Tag Team Wrestling: The Dying Art

[wrestlingotter]

Let me pose you a question. Do you believe tag team wrestling is dying? I do. Let us look at the track record. We went from having multiple teams throughout all wrestling companies to being held on passionately by independent companies. We used to have the beauty of tag teams and their maneuvers to two wrestlers with nothing in common holding a title for the sake of keeping the title alive.

Now we have Epico and Primo with the title at WWE and Crimson and Matt Morgan over at TNA. these are not Tag TEAMS. These are faces that these two companies have thrown together in hopes to keep the art alive. That is what Tag Team Wrestling is, an ART. Two wrestlers who train together and preform together from the beginning will be able to put on a better show in the squared circle than two wrestlers thrown together.

The days of the Road Warriors, The Rockers, The BushWhackers, The Hart Foundation, and the FreeBirds are long gone in my opinion. With the new addition to the WWE of Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli maybe we will see the spark needed to light the fire under the Tag Team Division. Only time can tell.

 

[PeepShow]

Tag teams have been a joke for the better part of the last 5 years now, especially in WWE. I hate to say it, but TNA has actually built up some great tag teams over the last 5 years. LAX, AMW, Styles/Daniels, Beer Money, MCMG, British Invasion, etc.

Who does WWE have? Primo and Epico? Santino and Kozlov? Otunga and McGillicutty? rofl

edit- also, I'm pretty sure Hero and Claudio aren't going to be teaming up once/if they hit the main roster.

 

[Axis]

It's at such a point that I don't even want Claudio and Hero to come in as a tag team. If WWE is going to be so unserious about tag teams, I'd rather them both be used in a way that lets them have good matches. Give me programs with Rhodes, Ziggler, Bryan, Swagger, and Punk over programs with Epico, Primo, and the Usos any day. It sucks because I'm a fan of tag team wrestling. I believe it was summed up best though when Shane McMahon told London and Kendrick that the last tag team he cared about was the Legion of Doom.

 

[wrestlingotter]

The major thing I see on WWE is you have tons of stand-alone characters. They only have two tag teams, really. Epico and Primo and the Usos. Personally i would love to see WWE utilize these teams to make tag teams a big thing again. Now, TNA has put quite a bit of work into their tag team division, so thats where I get my Tag Team fix.

And as far as Hero and Castagnoli are concerned, if they dont utilize them as a tag team than they are wasting a perfect opportunity.

 

[He who knows more than Nation]

^^^ I do agree with almost everything you say except pair the KoW up. I don't see Hero making an impact. He's too indy;hes a twig and his repertoire really needs an overhaul. He's going to be working with guys much larger than he did on the indies, he needs to adapt a WWE style. His mic skills are tip top though and I think he could best be utilized as a manger who wrestles occasionally.
Claudio on the other hand is WWE ready, hes got size, look and charisma. His style is fairly basic and could easily translate to the WWE style and he Ricola bomb is a unique and WWE friendly finish. If done correctly, Claudio could be huge.

As far as full time tag teams and there being so many single wrestlers doing jack, I'd like to pairL

Mason Ryan and Skip Sheffield-just two big monsters fucking everyone up and keeping the belts for awhile while they build a solid face team as a foil. Doesn't matter if Ryan can't wrestler, he just looks the part.
Trent Barretta and Gabriel -heard someone mention it and it seems like they would fit
Regal-Tatsu basically a rehash of Regal-Yajiri

 

[wrestlingotter]

I agree with you on Hero. But, thats why hes going to start at FCW. That will give him the necessary time and training to adapt to the ways of the WWE. Now if they did pair Mason and SKip it would be perfect. The new Superpowers, maybe? And pairing Trent and Justin Gabriel would give you the high flying tag team of this decade. That would be a good start to pairing of tag teams. But again, I still think it is a dying art. They havent hired any teams up to the WWE, just single wrestlers.

 

[Luke Flywalker]

I like Primo & Epico... they display a chemistry and they work the tag formula very well. There's just no competition outside of the Uso's, who are pretty boring. I wish they'd give them a Headshrinker's kind of gimmick... although, WWE won't sell headshots or anyone being impervious to them... but just have them be a dominant team. Air Boom looked like it could have been a damn good team though, as corny as the entire gimmick for the two was... they actually made the effort to look the part and work some decent tag spots into their matches... but that's on Bourne, not the E.

KoW could work, if done right... but it'd have to be a total focus and commitment by the E to do it... and, as said, Hero's not ready, yet.

 

[This Guy]

TNA did have one of the most dominate tag team scenes in pro wrestling at one point, but like the WWE they have pretty much flushed it down the toilet. The problem is, the big money is being a singles wrestler and being a main event player. So I get it, eventually a tag team has to break up so that you can move on to better greatness. So for example, the WWE saw something in Shawn Michaels, and they broke up the Rockers and Shawn went on to have a Hall of Fame singles career. But its not like the WWE didn't have other established tag teams at the time and still weren't bringing in or putting together new teams. The problem in the last couple years in the WWE & now in TNA, is there is this idea that you can just break up all your tag teams basically at the same time, and make a bunch of singles stars and then throw others together to make teams to replace them and it doesn't worth that way most of the time for 2 reasons. 1) there is only so many top spots on the roster. You break up all 10 of your tag teams your not going to have 20 single roster spots to fill. You might have 2 or 3. The other 17 guys are going to get left in the dust, and now you've acomplished nothing. 2) Your now thrown together new teams have no way to get established as a team because they have no other established team to draw off of. I get that in this day an age, Tag Team wrestling is never going to be a major draw, but there still needs to be some old school thinking. New Age Outlaws were thrown together. They became established and a draw, because they had teams like LOD to draw off of before LOD then disbanded and disapeared.

 

[monkeystyle]

Can't recall exactly where I heard it but Shane McMahon said something along the lines of them not really caring about any tag team since LOD.

Personally, I kind of miss good tag team wrestling and I kind of don't care. I grew up with the Killer Bees, Strike Force, the Hart Foundation and Demolition and it was all great fun. I'd rather have a competently written show though in general first.

 

[Rell]

I feel Santoshi could have worked.

WWE has a problem with breaking up tag teams for no apparent reason. There was really no reason to push JTG and Shad as singles wrestlers. Same with Kidd and DH. It's one thing if the breakup is being used to ELEVATE the guys (or at least ONE of them) as singles wrestlers, but if you're going to break them up only to have them float around on the underbelly of the card with absolutely nothing to do, why even do it at all?

 

[wrestlingotter]

What is everyones issue with the Usos? I honestly think they have the in ring ability they just dont get the push needed to get them over. Their entrance is great. They just need a push. And as a tag team they won't get the push because there is no competition

 

[monkeystyle]

Honestly forgot the Usos even existed.

Though I will say that they really blew it with them when they feuded with the new Hart Foundation.

 

[He who knows more than Nation]

Can't recall exactly where I heard it but Shane McMahon said something along the lines of them not really caring about any tag team since LOD.

Personally, I kind of miss good tag team wrestling and I kind of don't care. I grew up with the Killer Bees, Strike Force, the Hart Foundation and Demolition and it was all great fun. I'd rather have a competently written show though in general first.

What do you call the Edge-Dudleyz-Hardyz era? Seemed like they cared.

Then they did the Edge/Rey-Angle/Benoit-Los Guerros awesomeness during the Smackdown Six era. They've more than cared about the tag belts beyond LOD, they just havent cared for the past seven years outside the Undisputed Tag Title with Jerisho, DX and Showmiz. Havent care for the 10 years except for that brief invigoration,

 

[This Guy]

Yeah I was going to say, WWE had a pretty strong tag division since LOD, with Hardy's, Dudley's, E&C not to mention on top of those the APA, Kienti, Too Cool & later Billy & Chuck. So surely the WWE cared about tag wrestling after LOD. Maybe Shane McMahon himself hasn't cared about tag team wrestling since LOD.

Either way the point is still the same. If your going to break up tag teams just to have the flounder and do nothing (ie. Hart Dynasty, Crime Time) then why bother. And even if there is a star like a Shawn Michaels, you don't break up your Rockers until you've had them establish your newer teams.

 

[monkeystyle]

What do you call the Edge-Dudleyz-Hardyz era? Seemed like they cared.

Not saying I agree with the statement but it's what was said.

And just now I recall where it was said. It was during the London/Kendrick shoot.

They tell a story about how they were touring WWE Headquarters with Shane Mcmahon and one of them asked why there was no pictures of tag teams up on the walls and Shane Mcmahon responded with "Honestly, I haven't cared about a tag team since the Legion of Doom".