The 411 Wrestling Top 5 11.11.09: Week 48 – Best Tag Team Moves

Posted by Michael Bauer on 11.11.2009

From the Dudley Death Drop and the Doomsday Device to the Con-Chair-to and even the Hart Attack, 411's Wrestling Staffers rank their Top Five Favorite Tag Team Moves in the latest edition of the 411 Wrestling Top Five! See which tag team moves made the list and why!

Hello everyone and welcome to 411 Wrestling's Top 5 List. What we are going to is take a topic each week and all the writers here on 411 wrestling will have the ability to give us their Top 5 on said topic, plus up to three honorable mentions.


So, on to this week's topic…

THE TOP 5 BEST TAG TEAM MOVES

Well, due to much heartache from our writers when doing the Top 5 Overall Moves, when we pulled out Tag Team specialties, it was only a matter of time before this topic came around. Because Tag Team Wrestling might appear to be more dead than the Undertaker, the memories of great moves past, and maybe even some present, life on. If you don't believe that, just look at all the Youtube videos the writers pulled out for this one.

So what did our group of writers select? Let's find out…



Ryan Byers

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The Ant Hill - People in our comment section always love it when CHIKARA's tag team "The Colony" gets mentioned in these columns, so I figured I'd throw them in here with their Ant Hill splash. Fire Ant for life~!



The Spanish Fly - I don't much care for SAT, the tag team that popularized the Spanish Fly, but I will say that the move is the one part of their matches that I was guaranteed not to fast forward through.



The Quebecer Cannonball - I may be the biggest Quebecer mark outside of Montreal, so I have to give some love to their "Cannonball," which featured Pierre Carl Ouellette squashing jobbers dead.



5.Total Elimination - This is a bit like my listing of the Spanish Fly earlier on. Though Perry Saturn would come around to be a pretty darn good professional wrestler, I thought that his "Eliminators" team with John Kronus was horribly overrated. However, if there was one thing that they could do well, it was their finisher, a simultaneous spinning heel kick and leg sweep. It almost always came out of nowhere and folded up many opponents like they were accordians. Several tag teams have come up with their own variation on the move over the years, including Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch's "High-Low," but nobody has ever done it with the same intensity as the men who popularized it.



4.Powerplex - This is a great move that is largely lost to history because it was never done by a "main event" level tag team on national television. The majority of wrestling fans will probably remember it as the finisher of "Pretty" Paul Roma and the Mighty Hercules, collectively known as Power & Glory. The Powerplex would see Hercules power the team's opponent up for a superplex, which was combined with a top rope cross body block from Roma. Aside from being briefly used by the less-than-successful D-Lo Brown and Chaz team in the late 1990's (a.k.a. "Lo Down"), I don't think that any other duo has used this in a major promotion, which is a darn shame.



3.Veg-o-Matic - Unfortunately, this is the one move that I couldn't find any video footage of. It was a favorite of the Midnight Express, and it was later adopted by the WWF tag team Too Cool as the "Hip Hop Drop." For those of you who may not have seen it, picture one wrestler crouching and holding his opponent perpindicular to his own body. The wrestler's partner then flies off of the top rope, delivering a leg drop to the poor sucker's throat. It was rather similar to the much more popular Demolition Decapitation, though I always personally preferred the Veg-o-Matic because the legdrop looked like it was targeting the opponent's head and throat whereas it was always pretty obvious that the Decapitation was connecting with the opponent's chest if it was connecting with anything at all.

2.Con-Chair-To - The fact that this involves weapons may prevent some from considering it a "tag team move," but, in my mind, if it requires two guys to execute, it's fair game for this list. The first time that I saw Edge and Christian each take a chair, wind up, and crack their opponent over the head simultaneously with the furniture, I winced. After a couple of repeated viewings, it became obvious how the move was pulled off without killing anybody . . . but that didn't stop it from looking any less brutal when you were caught up in a match or an angle and saw the wrestlers setting it up. Ultimately, when Edge and Christian split, a "one man" version of the maneuver was invented, and that's what has been more popular ever since, even in situations where the guy executing the move has a partner who can help him out. It's a shame, really, because in my book the original looks significantly better.



1.Steiner Bulldog - Even before Scott became the "Freakzilla," the Steiner Brothers were a couple of scary dudes. Yeah, they were usually babyfaces, but even as faces you could tell that they were men who got pissed off easily and enjoyed putting a hurting on anybody who crossed them. They had many brutal pro wrestling moves in their aresnal, but nothing finished off more of their opponents than the patented Steiner Bulldog, which saw the unlucky sap taking a seat on Scott's massive shoulders so that Rick could jump off of the top rope and plant him face-first into the mat. In some ways, it was similar to the Roadwarriors' Doomsday Device, but I alwasy found the Steiner's version of the move to look more consistently devastating than the LOD's move, mainly because (in kayfabe terms) it was guaranteed to plant you on your kisser whereas you could still have a relativley safe landing out of the Device. I couldn't quite find a clip of the Steiner Bulldog in isolation, so enjoy it in this compiliation of the top ten moves of our favorite Michiganders.





Julian Bond

HONORABLE MENTIONS

"More Bang For Your Buck" (The Young Bucks' finisher) - I just started seeing this new tag team duo start to do this move in ROH and it's definitely one of the sickest combos I've ever seen. Definitely a new classic.



Death Sentence (AMW) - Many teams have performed a variation of this move before...Too Cool...The Midnight Express (as Ryan kindly pointed out above)...and even...the Headbangers (?!?). But to me, I best saw it done by the duo of James Storm and Chris Harris in America's Most Wanted. The sickest one is definitily the one from the top cage shown below.



Snapshot (MNM) - In this day and age where an unique tag-team finisher is hard to come by (without counting a team simply just doing their own individual finishers together), MNM is one of the few teams in the last few years to pull off an unique move while also naming it based off of their gimmick. What a concept!!

5.Spike Piledriver (Various) - It's a piledriver...with someone else jumping on top of the victim's legs...that's it. The move seems way too simple and sometimes too fake if one thinks about it. But it's to me easily one of the best and most effective-looking double-team moves done in the ring. No elaborate set-up, no crazy flip combinations. Just a simple "spiked" piledriver.

4.Hart Attack (Hart Foundation) - This is also like the move above one of the best simpliest double-team moves I've ever seen...except that this move was done to perfection by the duo of Bret Hart and Jim Neihart. Done by any other (except for the Hart Legacy who's slowly bringing it back) it doesn't look quite right, but done by the huge built Neihart and agile Hart and it always seemed to go over perfectly.

3.Total Elimination (Eliminators) - Everytime I saw (and see again today) this move being performed by the ECW tag mainstays Perry Saturn and John Kronus, I felt the pain of the unlucky victim who received it. To get swept off your feet and get a full force drop kick is just too painful to witness.

2.Doomsday Device (LOD/Road Warriors) - This move involving the Road Warriors knocking someone's block by clotheslining one off of the other's shoulders from the top rope has always looked sick and just plain wrong to me. Sure sometimes one would take a wussy-looking fall because of being afraid to take a huge hit. But when one just takes it as is and does an almost 360 flip from Hawk or Animal's shoulders...those are the ones I'll always remember the most.

1.3D/Dudley Death Drop (Dudley Boyz/Team 3D) - This is the double-team move that I always seem to mark out to no matter how matter times I see it. While in hindsight it's a super elevated and assisted "ace crusher/diamond cutter", the way that the former Dudleys always performed it, rather it just standing behind their dazed opponent and springing it out of nowhere on an unsuspecting victim, always has marked myself and countless others out. Plus I swear that these guys no matter how old they're getting now seem to always get the move spot-on.





Jeremy Thomas

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Double Superkick - I've always loved the superkick as a finisher. So what's better than it? Two superkicks at once!

Spike Piledriver - It's not super-fancy, but it's high-impact and it looks like it would hurt like hell. You know, much like a normal piledriver would, only more so.

Hart Attack - Much like the spike piledriver, it's not fancy and doesn't involve a huge set-up. But the effectiveness of it in the ring was not to be denied by the number of people the Anvil and the Hitman took out on a weekly basis.

5.Demolition Decapitation - As much as I liked the Hart Attack, this one took the cake for me in the late 80's and early 90's for WWF Tag Team Finishers. Smash would pick up the opponent and put him down in a backbreaker hold, while Ax got up on the second rope for an elbow drop. It was always effective and looked great, especially against smaller faces since they had the much larger Ax coming down to decapitate them. Can't beat that.

4.Doomsday Device - It's funny, because I've always stated how I actually prefer Demolition to the Road Warriors (I've never claimed normality). But as much as I love the Decapitation, the Doomsday Device clearly wins. It's much like some of the moves up above in that it's not intricately set up...as you may notice here, I don't really like those moves that take a massive amount of time to set up. Simplicity is king, and this was simple and effective...and it looked like a million bucks to boot when the victim took it well. What more can you ask for?

3.Total Elimination - The utter suddenness and brutality of this finisher made the Eliminators. I loved Saturn, and Kronus was...well, Kronus. If not for this finisher I probably wouldn't have given them the time of day as a tag team. But this was enough for me to get behind them. It looked viciously painful and I cringed whenever I saw it. Good times.

2.The 3D - Few tag team moves popped a crowd in the Dudleys/E&C/Hardy Boyz area of tag team wrestling in the 'F like the 3D (not to mention its use in the ECW days). Maybe it was the whole "Get the Tables" ritual, maybe it was just how over the Dudley Boys were. I like to think it was the effectiveness of the move, an elevated Diamond Cutter. Watching someone go through a table with Bubba Ray's arms around their neck was just great to see, and it's always been a favorite of mine.

1.Con-Chair-To - You want to take a move that looks absolutely brutal? Here we go. Two chairs coming together, with one unfortunate bastard's head right in the way. This move was so effective because it took some serious timing and aim to pull it off effectively without actually killing the poor schmuck taking the move, and Edge and Christian consistently managed to do that. I fully agree with Byers that the double-team version is vastly superior to the singles version, but I concede that the singles version is safer. That doesn't mean I don't want to see someone's head getting pancaked every now and then, though.



Chris Lansdell

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The 3D - This low because, in recent years, it's gone downhill. Bubba used to run the ropes and leap before hitting the move, which required a ton of timing and added some visual appeal to it. Now? Not so much.

Spanish Fly - A double, top-rope, somersault uranage. Need I say more? It would be higher if they used it more.

Doomsday Device - It was REALLY hard to figure out what to put as the third Honorable mention, because the top 6 are all so close. The Device takes the short stick because I identify more with the other moves on the list.

5. Powerplex: The finisher of Power and Glory (Hercules and Paul "I Am 411mania's Comment Section MVP" Roma) saw Hercules execute a superplex followed by a top rope splash from Roma. Pretty routine but I always marked out for it because they timed it so well and made it look so good. Yes, Roma is good for something other than baiting legends and trolling comment sections.

4. Superkick/German or Tiger or Dragon suplex combo: Done by many, many teams, one partner would hold the opponent in a waistlock, double chickenwing or full nelson while the other one measured and then hit a superkick. The non-kicking partner would pop his hips backward on the impact of the kick, executing the suplex and likely winning the match in the process. Again a case of great timing and lovely aesthetics.

3. Snapshot: Most recently done by MNM,this is a flapjack/DDT combo that was inspired by my number 1 choice. What made this move impressive for me was the pose beforehand, along with the fact that it almost always won matches. It's also surprisingly brutal for today's WWE. Well, WWE of three years ago.



2. Ghetto Stomp/Cop Killa combo: The nastiest, most brutal move I've seen. Ever. Homicide would position the opponent in the Cop Killa/Gringo Killa/Vertebreaker/Kudome Driver position while Low Ki climbed the ropes. Ki then jumped off into the crotch of the suspended opponent with a double stomp, causing Homicide to drop with the poor bugger.



1. Shaker Heights Spike: As performed by the Destruction Crew and the Beverley Brothers, who may or may not be the same team. One of the Brothers would elevate the opponent high for a flapjack, while the other would leap and catch them, driving their head into the mat. It started as a piledriver on the end, then a DDT, and finally it was just a head drop. This move was the first one that actually made me cringe when watching wrestling, as I saw Enos and Bloom pull it off in the AWA. It was actually the cause of a new rule made by Verne Gagne, which said that a wrestler could not catch his opponent, if he had been elevated above shoulder height, and then drive his head to the mat. So yeah, this move HAD IT'S OWN RULE to outlaw it. Win. See it here:



Aaron Hubbard

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Anything the Rockers Used - I love the Rockers and they are kings of double teams, but it impossible for me to pick just one.

Redneck Boogie - The Briscoes have a great collection of double team moves, but this crucifix powerbomb into a neckbreaker is the most unique in their collection.

Snapshot - This elevated DDT was the signature move of MNM, and the only thing keeping it out of the top five is the short run of the team; otherwise this would be spoken about in the same reverent tones as the Flapjack and the Midnight Express.

5.Hart Attack - Very simple, but very cool. Jim Neidhart would lift his opponent into a bearhug, and then Bret would connect with a flying neckbreaker clothesline. This was a great finisher in its day and is still used by many teams as a false finish. The Hart Foundation had many moves that showcased what you can do with a team that has a big guy and a smaller guy.

4.Total Elimination - Innovative. Exciting. Sudden. These are three words that describe the signature double team of the Eliminators. John Kronus would take out his opponent's head with a spinning wheel kick, while Perry Saturn would simultaneously hit a spinning legsweep. The move could come out of nowhere and had an almost scissor-like effect on its victims. One of the few moves that looked pretty and deadly at the same time. Solely for the greatness of this move, the Eliminators deserve a mention in the history of tag-team wrestling.

3.Backdrop Suplex/Chokeslam - The signature double-team finisher of the Holy Demon Army. Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue were one of the best tag teams of all time. Some would make an argument that their chief rivals Mitsuharu Misawa and Kenta Kobashi were better overall, but these guys were more cohesive. It shows in this combination of two of their finishers, creating a tag team finisher that spelled doom for anyone unfortunate enough to take it.

2.Dudley Death Drop (3D) - This move would deserve a spot on this list simply because it's the signature move of the most decorated tag team in history. Fortunately, it's also really cool and could get on this list if it was the signature move of The Edge Army. Well, not quite, but nearly. This was a combination of two great moves, the flapjack and the Ace Crusher, and it is awesome. It's more famous for putting people through tables, but I personally thought it looked just as devastating without the wood. Great move and one has to wonder if another move will reach its legendary status.

1.Doomsday Device - When you talk double teams, you have to talk the Doomsday Device. This is simple, but sometimes the simplest stuff is the best. Animal would lift an opponent on his shoulder, and then Hawk would fly off the top turnbuckle and nearly decapitate the poor soul with a flying clothesline. The combination of the impact of the clothesline and the fall, which often featured a near 360 degree rotation, made any viewer know that the match was over. There have been other teams using the move, and still others modifying it ever so slightly. But the original is still the best.