. As a result of the 2016 draft, the championship became exclusive to Raw and was renamed the Raw Tag Team Championship, and SmackDown created the SmackDown Tag Team Championship as a counterpart title. In addition, WWE's developmental brand NXT established its own Tag Team Championship in January 2013. The new NXT UK brand debuted its own Tag Team Championship in January 2019. The Raw, SmackDown, NXT, and NXT UK tag team titles are WWE's four currently active tag team championships for its male performers.