Tag Team Wrestling

[Milkyway!]

Over my tenure here at WrestleZone I have seen way too many threads, comments, posts, etc about WWE not utilizing Tag Team Wrestling. So, I have decided to adress this matter.

So, the question arises, why is Tag Team Wrestling less prestigous these days, compared to back in the 90's? 80's? 70's?

Tag Team Wrestlers aren't as good as they used to be. Look at the teams you had in the 90's alone. We had Edge and Christian, Jeff and Matt, The Hart Foundation, The British Bulldogs, Harlem Heat, the Dudley's, and many more great wrestling teams. Today, we have a sucky Hart Foundation, Cryme Tyme, John Morrison and R-Turth, a cheap knockoff of Jerishow in Miz and Show, and yeah thats about it.

The teams simply aren't as good as they used to be.

Some may say well the WWE needs to develop more tag teams! No, they don't. You see, old school wrestlers used to be in charge of booking their own matches, feuds, etc...They had agents. They were in charge of themselves, and no one else.

Wrestlers today are company funded. With tag teams, its double the people you have to pay. While tag teams have double the probability of sucess (Seeing as how theres 4 people in the rings putting on a show instead of two) They also have double the probability to put fail. If you pay two guys to come in, draw seats, and they fail. You just wasted 100,000$ on two 6 month contracts. So it only makes sense that companies further singles compitition moreso than tag team compitition.

So yeah, there you have it. This is why Tag Team compitition is no longer promoted near as much as it used to be. Stop complaining.

 

[Lee]

Tag Team Wrestlers aren't as good as they used to be. Look at the teams you had in the 90's alone. We had Edge and Christian, Jeff and Matt, The Hart Foundation, The British Bulldogs, Harlem Heat, the Dudley's, and many more great wrestling teams. Today, we have a sucky Hart Foundation, Cryme Tyme, John Morrison and R-Turth, a cheap knockoff of Jerishow in Miz and Show, and yeah thats about it.

Bold were related (whetehr they're brothers/cousins/in laws who cares) italics are best mates before hand. That leaves The Dudley Boyz which actually came about as a throw away tag team in ECW as a member of the Dudley stable.

However lets get onto answer what I feel is the downfall of tag team wrestling:

1) Over saturation of the market. In the UK we had a weekly wrestling programme during the 70s/80s called world of wrestling. Everyone knows this as the show that Bulldog appeared when he was 15 years old. They had a policy for a long time where they would only have four tag team matches a year on the show. This was so it wouldn't ruin the mystique! Now we have on average two or three tag matches a show.

2) Break out stars. We had HBK > Jeanetty, Bulldog > Dynamite Kid, Bret > Anvil. You see where I'm going with that? It seems now tag teams are formed, a break out star appears, they separate and one vanishes. Why take your chances with that when you can be a single star and maybe get some tag matches.

3) Roster size. Back in the day it was a different division, now it's an easy way to get everyone on the same show. Think of it, Raw has about 35 roster memebers. Lets say we have 30 on every week, that would be fifteen matches to have there. YOU NEED TO HAVE A FEW TAG MATCHES. As we see a few every week it loses its oomph, imagine if they had three ladder matches a week, I mean come on!

 

[Tastycles]

Tag team wrestling is something that people miss the point of a lot of the time. It isn't there to be a draw, and it never has been, primarily because every single tag match is exactly the same, as it is the only semi believable way to book such a match. People loved the TLC team because they were doing something different.

Tag team wrestling has always just been a way to get guys that you want to stick around on the card, without over exposing them. If you look at the history of tag team wrestling from as far back as the 1950s, you will see a lot of the sorts of teams that we have today. Upper midcarders with not much to do. Sure, there are teams that come along every now and then that are kept around because they are better than the sum of their parts, teams like Cryme Tyme are today's Minnesota Wrecking Crew and New Age Outlaws, but for the most part, the interesting tag teams are few and far between.

The exception is during periods of wrestling boom. At those times, you tend to have the same few people in the main event, because they are making too much money to be replaced. When Edge and Christian, The Hardys and The Dudleys were in their elements, there were two WrestleManias headlined by Rock vs Austin. There was no reason to make new singles stars, so these teams were kept together for too long. The point of tag wrestling is to keep guys around that later you might want as singles stars. There are few if any teams where neither guy never had a singles push no matter how abortive at no point in their career.

The only other good period of tag wrestling was when Hogan and Flair were in their respective elements, in the late 80s and we got exactly the same situation arising. Wrestling booms mean guys stick around in tag teams longer, and they manage to find their niche a bit better, because they have longer to do it. However, as soon as the main event scene starts to lag, all of those teams you mentioned early on split up immediately. Tag team wrestling is a means to an end, and wrestling fans need to realise that it has always played second fiddle to singles competition, and probably always will.

 

[King Patrick Star]

I have the WrestleMania Anthology. I was watching WrestleMania V last night for some odd reason (I asked my daughter to pick a number between 1 to 21 and she picked 5) and I noticed something that I haven’t seen a long @$$ time. There were a total of 14 matches on the card and 5 of them were Tag Team matches. That’s 10 Tag Teams on one card!! Twin Towers, Rockers, Bushwhackers, Fabulous Rougeaus, Demolition, Powers Of Pain, Brain Busters, Strike Force, Hart Foundation, and Rhythm and Blues were the 10 teams. Even the Main Event of WM V was technically based on a Tag Team “Exploding”.

I think the reason why Tag Team Wrestling was “better” back then and not as good today, is because of the direction and focus on the WWE and the World Champ. The WWE is divided into two shows, therefore there are two “Top” Champions. That itself would bump the Tag Team Titles down a notch, not to mention the addition of the US Title (and the ECW Title for period of time). You see, back in the day, the Tag Titles were the 3rd most important Title in the Federation. Now, you have two World Titles and 2 Mid-Card Titles and technically, not enough Superstars. If the WWE were to retire the Big Gold Belt and the Red White and Blue Flag Belt, more focus could be put into the Tag division. It’s all relative.