Sonya Deville Details Relationship With Former WWE Star Mandy Rose
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Sonya Deville and former WWE Star Mandy Rose previously teamed as Fire and Desire. They originally formed in 2017, until the two split up three years later during the pandemic after Deville betrayed Rose and partnered with former WWE star Dolph Ziggler to create tension between Rose and Otis, who were in a romance storyline together. Deville has shared her thoughts on the chemistry she had with Rose as a tag-team partner and as an opponent.
Speaking on “Insight with Chris Van Vliet,” Deville expressed her admiration for Rose, stating how much she enjoyed working with her on-screen. However, she also explained how she often felt Rose gained more opportunities than her in WWE, which led her to mix their feud with real-life.
“It was real, a lot of it was real. We’re best friends, we’re like sisters, we love like sisters, we fight like sisters. And so much of it was I had felt that Mandy had gotten opportunities in the ring because she had a certain look and I didn’t have that, and so did I truly feel like that to my core? No, but there was part of that I could definitely play off of… I love her so much and there’s so much friendship there and there’s so much history there, and so I think when you trust the person you’re out there with and there is so much love, it’s easy to kind of emulate any emotion.”
Rose was released from WWE in 2022 after several officials within the company became uncomfortable with the suggestive content she was posting on her Fantime subscription service. Meanwhile, Deville has just returned to WWE after suffering a torn ACL which kept her out of action for 10 months.
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
As the influence of women’s wrestling has grown within the walls of the WWE, so too has women’s tag team wrestling. For more than 30 years, WWE did not have enough depth in the Women’s/Divas divisions to necessitate a tag team championship. The original set of women’s tag team titles existed for six years between 1983 and 1989 and saw four different teams preside over five different reigns. However, the WWF retired the belts in early 1989, with the division often lacking enough teams to be truly competitive. Women’s tag team titles would not be seen again in the industry leader until early 2019, marking the end of a 30-year hiatus for the women’s tag team division.
The WWE initially struggled to create viable tag teams, and under Vince McMahon’s creative direction made a half-hearted attempt to pair women almost randomly. Some pairs would survive, while others would either fall to the wayside or result in an inevitable feud. Sasha Banks and Naomi’s reported walk-out as the incumbent title holders brought about questions over the company’s interest in continuing the division, but women’s tag team wrestling is back on track under the creative direction of Triple H. However, the brevity of the division has not stopped the company from putting together a healthy handful of memorable teams over the years.
Here are the 12 best female tag teams in WWE history, in no particular order.
Natalya and Beth Phoenix, known the Divas of Doom, were born in the pre-tag team championship era. The alliance always made sense. Both women are physically imposing technical wrestlers with a similar look, and both possess the versatility to excel in a babyface or heel role with the proper booking and direction.
The tag team came to be following the split of Natalya’s Hart Dynasty stable. While feuding with Layla and Michelle McCool, Natalya gained Beth Phoenix as a tag team partner as a way to even the odds against LayCool. Though the initial alliance was short lived, the duo would reunite as a heel tag team with the intent of eradicating the company of women who fit the “WWE Diva” mold. The two teamed for a full calendar year, disbanding after Phoenix left the company, only to reunite seven years later for a match at WrestleMania 35. Though they have yet to win the women’s tag team championship, Beth Phoenix does continue to wrestle sporadically, so perhaps the Divas of Doom’s day is yet to come. Both women did, however, win the Divas Championship one time apiece while teaming together.
Perhaps the greatest women’s tag team of the 20th century, The Glamour Girls were comprised of Judy Martin and Leilani Kai, two prodigiously talented women’s wrestlers during the Rock n’ Wrestling era. Martin and Kai’s history of teaming together can be traced back to 1979, though they made their WWF debut in 1985. Famed manager “The Mouth of the South” Jimmy Hart took an interest in the tag team and offered to help. In a shoot interview with RFVideo, Kai mentioned that Hart approached her and Martin at the hotel pool one day and recommended they dye their hair blonde, wear gold and black outfits, and change their look to fit with the times. He also became their manager, giving the team instant credibility in an era where women usually valeted for male wrestlers.
Along with archrivals the Jumping Bomb Angels, The Glamour Girls raised the bar for women’s wrestling throughout the ’80s. They wrestled a series of matches with the Angels specifically throughout 1988 and finished their WWF run as the only two-time women’s tag team champions during the belt’s initial run between 1983 and 1989. However, Martin and Kai would not be long for the WWF after they won the belts for a second time.
According to Kai’s shoot interview, the Fabulous Moolah, who owned the rights to the women’s titles the WWF used during the era, had not yet sold McMahon her tag team championship. When The Glamour Girls went on a tour of All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling to meet the Angels on their home turf, Moolah called in an unauthorized title change. When The Glamour Girls returned to America, Kai said the WWF fired the duo for their cooperation with Moolah and quietly abandoned the women’s tag team division.
The IIconics, most recently known as The IInspiration in Impact Wrestling, have several factors working in their favor. The duo from Down Under, formerly known as Peyton Royce and Billie Kay, have a classic tag team look about them. Both women wear matching gear, have a similar look and even have synchronicity in their entrance to the ring. They can even complete each other’s sentences. This is, in part, due to their longevity in association with one another. The tag team attended high school together at Westfields Sports in Sydney, Australia, and while they barely interacted, they formed a bond through working the Australian independents prior to arriving in WWE.
Originally known in NXT as The Iconic Duo, Royce and Kay quickly became fixtures on the program, even occasionally competing as singles stars, once comprising one-half of a fatal four-way match at NXT Takeover: San Antonio in pursuit of the NXT Women’s Championship. However, they still teamed frequently despite there being no NXT women’s tag team titles at the time. The opportunity eventually arose for the duo to win gold on “SmackDown” after being rechristened as The IIconics on the main roster. Little else changed about the pair other than the name, and Kay and Royce went on to enjoy a 120-day reign as the second-ever WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions. The IIconics were unceremoniously “forced to disband” after losing a match to The Riott Squad on Raw in 2020 and sent to separate brands in the WWE Draft that year before getting future endeavored.
Though seemingly polar opposites on the surface, Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross became two-time WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions before Bliss turned on Cross to kickstart her angle with The Fiend. Through teaming together, the duo learned they had plenty more in common besides being two of the shortest women on the roster (both stand at 5’1). Their styles meshed well together in the ring. Moreover, their personalities complimented each other as well as any team in the division.
“I saw a lot of myself in Nikki,” Bliss told Inside the Ropes in 2019. “When I first came to NXT, I was kind of by myself and I noticed she was by herself so we started talking, became friends, and developed a partnership. This has been a lot of fun and now we’re champions. There’s not really a big story to it. We just started hanging out, became friends, and became champions.” The pairing also helped Cross find her voice on the main roster. After Bliss turned on her, the WWE repackaged Cross as Nikki A.S.H., short for “Almost a Super Hero.” Under the moniker, Cross became the Raw women’s champion and has since gone on to turn heel and team with Doudrop, a fellow Scot. She also had a third reign as the women’s tag team champions alongside Rhea Ripley after becoming Nikki A.S.H.
Though their paths never crossed during their pre-WWE careers in Japan, Asuka and Kairi Sane made for a natural tag team as The Kabuki Warriors. As two of the most technically proficient wrestlers in the company during their reign atop the division, Sane’s ability to fly meshed extremely well with Asuka’s mat-based style. The tag team also gave Sane a chance to showcase her talents in a meaningful way on the main roster.
They came together in April 2019, initially with Paige installed as their manager and mouthpiece. Together, Asuka and Sane slowly ascended to the top of the women’s tag team division, competing against the likes of The IIconics, Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville, and Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross. After becoming the fourth team to win the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships, The Kabuki Warriors turned heel when Asuka spat the green mist into Paige’s face, ending their association. The team of Japanese stars defended their belts all over WWE, even in NXT on one occasion against Tegan Nox and Dakota Kai. Though they finally lost the titles to Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross at WrestleMania 36, they became the longest reigning champions in the brief history of the women’s tag team championships and continued teaming even after Asuka set her sights on Becky Lynch and the Raw Women’s Championship.
Similar to the Divas of Doom, LayCool came about at a time when there were no women’s tag team championships for the WWE divas to vie for. Instead, the team of Michelle McCool and Layla took an alternative approach, setting their collective sights on the Divas Championship, a singles title. Though the formation of McCool and Layla came about quietly with little to no fanfare, the act caught on and established both wrestlers as focal points of the Divas division.
With “SmackDown” consultant Vickie Guerrero in their back pocket, LayCool ran roughshod on the rest of the Divas. Their most infamous storyline saw them mock Mickie James over her weight and southern roots through the end of 2009 and well into the new year. McCool typically performed as the “A-side” of the team as the de facto Divas champion, with Layla helping out in a support role. However, Layla joined her partner in the spotlight after pinning Beth Phoenix in a handicap match for the Divas Championship, becoming the first Diva Search winner to win the belt. Given the handicap nature of the title match, both Layla and McCool began to sell themselves as “co-champions” with each wrestler taking possession of one-half of the belt.
Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville came together as one of several tag teams inspired by their real-life friendship. Rose and Deville got to know each other on a personal level during the “WWE Tough Enough” revival back in summer 2015. Rose was the show’s runner-up, but both wrestlers grew tremendously during their time on the show and were hired to developmental contracts with NXT. The two came together on screen for the first time as members of Absolution, a stable that Paige — a judge on their season of “Tough Enough” – innovated. However, a neck injury forced Paige out of action at the end of 2017 with Rose and Deville continuing on as a tag team.
The team of Rose and Deville, which became known as Fire and Desire, never won the women’s tag team championship as a unit, though they came close on occasion and constantly found themselves in the title mix. Their on-screen chemistry was always apparent, however, with their friendship obvious to the viewer in spite of how inherently different they seemed to be as personalities.
Once Rose got romantically involved on-screen with Otis, she turned face while Deville, jealous of Rose’s relationship, attempted to break them up. The break-up led to an inevitable feud that ended unceremoniously after the blow-off match stipulation changed from a Hair vs. Hair match to a Loser Leaves Town match without explanation, which Sonya lost.
Sometimes, the best of rivals can make the best of partners. This is the case with Sasha Banks and Bayley, who competed alongside one another under names such as The Boss ‘n’ Hug Connection and the Golden Role Models. The team, which came to be out of a longstanding rivalry between the two in NXT, took on many different forms during its life on the main roster. Banks and Bayley kept a loose alliance with one another for their first few years on “Raw,” but became tighter knit once the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship Tournament came about. The duo responded by winning a tournament to crown the inaugural champions.
Banks and Bayley are considered to be two of the most well-rounded female performers in the company, which led to a transition from the tight-knit Boss ‘n’ Hug Connection to the Golden Role Models, after Banks took a hiatus from the company. She returned as a heel, by which time Bayley had established herself as a top singles competitor on “SmackDown.” However, Bayley reunited with her former partner following a heel turn of her own, one that served as the catalyst for her reinventing herself as an entirely different character.
On the surface, Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, and Sara Logan seemed to have little in common, but found an on-screen kinship through the unity and trust they displayed in one another on screen. Riott, who now goes by the name Ruby Soho in All Elite Wrestling, told Chris Jericho on an episode of “Talk is Jericho” the group wasn’t supposed to being kept together long, and that the trio was loosely based on “The Suicide Squad.” “Maybe it was just a trailer [Vince McMahon] watched? I’ve always wondered what made him put that group together, the three of us,” Soho said. “He wanted a Joker, which was me. A Harley Quinn, which was Liv Morgan and a beast, which was Sarah [Logan]. Makes sense.”
The three characters complimented one another nicely, with three distinctly different in-ring styles. As a result, The Riott Squad filled out a growing women’s division at the time with tag team matches of the regular and six-woman variety. A little more than two years after they debuted together on “SmackDown,” Ruby Riott disbanded the group by attacking Liv Morgan, but attempted to make nice with her former partner months later. Logan was released by the company in the midst of Riott’s feud with Morgan, leaving Riott and Morgan as a tag team upon their reconciliation, which came after Riott stood up for her former stablemate in the face of bullying from The IIconics. As the duo seemed to be hitting their stride in the ring, the WWE let Riott go in June 2021, leaving Morgan as the sole benefactor of the Riott Squad’s upward momentum.
Following the dissolution of her tag team with Bayley, Sasha Banks took up a new alliance with Naomi, a fellow member of Team B.A.D. The former three-woman stable consisted of Banks, Naomi, and Tamina, and served as the vehicle for Banks to make her main roster debut during the “Divas Revolution” storyline. The two found their way back to one another in early 2022 with the intention of winning tag team gold. The duo won the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship for the first time at WrestleMania 38.
After defeating Carmella and Queen Zelina for the belts, Naomi and Banks embarked on a title reign that lasted just five weeks before controversy arose. Banks and Naomi, frustrated with WWE creative and fed up with the lack of direction in the women’s tag team division, walked out of “Raw” earlier in 2022 and have not been seen on television since. The company released an official statement through “SmackDown” commentators Michael Cole and Pat McAfee, claiming that the women “disappointed millions of WWE fans and their fellow superstars” with their actions and would be suspended indefinitely. With former head of creative Vince McMahon on the outs with the company, his successor, Triple H, has left the door open for the team’s return to WWE.
Shayna Baszler and Nia Jax possessed staying power as a tag team due to their varied forms of physicality. Baszler, a former mixed martial artist, has a way of breaking opponents down systematically, while Jax brought a power element seldom seen in the WWE women’s division. The pairing began as an odd couple tag team, but evolved into a legitimate pairing with both stars complementing one another in the ring. They are one of three tag teams to have held the women’s tag team championships more than once and hold the record for the longest combined reign at 215 combined days.
Like many tag teams to come together abruptly and randomly, Jax and Baszler teased dissent even before winning the belts back from Asuka and Charlotte Flair at the 2021 Royal Rumble. Baszler finally turned on Jax in September 2021, with Jax calling her former partner, “a literal piece of s***” on her Twitter account after the fact. Nothing ever came of Jax’s comments, however, as she took personal time away from the company before being officially let go in November 2021.
Toxic Attraction may only have a little more than a year together, but they’re already one of the top tag teams in the entire company. A new-look, new-attitude Mandy Rose leads the trio and has seen her career take off in its own right since forming the stable. However, Gigi Dolin and Jacy Jayne carry the group as a tag team and are already two-time champions in the NXT women’s tag division. Both Jayne and Dolin can hold their own in the ring, and have seen their tag team chemistry grow rapidly since they began teaming together in late summer 2021.
The duo has shown a propensity to shine no matter what they are asked to do on the show. Moreover, their ascension in NXT has helped foster new babyfaces for the women’s division such as Cora Jade and Roxanne, as well as tag teams like Kayden Carter and Katana Chance. Both Dolin and Jayne can shine as individuals or as a unit and have already proven themselves to be an asset to the company. With a full-time main roster debut imminent, Toxic Attraction will seek to become the first pair of women to have held the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship and the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship.
