Beyond the Ring 11.01.10: The WWE Tag Team Title Scene

Posted by Chris Skoyles on 11.01.2010

Wrestling fans have long bemoaned the way WWE treats its tag team titles, but is there any hope for the company's tag scene, or is it time for Vince McMahon to do kind thing and put his sick dog out of its misery?

Let's face it, we wrestling fans are not the easiest bunch of people to impress. Not a week goes by when we don't find something, usually a lot of things, to complain about.

Whether it's our favorite midcarder not getting the push he deserves, a match or card not living up to our expectations, or pretty much anything spewed forth from the mind of that much-maligned IWC punching bag, Vince Russo, there'll always be something that, to steal from Family Guy, really grinds our gears.

Sometimes, it's quite easy to justify this overly critical viewpoint to ourselves. After all, when you invest a lot of time, money and emotion into something, it's hard not to become so passionate about it that you want it to exist in one constant state of perfection.

And besides, as has been said before, it's often worth sticking it out through all the disappointment and frustration because when wrestling gets it right, it usually does so to an incredible level and reminds you exactly why you became a fan in the first place.

Jonny Midcarder's mis-handling can be overlooked if he's just placed in a hot angle for a few weeks (see: Kofi Kingson vs. Randy Orton), two wrestlers who deliver a stinker of a match on TV can be forgiven if they eventually bring their A game for an exciting ppv rematch, and hell, even Russo can find some solace in the knowledge that, at some point in his career, he must have surely booked something that wasn't completely nonsensical.

Yet for all we're willing to forgive and forget, there's one particular bee in our collective bonnet that we just can't seem to let go of; the tag team wrestling scene, particularly in WWE, and it's unfortunate demise.



Those who got into the wonderful world of wrestling back in the often heralded glory days of The Attitude era probably look back fondly to a time when teams like the New Age Outlaws were insanely popular, when the A.P.A were kicking ass and taking names in between lengthy beer-and-cigar sessions, and further, to those classic TLC bouts featuring The Hardy Boys, Edge and Christian and their contemporaries.


Those who were swept off their feet by the huge boom back in the 80s probably still have a soft spot for memorable teams like The Hart Foundation, The Rockers, and this writer's hometown heroes, The British Bulldogs.



Though no matter when you were first bit by the wrestling bug, chances are you probably look at today's WWE tag scene, where the company struggled to pull enough full-time teams together for Night of Champions, and are less than thrilled with it.

Not that anybody could blame you; you can count the number of legitimate teams in the WWE right now on one hand.

The scene right now

Of course, we have The Hart Dynasty, third-generation superstars from the legendary Hart family, who in my opinion are the strongest full-time team on the company's roster.

They're usually decent in the ring, have a believable excuse for teaming up, and with Hart Smith bringing the muscle whilst Kidd does the fancy stuff, they bear at least a passing resemblance to that other great Hart team, Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart.



Speaking of teams from famous families, there's also The Usos, sons of Rikishi, who didn't impress me much back in May and haven't done much to change my mind since.

Don't get me wrong, it was genuinely exciting to see another fully-fledged team who, much like the Harts have a good reason for being together and are booked as a proper team thrown into a genuine storyline with David, Tyson and Natalya, but their first in-ring promo, in which they explained their motives for attacking the Harts, felt awkward and, to be honest, every time I think of The Usos, I just see Jimmy (or was it Jey?) botching up that three-way top-rope attack on Raw.

Hey, at least they tried though.

As did the short-lived gatecrashers team of Vance Archer and Curt Hawkings, who somehow managed to come across a team who weren't just thrown together because creative had nothing for them and, in this writer's mind at least, did have some potential before their run came to an end in early October.

Back on the plus side, having Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel holding the straps right now makes sense, keeping a little bit of power within the Nexus faction, and could well be something exciting, despite the less-brilliant-way in which they got their hands on the titles.



Yet for every positive there's a negative, and this random pairing of Drew McIntyre and Cody Rhodes makes little sense.

Rhodes has been settling in nicely to his new ‘Dashing' gimmick as a singles performer, whilst McIntyre has been consistently pushed as a force to be reckoned with since his return to TV back in August 2009, so why The Big ‘E suddenly decided to dump both performers in a meaningless tag scene is pretty baffling.

Oh, and then there's The Dude Busters, another booked-as-a-team-and-not-just-thrown-together outfit, but come on, are we actually supposed to take those Trent Baretta and Caylen Croft seriously?

So, that's the situation as it stands now (unless I've missed anyone, please free to let me know in the comments) and it's just about as dire as it's ever been.

From hip hop to hog farmers.

When I initially sat down to write this column, my argument was going to be that as bad as things may look right now, they are actually no worse than that dodgy period during the early-mid 1990s when Vince McMahon was obsessed with saddling the bulk of his roster with over-the-top gimmicks.

Then I thought about, and changed my mind.

Sure, the years which bridged the gap between the Hogan years and the aforementioned Attitude Era didn't exactly deliver a great deal in what was then the World Wrestling Federation, but at least it had tag teams, even if they did mostly suck.

From those harbingers of half-witted hip-hop Men On A Mission to portly pig farmers Henry O. and Phineas I. Godwin, by way of The Smoking Guns, The Headbangers and The Bodydonnas, teams back then had some awful gimmicks to work with, but they were booked as teams, wrestled as teams and did what they could to keep the tag scene alive.



What's more, that time period did at least give us the pairings of Yokozuna and Owen Hart, and later Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith, all of whom I recall being fairly entertained by when I was younger, even though I'm actually struggling to remember a single match involving either team.

Things did eventually pick up though, and after the early part of the Attitude era saw the New Age Outlaws share the gold with make-shift teams such as Kane/X-Pac and Owen Hart/Jeff Jarrett, it was up to Edge, Christian, The Hardys and The Dudleys to swap the gold for the better part of eighteen months between 2000-2001.

As the years wore on, teams like Paul London and Brian Kendrick, The Miz and John Morrison, and even Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase did their best for the art of the tag match, but in hindsight, they were facing a loosing battle, as both the quality and quantity of WWE tag teams dwindled until we reached the point we find ourselves at today.

Fantasy booking

All of this really begs one simple question: What should be done about the tag scene in WWE?

If you're anything like me, your first thought is to drift off into any number of fantasy booking scenarios, then hope and pray WWE take them on board, convinced as you are that your solution is the one thing that would revive the fortunes of the flagging tag scene.

Heck, I've even got one of my own, even if it isn't entirely perfect.

Have Nexus, with Gabriel and Slater still as tag team champions, seriously their attentions to Smackdown.

After a few weeks of the boys in black and gold running roughshod over most of the company, have Christian return from injury and cut a promo about how he missed all the fans and loves being on Smackdown, at which point Gabriel and Slater run in for a colossal beat-down, perhaps dump him through the announce desk, do him in with a steel chair, that kind of thing.

This would then lead to Christian challenging the champs to a pay per view match against him and a mystery opponent who would, you guessed it, turn out to be Edge.

I know, it would be too obvious, but sometimes obvious is good and wouldn't you make sure you were watching for an anticipated Edge and Christian reunion?



Anyway, whilst those two teams are feuding for a few weeks and really putting the tag team title picture into a notable, money-making storyline, you remodel The Dude Busters with a less ridiculous gimmick and have them win a couple of good matches over some make-shift teams of decent performers and then claim there's no competition, only for The Hart Dynasty to show up and start up a feud with those guys, which could then evolve into a three-way involving The Usos.

As I said earlier, I'm not a big fan of The Usos, but whilst they're there, we might as well use them.

At some point, you'll probably need Edge to go back into the World title picture, so, after doing his bit to restore credibility to the tag straps, he and Christian amicably split up after dropping them back to the Nexus boys, who are eventually stripped of the belts for using some dastardly tactic to win a match.

This would then set up a tournament featuring all the remaining teams (apart from E & C), one makeshift team of under-utilized talents (Kaval and Evan Bourne anyone?) and a mystery team who turn out to be a recently hired Motor City Machine Guns, who advance all to the final and begin feuding with the other finalists. Hey presto, you have a tag scene.

Look, I know it's not the greatest idea ever, but at least it's an idea. The problem is, it will never happen, which leaves just one other solution:

Abandon the tag team titles all together.

The end of an era?

I admit, it's not the option I would prefer, and I'd be as sad as anyone to see the tag scene, but just like shooting a sick dog, killing off the tag team title scene in WWE right now would probably be the kindest thing to do.

Let's face it, the tag team titles are more or less meaningless, more so now since WWE have decided to trace the lineage of the current belts back only as far as the Stephanie McMahon-created titles of 2002.

What's more, the scene revolving around those titles has been so neglected and poorly treated for so long now that it's likely fans who only came to wrestling would even miss it or care that it's gone.

Of course, this would create more problems; what to do with the teams that do exist, what to do with those random midcarders you'd usually just dump in the tag scene if you couldn't think of anything else for them to, and how exactly do you take the proverbial gun to the head of the tag titles?

Have Vince McMahon come out and say ‘Sorry, we've f*cked this up big time, we're just going to call it a day and act like this never happened'? Just stop booking anything for the few tag teams currently in existence and hope nobody notices?

Honestly, dear reader, I don't know the answer to that one. I just know that, as someone who has been a big fan of tag team wrestling for such a long time, I'd rather not have a WWE tag team title scene than have the poor excuse for one we have now.

It's sad, but on the bright side, it would probably give us fans one less thing to complain about.