User:RickVulcan/WWE Yolo County Tag Team Championship

The Yolo County Tag Team Championship is a professional wrestling championship introduced by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE. It was introduced as part of a storyline involving Heavy Machinery (Otis and Tucker), Erick Rowan and Daniel Bryan. Heavy Machinery are the current champions, in their first reign.

History
On June 11, 2019 the then-reigning champions, AJ Kirsh and Dave Dutra, agreed to appear on WWE's Smackdown Live television show to put the championship on the line against reigning WWE SmackDown Tag Team Champions Daniel Bryan and Rowan in a unification match. The scheduled match was interrupted by Bryan and Rowan's storyline rivals Heavy Machinery (Otis and Tucker), turning the unification match into a title defense against Heavy Machinery instead at Bryan's request. Heavy Machinery defeated Kirsh and Dutra in exactly two minutes to start their reign as WWE Yolo County Tag Team Champions.

Belt design
The two identical belts that symbolizes the WWE Yolo County Tag Team Championship are both made out of corrugated cardboard, cut out with a large center plate in front and wide straps to each side to allow the championship to wear the belts around their waists. The front plates read "Yolo County" at the top, curved with the top of the face plate "Tag Team" horizontally across the middle,. and "Champions" curved up at the bottom of the face plate, in black marker. The two straps are adorned by several hand drawn stars in red or blue.

Reigns
As of July 29, 2024, there have been two reigns. The inaugural championship team was AJ Kirsh and Dave Dutra. Heavy Machinery have the longest reign at + days, while AJ Kirsh and Dave Dutra have the shortest reign at less than 10 minutes. The title history prior to June 11, 2019 is unknown, making it unclear of Kirsh and Dutra were the first champions or not. The current champions are SmackDown's Heavy Machinery (Otis Dozovic and Tucker Knight). They won the titles by defeating the previous champions in a tag team match, on an episode of Smackdown Live on June 11, 2019, in Sacramento, California.

Reception
The introduction of the until then obscure title seemed to be favorably received by the fans in attendance, who chanted "YOLO". The reception was in stark contrast to the reception of the last championship introduced by WWE, the WWE 24/7 Championship that was loudly booed when introduced on May 20, 2019. At least one commentator, Byron Saxton, could not believe what he saw, stating that "those cannot be real". The debut of the championship also received international coverage upon it's WWE. The Yolo Country Tag Team Championship title change was a part of the top rated TV show on cable in the timeslot.