As previously reported, Sasha Banks and Naomi have been indefinitely suspended by WWE following their departure from Raw last week. During Friday’s “SmackDown” announcement, Michael Cole revealed that a tournament will be held to crown the new Women’s Tag Team Champions – titles that were vacated following the suspensions of Banks and Naomi.

Cole did not say when the tournament will take place, or which teams will participate. He was simply quoted as saying, “We’ll have a future tournament to crown the new WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions,” shortly after lamenting that Banks and Naomi “let us all down” by staging a walkout during a live television broadcast. A similar sentiment was echoed by Corey Graves earlier this week on Raw.

In an update, the latest Wrestling Observer newsletter notes that WWE’s creation made several different presentations regarding the impending tournament format, with at least two presentations calling for a four-team tournament. In a pitch, the four teams discussed are Natalya & Shayna Baszler, Tamina & Dana Brooke, Nikki ASH & Doudrop, and Carmella & Queen Zelina Vega. For what it’s worth, Carmella and Vega’s team broke up following their loss at “WrestleMania 38”, so they should reunite to compete in the tournament. With the exception of Natalya & Baszler, no other women’s team have been used regularly on WWE TV, although Nikki & Doudrop lost to Banks & Naomi on Raw a few weeks ago.

Natalya and Baszler have teamed up regularly at live WWE events, and even fought Banks and Naomi in a televised tag team title match a few weeks ago on SmackDown.

It’s also possible that WWE will call teams from NXT for the tournament to crown new Women’s Tag Team Champions.

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