Tag Team Wrestling: The Lost Art

While I know that professional wrestling is a entertainment oriented business and that the various promotions have creative teams coming up with all the storylines, I still enjoy reporting and commenting on this business. In today's wrestling industry, true tag team wrestling is practically non existent.

Today, I want to speak on tag team wrestling. It is a lost art. Rarely do we see any great tag teams in the major wrestling promotions today. The two major promotions that I'm referring are World Wrestling Entertainment and Total Nonstop Action, or WWE and TNA respectively. There is another promotion called Ring of Honor or ROH, but all I know about that is what I read in the various wrestling rags such as Pro Wrestling Illustrated, Inside Wrestling or The Wrestler. Occassionally I will find a results post somewhere on the internet, but other than that, I don't know too much about that organization, so that is why I choose to omit them from my commentary.

I grew up watching some of the greatest Tag Teams in the history of the industry. The Rock and Roll Express, Fabulous Freebirds, The Blackjacks, The Midnight Express to name a few. Today we don't see a lot of great tag teams. There are a couple that are worth mentioning, both being in TNA at the moment: Team 3D and Beer Money Inc.

Recently in the WWE, we had a pretty good tag team of The Miz and John Morrison. When they first got together, I thought, this isn't going to work. But in the long run, they became one of the most dominant tag team in recent WWE memory. However, the WWE draft broke the pair up when The Miz was drafted to RAW and Morrison to Smackdown. The Miz is persuing a singles career currently while challenging John Cena, while Morrison is being transformed into a babyface is possibly a feud with Chris Jericho. Morrison is a former ECW heavyweight champion, but I think he really made his mark with Miz as Tag Team champions, not to mention that they hosted the very popular WWE.com exclusive show, The Dirt Sheet.

About a year or twp ago, there was Paul London and Brian Kendrick. They held one of the WWE tag championships for almost a year. Quite impressive in this era of wrestling. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but this team split up, London is no longer with the WWE and Kendrick has re-invented himself to become The Brian Kendrick.

What is tag team wrestling? It is a pair of wrestlers who may not have a lot in common, but together they gel and make a great team. They learn each other's habits, when one is setting up for a particular move or hold and can make an assist. If you're really good with each other, one can distract the referee while the other attacks their opponent. You can also double team your opponent which may enable you to garner a victory, not to mention a championship.

We've mentioned some of the tag teams that have formed good tag teams. The Road Warriors were quite possibly the greatest tag team of all time. Road Warrior Hawk and Animal were as close as brothers. Everywhere they went, championship gold seemed to find them. The Bladerunners, were good, but once they split, they became Sting and The Ultimate Warrior, two of the most entertaining wrestlers of the 90's and early 2000's.

For whatever reasoning, wrestling has allowed what I call true tag team wrestling to fall by the wayside. We still see tag matches, but usually they are throw togethers in order to put the spotlight on a couple of single competitors to promote their career or a upcoming PPV. But these are not true tag teams.

I'd like to see real tag team come back. Right now The Hart Dynasty are unified tag team champions of the WWE, recently won from ShowMiz. We had a mid card tag team in Cryme Tyme, but those two have been busted up and are pursuing singles action.

In closing, I suppose the best tag team division is currently with TNA. They have the previously mentioned Beer Money Inc. (Robert Roode and James Storm), The Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin), Team 3D (Bubba Ray and Devon Dudley, sorry, they are still the Dudley's to me.) Recently we have seen a new team formed, called Ink Inc., consisting of Shannon Moore and Jesse Neal. We have "The Band" back together, which is basically The Outsiders from the WCW/NWO days, Nash and Hall.

If TNA holds true, this could really be an exciting division. In my opinion they have already surpassed WWE in tag team material. Beer Money has the fan appeal and have been together the longest other than 3D I believe they could become one of the greats if given the right opportunity, while The British Invasion got a lot of heat, they are pretty much done now as well.. That's what you want as a promoter to get the fans behind their favorites and to "boo" the not so favorites.

Wrestling fans, let's keep our fingers crossed, that tag team wrestling will make a comeback and become as relevant as it was back in the days of The Road Warriors and Rock and Roll Express.