wrestling / Columns

411’s Top 25 Tag Teams of the Last 25 Years (#20-#16)

November 1, 2011 | Posted by Larry Csonka

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the 411 wrestling section, and welcome to our latest feature, the top 25 tag teams of the last 25 years. Yesterday we started our countdown, and I would like to thank those of you that took the time to read and comment on the article. Today we continue the countdown, from #20-#16. As a reminder, every 411 writer had the opportunity to share their top 25, and after over 25 writers produced and shared their list, the grand list was then complied to make the top 25. Remember, everyone has different values. Some value workrate and match quality, while other look at influence in the business or how much money they drew. While people will always disagree, we at 411 felt that this was the fairest way to make the list, and we know that some people will be left out. Here are the men that just missed the cut, and the first official members of the list…

Just missing the cut…
* Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi
* Ultimo Guerrero & Rey Buccanero
* Los Guerreros (Eddie & Chavito)
* The Fantastics (Bobby Fulton & Tommy Rogers)
* The Heavenly Bodies (Dr. Tom Prichard, Sweet Stan Lane & Gigolo Jimmy Del Rey)

#25. The Hollywood Blondes (Steve Austin and Brian Pillman)
#24. Los Gringos Locos (Eddie Guerrero and Art Bar)
#23. The Holy Demon Army (Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue)
#22. America’s Most Wanted (Chris Harris and James Storm)
#21. The Kings of Wrestling (Chris hero and Claudio Castignoli)


Jack Bramma: Since Day One, The Briscoes Brothers have been the premiere tag team of Ring of Honor and easily one of the world’s best tag teams in the new millennium. From the sticks of Sandy Fork, Delaware, a town with only a population of a few thousand, The Briscoes have risen to heights few teams have achieved on the independent scene in the last decade. In ROH a company that only has a handful of multiple-time singles or tag champs, it is telling that the Briscoes have won the ROH tag championships SIX times, four clear of any other team. One of the main reasons is that they are one of the real pure TEAMS left in professional wrestling. Aspiring little for singles accolades, The Briscoes have stuck together through thick and thin including a real life hiatus in 2004 after Mark was in a motorcycle accident but Jay refused to accept bookings without his brother.

Inspired by The Eliminators, The Briscoes proudly own their hard hitting, Southern formula tag wrestling roots. If Southern isn’t your style, they can throw in some Puro, Strong Style striking as evidenced by their stint in NOAH including a run as GHC junior tag champs. And if necessary, they can get extreme as seen in not one but TWO Ladder Wars against All Night Express and Steenerico and two reigns as CZW tag champs.

But perhaps more than any other duo in wrestling, when the Briscoes say they are batshit crazy and will do anything to win belts or entertain fans, you believe them mostly because they WILL including beat the hell out of each other. So many teams over the years and especially in modern wrestling are broken up and feuded against one another carelessly to the detriment of the product and the team, but the Briscoes are the only team able to occasionally get together in the squared circle for an all out MOTYC war only to tag together at the next show without missing a beat for a tag MOTYC. Why? Because just like their promos demonstrate, the Briscoes are just two ruthless rednecks who like drinking, partying and beating people up. Whether it’s having the best Doomsday Device since LOD in their prime, having interpromotional dream matches with the Murder City Machine Guns, or firing off shotguns at beer cans on the redneck firing range, The Briscoes have been one of the best since Day One.

Greg DeMarco: Jay and Mark Briscoe were born to be wrestlers. When Ring of Honor kicked off their “Project 161” storyline, childhood photos of Jay & Mark that were used showed the duo with homemade WWE replica championship belts. The brothers grew up on a chicken farm in Sandy Fork, Delaware, where they still work today. But away from their family farm, they have established themselves as one of the most sought after acts on the independent scene.

Their path to recognition is not what anyone would call a traditional one. They are originally self-taught wrestlers, learning from videotaped footage that they practiced on a trampoline and homemade wrestling ring in their backyard. Footage they took of themselves lead to their first ever booking with the East CoastWrestling Alliance in 2000. They did receive formal training through both the ECWA and CZW wrestling schools, and debuted in the latter in January of 2001.
Ironically, the match that really forced wrestling fans to take notice of The Briscoes wasn’t a tag team match. They faced each other in a second round match at CZW’s Best of The Best tournament in 2001, and the match is regarded as the best of the night and the launching pad for a career that is both well-traveled and well documented.

The most amazing attribute about the Briscoe Brothers is that they do not have aspirations to be singles champions. Many have written that Jay Briscoe has the talent and promo ability to carry a company like Ring of Honor as its singles champion. But they have never shown an interest in splitting up. This even held true when they stopped wrestling in August of 2004. Mark Briscoe was injured in a motorcycle accident, and Jay stated that he’d rather not wrestle than wrestle separated from his brother. The duo did return to active competition in late 2005, finally returning to ROH in late 2006. They have since become six-time ROH tag team champions, and the only competitors on the active roster who appeared at the company’s first ever show, The Era of Honor Begins.

Both still in their twenties, Jay & Mark Briscoes have a long career ahead of them. They have received tryout matches in both TNA and WWE, with multiple reports of contracts being offered. But the brothers have chosen to keep Ring of Honor as their home promotion, guaranteeing that they can remain as a tag team for as long as they choose.



Tony Acero: It’s not often that someone who boasts themself as the greatest can actually live up to the expectation, hell I’ve been doing it for years with little clout. It’s very telling, then, that The World’s Greatest Tag Team actually fits the bill. Sure, some say that there is a bit of a hindrance due to their lack of skills behind the microphone, but that’s what managers are for. Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas first came on the stage under the tutelage of Kurt Angle as Team Angle, appointed to Kurt by Paul Heyman. Immediately, they made an impact becoming tag team championship contenders and continually putting on great tag team matches on a weekly basis. After their break away from Angle, people saw a bit of a floundering team, but I saw rookies well on the cusp of greatness. Their time in WWE was marred with a combination of gimmicks that didn’t work and bad showings of talent on the stick. Some blame WWE and some blame Shelton and Charlie. After a split in 04, it looked like Benjamin was getting the push while Charlie was a bit stagnant but due to Shelton’s mediocrity outside of the ring, he didn’t go too far. Fast forward to last year, 2010 and both men were released within two months of each other. If you thought this was the end of the World’s Greatest Tag Team, you’d be wrong as ROH showed an interest in them and TWGTT has been there ever since. Their time in ROH showed a bit of a resurgence in their motivation and as current ROH Tag Team Champions, they’ve been proving that they truly are The World’s Greatest Tag Team.

Shelton and Haas both come from an amateur background and if it weren’t for their shortcomings on the microphone and WWE’s lack of faith behind them, I’m sure they’d still be on the main stage of the WWE, tearing it up. With that being said, ROH is nothing to sneeze about and it’s a place where their freedom is much more lax. I learned long ago that there are some wrestlers who thrive off of the charismatic necessities that the WWE require and there are those that use their technical prowess to succeed in this business that we love. The World’s Greatest Tag Team is most definitely a part of the latter group and there’s not a damned thing wrong with that.

Jeremy Thomas: In a lot of ways, The World’s Greatest Tag Team is the quintessential tag team. The team of Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin is a fantastic pairing of two guys who never quite had successful singles runs but have an almost-unmatched level of timing and excellence in the ring. And on that note, I think that where teams like the Hardys and Dudleys had difficulty finding singles success because of their tag team reputations, the former Team Angle’s reputations as a tag team has somehow suffered because of their failed singles runs in WWE.

It’s interesting to consider how this team nearly didn’t happen. Charlie Haas was supposed to become a tag star with his brother Russ. When Russ tragically died of a heart attack at twenty-seven, Charlie went solo in developmental until he was paired with Shelton and brought up to the main roster as Team Angle, one of Paul Heyman’s contingency plans for his client. Shelton and Charlie very quickly found success in a feud with Los Guerreros and got over on the strength of those matches and their association with Angle. The big test was how well they would do on their own, and when they broke away from Kurt we found out the answer was “quite well.”

Hass and Benjamin were never the greatest mic workers, and that’s a good portion of what keeps them in the lower part of this list. But as a tag team they were almost unparalleled during their time in WWE. They worked so incredibly well and brought back the idea of innovative tag team moves. Even if their reformation in 2006 wasn’t as successful as they would have liked, it showed that they still had the spark and that led to their successful Ring of Honor run over the last year or so once they were released from WWE. I always thought that the ‘E missed the boat with these guys because they tried to fit them into other molds that didn’t work. Sometimes it’s better to just let a team be who they are and have them find success that way. If Vince and company had given that a try, they would have gotten a lot more bang for their buck from these two. As it is, they stand as one of the more underrated tag teams of the era…and considering that they’re ranked on this list, that says quite a bit.



Greg DeMarco: From 1979 to 1994, Michael Hayes, Terry Gordy, Buddy Roberts and Jimmy Garvin held membership in a faction known as The Fabulous Freebirds. Hayes, Gordy & Roberts are the most famous iteration of the group, with Garvin as an occasional member until 1989 when he joined Hayes as a tag team version of the Freebirds in WCW. Brad Armstrong also served in one of his many masked personas as Badstreet, but is rarely considered an official member of the stable.

While Hayes, Gordy & Roberts debuted in 1979, it was their battles with The Von Erich Family that gained original attention amongst wrestling fans. Many old school Texas fans can recall Michael Hayes dressing as Santa Claus to attack Kerry Von Erich. The threesome also feuded with The Road Warriors in the AWA, and appeared briefly in the WWF—leaving when the company moved towards splitting the trio up.

The group moved to Bill Watts’ UWF promotion, where Terry Gordy was booked as an unstoppable world champion. It was here that Michael Hayes began to shine as both a manager and heel commentator, roles that would take him far in the future. When the promotion was purchased by Jim Crockett in 1987, Michael Hayes went back to World Class while Terry Gordy began to make a name for himself in Japan and Buddy Roberts began to move towards retirement.

Hayes started teaming with Jimmy Garvin in 1989 in WCW, boasting a rare accomplishment: they lost the WCW World Tag Team Champions before they won them. The duo captured the WCW World Tag Team Championships from Rick & Scott Steiner at the February 24 12991 WrestleWar pay-per-view. Due to WCW’s taping schedule, their March 9 loss back to the Steiners was actually filmed on February 1991, a full six days before their victory over the Michigan brothers.

As a fan, there will always be two things that I forever keep with me from The Freebirds. The first is their “Badstreet USA” theme song, written, produced and performed by Michael Hayes himself. This song always “takes me back” to my younger wrestling memories, and I often use it as break music on The Greg DeMarco Show. The second is, of course, The Freebird Rule. This rule is enacted to allow multiple members of stable stand in and defend the tag team championships. While not official, this rule has been applied by many groups outside of The Freebirds, including WCW’s Jersey Triad of Diamond Dallas Page, Chris Kanyon & Bam Bam Bigelow, the WWE’s Spirit Squad and TNA’s Beautiful People.

Scott Rutherford: While the Fabulous Freebirds had several incarnations, the one that really mattered was the version consisting of Michael Hayes, Terry Gordy and Buddy Roberts. Three men with wildly divergent personalities that when mixed together created magic.

In Hayes you had the charisma. Not great in the ring but an awesome talker and natural heat getter. He knew that rock ‘n roll and wrestling was a perfect fit and was the first man to use that type of music to accompany him to the ring. Gordy was the upstart talent. How talented? Pound for pound one of the greatest wrestlers that has ever lived. Roberts was the hard as nails veteran. Tough and uncompromising, he was the no frills back bone of the unit.

Put them together and you had something special. They weren’t so much a team as a gang. You could clearly see that that what they portrayed in the ring bleed over into real life. You just know that they would stand back-to-back in a bar fight making sure no one got a cheap shot in on one of their brothers. And this is what makes them so great.

You picked on one, you picked on all three. It didn’t matter if it was Michael Hayes mouth that was getting the into trouble in the first place, the other two would always be there to back him up. In the ring they could incite a riot like when they turn on Kerry Von Erich and lit the fuse for the explosion that came out of Dallas in the mid 80’s. In fact they created excitement wherever they went and the only reason you don’t hear more about them these day was the lack of substantial run up North.

The Freebirds only had a cup of coffee with the WWF during their time together. What seemed like the most natural fit in the world, really didn’t fit at all. When the WWF broached the idea of them splitting up, they stuck together and headed back south. Finding homes in Georgia, the UWF and a couple of stints in the AWA, they would instantly plug in to the top talent of any territory and draw money. They never won that many titles but that never seemed to matter in lieu of kicking ass and having a good time..

As with all things they soon split and Hayes formed a straight tag team with Jimmy Garvin under the Freebirds banner enjoying great success in the NWA/WCW. Gordy was all set to fulfill his promise as he best big man wrestler around before drugs put him into a coma, leaving him brain damaged and a shell of his former self, before the grim reaper called. Roberts, who was at the tail end of his career, called it a day and fought a winning battle against throat cancer.

The Freebirds were stars before they were known. What they gave us wasn’t a gimmick but a reflection of their lives, giving us a realism and grittiness that I feel is not often talked about and definitely under appreciated. They “got” that it was as much about the sizzle as it was the steak and when they came to your town, you were guaranteed that something great was going to happen.



Wes Kirk: Kevin Nash and Scott Hall both had success in the WCW before 1996, but not as much as when they left to join the WWF and become big name stars. After a while, a brand new innovative angle was pitched to them if they joined WCW involving things never seen before in the business and both guys accepted, starting with Hall’s famous jumping the barricade on Nitro and promising that “we” are taking over. With the appearance of Nash soon afterward, the two were quickly becoming popular and causing chaos as people wanted to know if this was a legitimate WWF invasion of WCW at the time while Hall and Nash decimated various stars and even power bombed Eric Bischoff through a table well before it was considered mainstream to assault an authority figure. With the revelation of the third man being Hulk Hogan and the subsequent formation of the New World Order, both men would forever be known as the guys who started the hottest and most profitable angle and faction in wrestling history. Together, Hall and Nash would accumulate tag team title belts and become more famous than ever before as the nWo assisted the original “Outsiders” to WCW to victory and keeping the belts at all costs. They also worked well as a team, with both using trademark moves and being above average in size and throw around their opponents more frequently than not.

They are also one of the few teams not to have a signature tag team finisher, as it was usually one of their singles finishers that were used to put a team away, either the Outsider’s Edge or the Jack-Knife Powerbomb. Hall and Nash were able to work the same style as both relied heavily on power and brawling techniques that worked well for a team in which the smallest man was six foot seven and 275 lbs. The two men were able to defeat the top teams in the company for years with their trademark moves and a little assistance from the entire nWo faction at their disposal, with the two calling themselves the Wolfpac along with Syxx which would eventually become a separate faction of the nWo led by Kevin Nash. During their time in WCW, the two would chalk up six tag team title reigns over teams such as the Harlem Heat for the first reign, the Steiner Brothers, and their final title run came in December 1999 during some questionable booking in the Vince Russo era. Hall would never go on to achieve the top singles title due to his personal demons and when the two did part ways, they left behind great achievements and one of the greatest runs in wrestling during the start of the Attitude Era in which Hall and Nash made it cool to be the bad guys again, becoming so successful as a team that Hulk Hogan changed his mind and jumped in with the New World Order angle when he had previously decided against it. For the New World Order fans, the Outsiders will always be just too sweet!

Tony Acero: Razor Ramon was one of the first wrestlers I saw on television and he reminded me especially of one of my distant cousins who had the same hair and mannerisms, down to the toothpick! I thought he always looked dirty but a ladder match with Shawn Michaels showed he had the skills and the charisma to be one of the greatest. Kevin Nash is a big man, that goes without saying, but in his heyday he was also more agile and showed something that not many his size had; talent. Both men had considerable talent that was only damaged by the fact that they played games backstage and Scott Hall opted for alcohol instead of training. While they weren’t the greatest in the ring, The Outsiders were probably more known for something else.

Backstage Politicians, Drunks, Egomaniacs, these are the words many people use to describe Kevin Nash and Scott Hall nowadays, and maybe even in their heyday, but no one can deny the impact that they had on the business as a whole. With one ingenious storyline’s beginning, the landscape of the wrestling business changed as a whole. The moment Scott Hall walked onto WCW television and pronounced an invasion, wrestling as a whole was shaken to its core and rebuilt from the ground up. Nash and Hall were the lighter fluid and flint to the fire that was the Hulk Hogan heel turn. To say that they are not important to the wrestling landscape would be a horrible misrepresentation of them. Personal demons aside, Hall and Nash captured the WCW Tag Team Titles 6 times before ultimately dissolving as a team. Of course, they’d make a short lived return in WWE with Hogan for one last hurrah as the now before heading over to TNA to use The Band as a tag team name. Although a majority of their pushes seemed to be more of a testament to their backstage maneuvers than talent in the ring, there’s no mistaking the impact that these two men have had on the business even to this day. Scott Hall was just featured on ESPN’s E:60 and Nash was last seen getting knocked on his ass by Triple H. It’s obvious that these two men continue to make an impact in the business, an impact that has lasted longer than any of us could have imagined.



Mike Campbell: One sort of thing there is no shortage of in tag team wrestling is “super teams” – combinations like Rock and Austin, Rock and Undertaker, Cena and Orton, etc. The next tag team on this list fits into that category. Two of the toughest wrestlers to lace up a pair of boots, and former rivals themselves, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams and Terry “Bamm Bamm” Gordy also known as “The Miracle Violence Connection.

Doc and Gordy were big rivals in the UWF in 1986-87 when Gordy was the UWF Champion and Doc wanted the title (Doc would eventually get the title, but not from Gordy directly). They were also on opposite sides of the War Games match during the 1989 Great American Bash PPV, which saw Doc show off his power by pressing Gordy several times in the air. This all led to Gordy proclaiming that Doc was the toughest opponent he’d ever faced, and Doc saying Gordy was the toughest that he’d ever faced. As Jesse Ventura put it, it was only natural that they should form a tag team.

They started teaming in All Japan in 1990, and quickly made an impact by winning the AJPW World Tag Titles in March of 1990. They’d have a stranglehold on the titles during the early part of the decade, holding them five times from 1990-93, as well as winning All Japan’s annual Real World Tag League Tournament in 1990 and 1991. They were also quite successful on the other side of the Pacific. Bill Watts was put in charge of WCW in 1992, and Watts was always fond of wrestlers who were legitimately tough, not to mention that Watts was also in charge of the UWF, where Doc and Gordy first crossed paths, so it made perfect sense that he brought them into WCW.

Doc and Gordy made a big impact in WCW right from the start. They were put into a feud with the Steiner Brothers, the top tag team in WCW at the time, and also a dream match of sorts for Japanese fans (Doc and Gordy were with All Japan, whilst the Steiners were with New Japan), and they were the main event of Beach Blast ’92 challenging for the WCW Tag Team Titles, and going to a thirty minute draw. Less than a week later, Doc and Gordy rebounded at Clash of Champions XIX in the NWA Tag Team Title Tournament, they literally plowed through Larry and Jeff O’Day, and then sat back and waited for the Steiners to win their match against the Puerto Rican Team (known only as El Boricua and Perez), but they were mysteriously attacked before the match, and Doc and Gordy gave a very memorable interview on the subject. This led Watts to order Doc and Gordy to face the Steiners right then, and Doc and Gordy were able to win.

The rest of the tournament commenced at Great American Bash ’92 with Doc and Gordy plowing through Ricky Steamboat and Nikita Koloff, and then Barry Windham and Dustin Rhodes to win the titles. Five days after that, they defeated the Steiners in the Omni in Atlanta to unify the WCW and NWA Tag Titles. Their reign wouldn’t last too terribly long, they lost the titles in October to Windham and Rhodes, and they soon left WCW to compete in All Japan full time. Sadly, the team would finish for good when Gordy over medicated himself on an airplane ride and was pronounced clinically dead twice, which was the end of his career in All Japan, and the end of Terry Gordy as one the all time great wrestlers. Doc and Gordy had a short reunion in 1996 in ECW, but they’re ECW run is best known for a tag match against the Eliminators, in which Saturn delivered an elbow from a scaffold to Gordy.

Sadly, Terry Gordy passed away in July of 2001, and Williams would come down with throat cancer and would pass away on 12/29/09. Their time may be over, but Doc and Gordy will long be remembered as one of the best, and toughest, tag teams of all time.

Shawn Lealos: Honestly, this is the second best tag team that Dr. Death Steve Williams was involved in. In 1985, Williams wrestled in Bill Watts’ Mid South Wrestling. While he was popular as a former member of the Oklahoma Sooners, he soon turned into a villain, teaming with the rugged Ted DiBiase. The two formed a spectacular tag team, Williams muscle and DiBiase’s heal tactics blending together perfectly. However, that awesome tag team lasted only one year before the UWF formed out of the Mid South’s promise and Williams became their champion.

Meanwhile, Bam Bam Terry Gordy was a member of the Freebirds, one of the greatest factions in all of professional wrestling. He would team with the flamboyant Michael Hayes or the dirty Buddy Jack Roberts and developed into a solid tag team star. Williams moved on to the NWA where he became part of Kevin Sullivan’s Varsity Club and soon moved on to All Japan where something special happened.

In 1990, All Japan chose to take the two American tough guys and put them into a tag team. Steve Williams and Terry Gordy became the Miracle Violence Connection and became the deadliest tag team in the world. They were never huge in the United States but who cares? Wrestling was bigger in Japan than it ever was in America, so their reign there was even more impressive. Japanese crowds know what is great and Miracle Violence was great.

They defeated Genichiro Tenryu and Stan Hansen to win the AJPW Unified World Tag Team Championship in 1990. They lost the belts but then won the World’s Strongest Tag Team League tournament, and with it, became World Tag Team Champions again. In 1991, they won the belts a third time, beating Stan Hansen and Dan Spivey for the belts. In 1991, they won their second consecutive World’s Strongest Tag Team League tournament and picked up the titles for a fourth time. In their third year in the company, the entered the tournament again, coming in second. The Miracle Violence Connection won their fifth and final Unified World Tag Team Title by defeating Mitsuharu Misawa and Toshiaki Kawada in 1993.

During this time, they also wanted to see what they could do in the United States. The two showed up in WCW in 1992 and quickly won the WCW tag team titles by beating the Steiner Brothers. They won the NWA tag team titles the next week by beating Dustin Rhodes and Barry Windham and it looked like they were in for a huge push. They held the belts for two months and quietly left WCW.

They only teamed one more time after they left All Japan. They teamed up in ECW to lose to the Eliminators. Terry Gordy died in 2001 and Steve Williams passed away in 2009. In their legacy, they left one of the roughest and toughest tag teams in wrestling history.


AS IT STANDS:

Come on back tomorrow as we unveil #15-#11…

– Listen to the latest edition of the 411 on Wrestling podcast! On the show, 411’s Larry Csonka is joined by co-host Andrew Critchell to discuss the latest edition of WWE Monday Night Raw, the Rock’s promo, super Cena, the MUPPETS, Halloween, the start of 411’s Top 25 Tag Teams of the last 25 years feature and more!

You can listen to the show on the player below, or you can download the show here.

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