When Was The WWE Tag Division At Its Best?

[The Brain]

We all love tag team wrestling, right? It seems every week there is a thread about the status and future of the tag division in the WWE. Since this is the Old School section let’s discuss tag teams of the past. I’d like to know when you thought the tag team division was the best in WWE history. I’m going to go as far back as 1987 for my discussion but if you can remember further back, by all means feel free to educate us. Here is a list of teams from different times in WWE. Of course some of these teams overlap into other years so keep that in mind if you’d like.

1987-1990

The Hart Foundation, The British Bulldogs, Demolition, Strike Force, The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers, The Rockers, The Islanders, The Brain Busters, The Killer Bees, The Young Stallions, The Powers of Pain, The Bushwhackers, The Bolsheviks, The Orient Express, Power & Glory

1991-1995

The Legion of Doom, The Nasty Boys, Money Inc., The Beverly Brothers, The Natural Disasters, The Steiner Brothers, The Headshrinkers, High Energy, The Smoking Gunns, Men On A Mission, The Heavenly Bodies

1996-1999

The New Age Outlaws, The Godwinns, The Headbangers, DOA, LOD 2000, The New BlackJacks, The New Midnight Express, The New Rockers, Various combinations of The Nation of Domination, Los Boricuas, and The Truth Commission

2000-2002

Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boys, The Dudley Boys, Too Cool, APA, The Holly Cousins, T&A, RTC, Billy & Chuck

I’m going to stop there because the brand extension years caused the tag teams to be split between Raw and Smackdown causing a shortage of team for both brands.

My pick for the best era of tag team wrestling is 1987-1990. You could look at it as a decision based on quantity but those were all pretty quality teams in that era. What I liked most about it was there were plenty of tag team feuds that didn’t involve the titles. It seems since 1996 if the titles weren’t involved the tag matches just didn’t matter much. The Hart Foundation vs. The Rougeau Brothers, British Bulldogs vs. Islanders, and Rockers vs. Brain Busters were all good tag team feuds that didn’t need the titles to be interesting. There were enough good teams to have multiple simultaneous feuds that people cared about. That doesn’t happen much anymore and hasn’t happened much since the early 90s.

To me the late 80s into 1990 seems like a rather obvious choice but I know the early 2000s was a hot time too with all those ladder matches going on. What’s your choice for the best tag team era in WWE?

 

[thechef]

i'd choose the early 90's with the steiners and Lod being the main reasons as the steiners especially Scott were fantastic at pumping up the crowd and Lod consistently put on good matches which i see as a compliment to the other teams to as they were very able in the ring to hand with lod and make the matches good consistently

 

[Headman]

88-89. The WWF had teams like Demolition, Hart Foundation, The Rockers, The Twin Towers, The Brain Busters, the Powers of Pain, Rhythm and Blues, the Rougeau Brothers, the Bushwackers and others. Tag team wrestling was actually an attraction back then. The 90's had some good teams but the late 80's is where it's at.

 

[jameswalsh292]

I only started to watch in 99 so I can only judge from then onwards. I have to admit that I loved tag team wrestling from 99-02. Apart from whatever Austin was doing Tag teams were my favourite part of the show. The stuff that e&c were doing with hardys and dudleys were quality. I have fond memories of all the teams you mentioned between 00-02, except for billy & chuck.

There were so many cool tag teams during this period. My favourites were NAO, Dudleys, APA, kane & xpac/taker and too cool with rikishi. Honorable mentions Funaki & takamichanoko (spelling?) and who remembers head cheese?

I still enjoy tag team wrestling but there is not enough teams with personality. The only teams with personality in the last 5-10 years even are the champs and the challengers. There needs to be a division for people to believe that the champs are actually the best team rather then the only team thats bothered to hold the titles. Although at the current moment we do have a lot of good teams on the roster, hopefully this will continue. Love Rhodes bros as champs.

 

[Blade]

Yeah, late 80's to early 90's is the best for me. The division was filled with great teams, but also a lot of teams that you feel could've had great singles careers, a handful of whom actually did. But it was also a time when the tag teams were at their most credible. I mean, the likes of the Hart Foundation and Demolition had great title reigns, but the division had individual talent like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels.

The mid-to-late 90's had some good reigns (the Smokin' Gunns especially are super underrated) and teams that were entertaining as long as they were in a couple, but there was very little potential there for breakout singles stars. Plus, that was the time when the trend of throwing together two singles wrestlers and hope they make a good team really became ridiculous. I mean, did they just spin the Raw Roulette wheel to see who Owen Hart would win the tag titles with next?

The Attitude Era, meanwhile, had plenty of teams with singles potential once they'd split up, as well as plenty of incredible matches and innovations. But the title reigns... Well, you can barely call them title reigns. There's such gems as: Edge and Christian winning the titles from the Hardyz, only to lose in the rematch a day later, only for the Hardyz to lose the titles to RTC two weeks later. What is the fucking point? People say when complaining about the modern product that not defending a title makes it lose its value, but newsflash, so does crowning new champions every week and a half.

So yeah, late 80's - early 90's all the way.

 

[harrythem]

"Here comes the Axe, Here comes the Smasher..we're Demolition, walking disaster."

That there starts the lyrics to the coolest wrestling theme song of all time. It belonged to, IMO, the best WWE tag team of all time. They were that tough (on screen) they quickly moved away from being seen as Road Warrior rip offs into being a great tag team. Then you look at the great list of teams they had to work with and, yeah, the late 80s was the best period for tag wrestling. The simple fact they had enough teams people cared about to have a 20 man Survivor Series match says how good tag wrestling was in the late 80s.

Demolition for HOF at WM30 please!

 

[Goldie]

Late 80s is my pick. The Bulldogs & Hart Foundation had great chemistry, both having the classic powerhouse (Davey, Neidhart) and Artist (Bret, Dynamite) combinations. Fans till discuss their matches to this very day.

Demolition may be criticsed for being LOD carbon copys... but in their day I think they were very convincing no-nonsense brawlers.
The Brainbusters (Tully, Arn), Strike Force (Tito, Martel) were very solid technical teams, and the Rockers are often remembered as being the best high flyers.
Even some of the less prominent teams such as the Killer Bees and the Rougeaus were still decent to watch.

The Attitude era ran in close.... Hardys, Dudleys, NAO... and my favourite from that era Edge & Christian .... but the roster in the late 80s was very solid.... and the fact that title switches were not manically booked back then, gave the belts more prestige.

 

[JoeyJoeJoe]

87 through 90 for me, and not just because of the great lineup of tag teams that the WWF had at the time, but also because you had an equally great selection of teams in NWA at the time. It inspired so many different What If kind of scenarios that I loved.

To this day, I would've loved to have seen a late 80s Hart Foundation/Midnight Express feud. But so much awesomeness would've been too much to put in one match, I think.

 

[Mustang Sally]

My pick for the best era of tag team wrestling is 1987-1990.

I'd agree with that. Until this list, I hadn't realized there were so many quality tag teams on the roster at one time. The difference between this era and most others is that the majority of teams on the list were true tag teams, not just two guys thrown together, whom the announcers would marvel over the teamwork being shown.

Plus, as I remember it, every single team on the list wasn't constantly fighting for the title. Sure, if your team was around long enough, they'd probably get title shots along the way, but most duos were simply occupying their place as performers on the roster, albeit ones that functioned as teams rather than individuals. In fact, when a member of a team would break out and have a singles match, it was an unusual occurrence; something that stood out in the usual scheme of things.

But, if nothing else, just the sheer number of established, recognized tag teams in that era is enough to feature the division more than it had even been before.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

But the era wasn't just the latter part of a decade...it basically was a decade... It ran from 1985 to 1994.

It started with Windham and Rotunda but more importantly, Sheik and Volkoff...

Today a "thrown together team" gets stick for being a waste of talent but when Sheik and Volkoff won those belts, he was barely a year removed from being the World champion... It was a big deal that Sheik held that title and the start of a division. New teams like Windham and Rotunda came in but they also disbanded a lot of the old style teams.. Fuji and Saito, Soul Patrol... cos Vince had gotten the idea from the Freebirds, who ironically failed their audition and lasted weeks... but also Road Warriors and to a lesser extent the Sheepherders that "branded teams" would be the way forward.

It went wrong with Windham and Rotunda, basically cos Windham got too big for his boots but the building blocks were already in place - in the wings were Brutus Beefacke (Hogan's BEST bud) and oh, Greg Valentine who had been IC champion just months earlier...

So straight away you have World champ and partner to "next big thing" to former IC champ and partner... the division was born and perhaps the true moment it changed was 88. When Demolition suddenly showed than not only could Vince borrow from others but on many levels do it better. Someone mentioned the music and it's a spot on observation. Rick Derringer was a massive part of Hogan's success (although ironically Windham and Rotunda had the theme first) and the Demoliton theme went beyond Iron Man or the generic rip off the Road Warriors used once Sabbath got wise. It was about them destroying people and they did just that. It was perhaps the first proper "theme tune" for wrestlers rather than a generic song that kinda fit them.

But what Vince had been doing was carefully building a roster, where he built teams they had gimmicks so polished that you instantly assumed they had been together forever. Demolition looked awesome the moment Bill Eadie and Darsow got together... of course there was Randy Colley in between, but it worked cos Eadie himself had been a main event star as Masked Superstar, indeed the original plan to have Hogan's spot... Darsow had been a major player in the NWA territories as Krusher Kruschev, but the masks and paint erased that history so they both had clean slates, and people didn't see Masked Machine etc...they saw Ax and Smash and these guys grew up together and kicked ass...Jacques and Raymond...brothers just as the Hart Foundation, Brothers in Law and the Bulldogs of course who were cousins...so that's 3 of the major teams with legit familial connections... Brilliant building blocks for a division, especially if they've all worked together for years!

The big steal was the Bulldogs, getting them from their cushy Japan deal in late 85 was massive as it allowed Vince to borrow those Stampede matches, which with the WWF spin knocked the socks off of everyone.. and their run with the titles albeit cut short was a major catalyst in that it made the WWF global., World of Sport would show Big Daddy 3 weeks out of 4 but the 4th week was WWF, and the first match I saw was Bulldogs v Hart Foundation.... bu they continued to steal talent at the right time... Powers of Pain, Sheepherders/Bushwhackers and then...The Rockers.

Don't let their jobber status in their early days fool you, The Rockers were a big deal when they were first signed, but they fell foul of someone cos they "partied too much" and Vince foresaw another Freebird fiasco so they got fired... sure they came back but they were at the bottom, not was intended when Vince had signed the then AWA World Champions but they added that depth to the roster... if the bottom was THAT good, then the top were better, he then did the same with Wayne Bloom and Mike Enos or as you know them the Beverly Brothers.

The key to the era is the depth... for every LOD there was a Killer Bees, for every British Bulldogs an Islanders team... Tag teams genuinely were on every rung of the totem from jobbers up to main event like the MegaPowers/MegaBucks/Twin Towers. Soon Andre The Giant was a tag champ, then Ted DiBiase but in teams that made sense, not like the random ones that would come to be the norm today.

The era died when the Steiners left... They were the last "hope" but of course were never signed to be a tag team for very long. Vince wanted Scott, quite rightly at the time but the brothers chose to stay together. Had they made a different call, Scott would have gotten Shawn Michaels push without question, possibly even Kevin Nash's. That Scott was given the TV title in a win over Rick Steamboat on his way out of WCW in a hidden classic proved as much...he was the Benoit of his day (in so many ways as it turns out...)


By the time 93-94 rolled around, Tag Teams were not so much passe but clearly a stepping stone. 4 of the most important guys of that tag team era had not only gone on to singles but won titles. Bret, Davey, Shawn and Jacques/Mountie. The genie was out the bottle that Tag Teaming was merely a hill in the road to being a singles star and the template has been there ever since. Diesel was the last nail in it - a manufactured champ, never a serious tag teamer yet held all the belts in a year and then did it while he had the World and Shawn the IC... death knell time. Men On A Mission really had no chance, nor did the Gunn's or BodyDonnas...

Today, I'd have more respect for The Shield if they didn't split as expected... If Roman Reigns says NO... I want to team with Rollins for years... it won't happen. but in that 85-94 period people would hitch their careers to another's for the long haul and Shawn and Bret and to a lesser extent Davey proved that it IS the right way to go.

 

[HBsam31]

For me it is easily 87-90. As a kid I loved Demolition, and I remember when they were having a feud with The Hart Foundation and the Rockers were involved too. There were so many good teams that there were tag feuds that weren't even for the title. I can't remember the WWE having that many good tag teams at one time since. The TLC era had some great teams, but it never matched up to 87-90 for me.