Stuck in the Middle With You - Tag Team Turmoil
Submitted by Da J-Train on Sunday, August 22, 2004 at 3:50 AM EST
Welcome back to my column everyone. I haven’t been around because I have been gone to Jersey for the past weekend... and then the Warped Tour this Wednesday. All were fun and now I’m on the final stretch to going back to school next Sunday. Flogging Molly and the Vandals RULED
Oh, and by the way… if anyone wants another player for Yahoo Fantasy Football in a Live Draft Head to Head situation, I may be interested… email me the terms.
So what’s on my mind today? Since I have been gone, I am giving you a double issue column… which consists of a topic that will be longer than a normal column. It has to do with the Tag Team situation in the WWE. In the mean time, I will be also debuting a new section called Cheers and Jeers in place of the now retired Random Stops along the Way. I hope you like it
BUT FIRST...
Letters! I get Letters! I get sacks and sacks of Letters! LETTERS!!! That's right; it's time to answer some of my Love, Hate, Kind-Of-Care-For, and I-Only-Like-You-as-A-Friend-Mail… I’m hoping one of these is a publishers clearing house WINNER!
I have been getting mail for a possible future column from someone named Mikey who wants me to write about a theory of his. Look for that possibly soon.
Feedback O Rama
Letter 1 :
First let me just start off by saying your column is great! I look forward to it every week! My question is do you think Teddy Long will be a good general manager for smackdown? Also do you think Shane would have been more interesting if he got the GM position as far as entertainment wise and beleivability (i hope that's a word)? Keep up the good work!
Dunkamania
Dunk,
I like the thought of Teddy Long as a GM. He is a very charismatic person and I think he could work well in that position. I think after the last Kane angle, Shane McMahon has lost his hold on me.
Letter 2 :
Now, normally I wouldn't waste my time sending feedback to an Internet columnist but when I read your column this week I realized that this was a special case.
You are the worst columnist on LOP. Period.
Keep it up, son.
Sincerely,
Jordan
Jordan,
Well, that was quite blunt of you. I am the worst columnist on LOP? Well, that may be true, and I can’t argue with your opinion. So, since I have nothing to say to refute your claim, I figured I would just like to do some math.
The average male reads at a level of 300-350 words per minute, so for the basis of argument, let’s say you, Jordan, read at 325. Now, assuming you read my whole column last time, because don’t seem dumb enough to make such a claim without reading the whole thing, you read a total of 3,546 words. Now, using mathematics that means that it took you roughly 11 minutes to read my column
In the mean time, you wrote me feedback. The average male types about about 30 words per minute. Your feedback, including typing in my email address and the subject, was a total of 45 words. This means, it probably took you about 1 ½ minutes to type the feedback.
Let’s just tack on 2 ½ more minutes for website loading time or human error and that means one thing…
You lost 15 minutes of your life that you will never get back, courtesy of the worst columnist on LOP. Thanks for writing.
Letter 3 :
Hey,
I normally don't write to internet wrestling columnists--and I've been reading
columns since 1998--but your story about Perry Saturn makes the exception. Thank
you for putting that in your column. Reading about Saturn's heroism makes me
glad to be a human being; and likewise, your recognition of Saturn's heroism
makes me glad that there are others out there who know where to place ideals of
heroism and bravery.
Keep it real,
Nick
Nick,
Thanks for the kind words and I’m glad Saturn’s story inspired you. It is truly an inspirational story and I am glad it reached to at least one person.
Letter 4 :
I read your recent column as well as some of the comments people made about gay wrestlers. I happen to be a pro wrestler in North Carolina and I just wanted to say that I have never met another wrestler in the independent circuit that truly cared if you were gay or not. There are bound to be a few assholes here and there, but if you can get it done in the ring then no other wrestler has the right to question you. I would have no problem putting on a match with a gay wrestler. I'll respect him as much as he respects me and I think most of the guys feel the same. I enjoyed your material, thanks!
Rex
Rex,
It’s good to see the issue being discussed by someone who could potentially live it. Look, I said what I said because I believe it would be interesting. For those of you who don’t agree, fine. Right here, I have a pro wrestler who says it’s not that big of a deal. I’m not saying that his answer is the right one, but I want to use this opportunity to put the debate to rest. ALL Other comments on this issue can be brought up in the forums and I’ll discuss it when I have time.
Thanks, Rex, for clearing it up.
Letter 5 :
Hey J-Train;
I just read your column and thought I'd drop you a line to let you know that you did a bang up job. I've read some funny stuff on the main page and in the columns forum, but that Interview With Jesus was just downright hilarious... fake beard and all.
Looking forward to the next one.
Valleyboy
Valleyboy,
Thanks for the kind words. I am glad I could make you laugh. Also, tough break in this past COTM race. You have a solid column, so keep going at it. Good work in the forums and I am glad to have you as a reader… I hope to see new stuff soon from you. GO TO THE COLUMNS FORUM AND SEE VALLEYBOY TAKE ON SMACKDOWN.
Well, that’s that. We laughed, we cried… I’m watching the Usual Suspects. Enjoy the rest of the column.
Tag Team Turmoil
Ah yes, tag team wrestling. In the past, the WWF/E has had their share of excellent tag teams that have garnered excellent matches and great post-team singles success. In the late 80’s to early 90’s, the WWE touted many excellent tag teams such as Demolition, The Hart Foundation, The Legion of Doom, The Rockers, The Strike Force, The Powers of Pain, The Nasty Boys and other major names, many of which I have left off. If you think about those I left off and those I listed, you’ll be thinking of truly great teams who each can provide a memorable moment. Tag team wrestling in the WWF went a bit south in the mid 90’s, only to enter a renaissance period in the Late 90’s into the Early years of the New Millennium. This truly was the new breed of WWE tag teams… teams like The New Age Outlaws, The Dudley Boyz, The Hardy Boyz, Edge and Christian, Too Cool, the Rock and Sock Connection, and The Acolytes provided us all with a new life in the once thriving tag team division of the WWE. Despite the WWE’s newfound desire to put random big name stars together to win the tag titles… the real tag teams gave us thrilling TLC matches and fatal 4 ways to keep the division respectable.
Now, it seems to be going south again. In fact, it’s been that way for a number of years. The federation seemed to have almost gotten away from using real tag teams and just kept their tag division solely on one or two real tag teams and the rest just thrown together teams. It’s been that way since the Invasion really. If the WWE is lacking anything, a well defined tag team division is it. You can say what you want about how the cruiserweight division is not pushed… or how the Women’s division should get more time. It’s all B.S. because the tag team divisions on BOTH shows are pretty bad, there’s no denying it.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that both shows have a lot of potential in their tag divisions. Well, Smackdown more so than Raw, but they both have a fair amount of tag teams that given the right circumstances. It’s different now, because of the amount of real tag teams that are in the WWE, but aren’t given the proper pushes. It seems as if we have a powder keg of tag team talent in the WWE, but they still seem to favor the random wrestlers thrown together concept. On Smackdown, the ACTUAL tag teams we have are The Upstart (Kidman and London), The Dudley Boyz, The F.B.I, and The Basham Brothers. On Raw, we have La Resistance and The Superheroes (The Hurricane and Rosey). Now 6 teams is a great start to a well defined division, especially if it was a unified division. Not only that, we have the thrown together teams that seem to be mainstays, such as Billy Gunn and Hardcore Holly, Rhyno and Tajiri, and Jamie Noble and Chavo Guerrero.
But the point is, the WWE’s tag division doesn’t look like it’s going to be unified at any point, so that means the WWE is going to have to take the 4 teams on Smackdown and the 2 teams on Raw, and all of the supplemental teams, and try to build upon what they have… and in my opinion, I think they have decent foundations. In the mean time, the WWE needs to figure out how to build upon these foundations.
One way, of course, is completely supplemental from the actual wrestlers, and that’s the look and overall feeling of the tag team. If there is a tag team, the WWE officials should force the ring announcer and the commentators to refer to them first and foremost as their tag team name. I mean, once the match is in session and one member is in the ring, it should be okay to refer to them as their individual name, but before and after the match and in all of the areas outside of the match, the team should be referred to as their team name. In most instances, this happens… but sometimes, for example in the case of our current Smackdown tag team champions, it doesn’t happen, and sometimes it’s hard to deviate from being a real tag team and a thrown together team. I consider London and Kidman to be a real tag team, and according to the commentary of Michael Cole, so does he. However, in order to differentiate from being a thrown together team, they should begin to refer to Kidman and London as the name that Cole has referred to them as many times, The Upstart.
Think about it... back in any era of great tag team wrestling, this method was always the case. Demolition were announced as Demolition. Their entrance graphic said Demolition, and they were constantly referred to as Demolition. But in the match, who ever was in the ring was referred to as their individual name so that the crowd could not only cheer them on as a team, but as individuals. I just think that the name is an important factor in making a team a team… along with other factors… such as a tag team finisher, similar dress, similar wrestling styles maybe, and overall team cohesiveness, all of which may make or break the team’s stance as an actual tag team
Now that we have supplemental stuff out of the way, it’s now time to focus on the teams themselves and how to build upon the foundations that they have for each brand. How exactly can the WWE do this? In my opinion, there are three things that the WWE can do to help build up both tag divisions. It’s gonna take time and probably money, but who expects the WWE to rectify their situation over night? In my opinion, the three ways to rekindle the tag divisions is through Creation, Breeding from Within, and Dropping the Green.
1. Creation
Method number one in my way of getting the tag team division back on track is creation. Creation has to do with what the WWE does already, but augmenting the way in which they do it. Creation has to do with creating a tag team out of two wrestlers that they have nothing else to do with… but with a bit of a twist.
I am all for the WWE putting two wrestlers that aren’t doing anything. The way I see it, two wrestlers are better off being a tag team than sitting dormant in lower card hell. However, there are ways to go about doing it that the WWE just doesn’t work. They simply put two wrestlers together, shove them down our throats, and expect us to buy it… and that rarely all happens. That’s how they put many weak teams like, say, Billy and Chuck together. Sure, they had their small fan base, but when it was all said and done, they weren’t really a tag team… more like two guys that happened to be pushed.
What I think should happen in that situation is the WWE should take each wrestler off television for 6-8 weeks, and send them down to OVW, or another training facility to help train them in tag team wrestling. Not all single wrestlers are trained in that way, and I truly feel that tag team wrestling is a part of wrestling that needs to be trained along with any other forms. Charlie Haas trained as a tag team wrestler all throughout his development stint, until his brother’s death, and look how well he gelled with Shelton Benjamin, who also teamed frequently early on. In those 6-8 weeks, these wrestlers should go through a variable tag team wrestling boot camp, where they learn all that stuff. In the mean time, the 6-8 week cushion should allow fans to either begin to forget about the wrestler, or wonder where that wrestler is, which makes their return even more important
In the mean time, the moment the decision is made to create this tag team and to send them down to get crash course training, there should be a part of the creative team whose priority is to make this team happen. They should brainstorm possible gimmicks, angles, and tag team looks and names if necessary. If they use that 6-8 week cushion, they will be able to make the team look more polished and look less like a sloppily put together team. That way, in the end of 6-8 weeks, the team comes on with a better impact and has more of a chance of a success. I’m pretty sure the used a method like this with The Acolytes.
2. Bred from Within
My second option of restructuring the tag team divisions is called bred from within, and it’s simply a matter of training developmental tag teams and then debuting them as tag teams. After all, why would you train people as a tag team and not debut them as such? It always mystified me as to why they didn’t debut Tyson Tomko and Mordecai as a tag team considering they tagged together for so long in OVW as Bane and Seven. After all, I think it works. Take a look at the Basham Brothers. These two wrestled many times as a tag team for many years in OVW, and their chemistry has definitely transferred to their WWE team. Look past the fact that they may be boring… they are good tag team wrestlers… probably because they have done it so many times.
In my opinion, they tried this already and it failed twice for different reasons. One team was the Haas Brothers which didn’t work out because of the tragic death of Russ. The other team was 3 Minute Warning, which ended up being a failure. I think the fact that both teams were trained for so long as developmental wrestlers and they both didn’t pan out, set back the WWE’s use of the developmental system for tag teams, and the future of the tag team division for years to come.
But now, the WWE has many tag teams in OVW that should debut in the WWE as tag teams. I’m sure they would make fine singles competitors, but if they are succeeding in OVW with the fans and in matches as tag teams, it’s only logic that they be brought in as a tag team in the WWE. Right now, OVW has the Tag Team Troubleshooters (Brent Albright, who was on Raw a few weeks ago in the La Resistance 2 minute challenge, and Chris Masters), Adrenaline (Chris Cage, who was the other wrestler in the 2 minute challenge, and John “Tank” Toland), Hell’s Bells (Johnny Nitro and Joey Matthews), The Jersey Shore Crew (Nova, Aaron Stevens, and Danny Inferno), and Mac Johnson and Seth Skyfire., the OVW Southern Tag Team Champions Right there is a plethora of different talent that could be called up at any time or will be trained as tag teams… and that’s just the elite of the OVW tag teams. There’s also people like The Bell Brothers (Mark and Mike), and The Mondo Brothers (Mike and Mean Gene).
Long story short, the WWE should use at least some of these teams as teams in the WWE. In fact, to go further, the WWE should hire a tag team legend like Road Warrior Animal or Robert Gibson as a trainer for developmental tag teams. It would help, and it’s the logical thing to do. If anything, just to teach overall team cohesiveness and tag team maneuvers including double teams and finishers. Again, you can say what you want about The Bashams, but I think the nature of their double team moves and the fact that they use them so well solidifies them as a team.
An effective tag team finisher can really help your team make their mark, and you don't know how much I HATE it when a team uses one person's individual finisher as their team's finisher. I love seeing new tag team finishers as much as I love seeing regular new finishers. I guess I'm just a fan of innovation. I was pumped when I first saw La Resistance's move. Even the Ball and Gag is a double team finisher... it might not be effective, but hey. It frustrates me to see a team like, again, London and Kidman not have a tag team finisher. They are two creative guys... let them innovate!
But these moves and finishers need to be taught, and if a finisher or move is being invented, it needs to be practiced and coached by a person that spent their life executing similar moves. That's why I say the WWE should hire a tag team wrestling legend to go down to OVW and train these guys. It might just work.
3. Dropping the Green
Dropping the Green is also a simple concept. There are many independent tag teams out there that would give their left nuts to get a contract from the WWE. Many of these teams travel as teams and have their own gimmicks and personas that get over with the crowd, so there’s half the battle for the WWE creative team.
I just wish that the WWE would spend the money that they obviously have to try to rectify a lost art that is tag team wrestling. TNA teams like AMW or The Naturals would be great for the WWE, and if I were the WWE, I would try to woo them away from TNA with cash. I’m not trying to sabotage TNA here, but from a business standpoint, it’s the logical thing to do.
But past TNA, there are other teams that would be fine in the WWE that are currently cruising the independent circuits. To name a few… The Backseat Boyz (Trent Acid and Johnny Kashmere), the Ballard Brothers, Los Maximos, and Native Blood. Maybe they won’t all work in the WWE, it’s worth a shot.
To bring this who diatribe to a close, I feel that the WWE can improve its stance in the world of tag team wrestling, but they need to actually work at it. It’ll take time, like most things. Like I said, they have a foundation already… but now all they need to do is to build upon the foundation to try to make it work again. Who knows… if it works out, we may see a third coming of wrestling tag teams.
Cheers and Jeers
This is the newest part of my column… it’s a basic cheers and jeers section for what’s going on in wrestling today. They are going to be somewhat linked in subject too. I think I’m going to do 1 or 2 pairs a week, but since I skipped last week and it’s a double edition, I will do three pairs this week. It’s been done before, so let’s get to it.
- CHEERS to the WWE for turning Spike Dudley heel. I think it’s a good way to add depth to his character and breathe life into all 3 Dudleys. I never would have thought that a heel Spike would work as well as it has. He’s making me want to watch Smackdown.
- JEERS to the WWE for turning Randy Orton face so quickly. I would much rather him try it out as a heel for a little while and make the heel turn an eventual thing allowing HHH to do his movie and then perform his coup. I am all for Orton as a face champion. I just think it’s a smidge too early.
- CHEERS to the Best of 5 series for the United States title. It’ll give John Cena a chance to work with a seasoned wrestler over and over and we’ve seen what a good series can do for a career. Just ask Booker T, Chris Benoit, Edge, Christian, and Both Hardys
.
- JEERS to the Kane/Lita wedding. It’s a bad storyline that’s going way too far. Even if Lita turns heel, it won’t make me care about the angle at all. Sorry guys.
- CHEERS to TNA for advertising their training facility. More awareness causes more wrestlers to try out, which means more opportunities for up and coming stars.
- JEERS to the stupid contest the WWE has been putting on. The Diva Search is a waste of time and if it truly is a work to make Carmella win, I will be pissed. In the mean time, they are redoing Tough Enough… which they have tried three times and haven’t made a successful wrestler out of any of the three seasons yet. Allow the six winners to prove that they are worth a damn first, and then try again.
Well, it’s about that time again…
Free Flowing Hostility: Minor cultural items I am Bored With, Tired Of, and Pissed At.
1. Bob
You all know Bob. Bob from the Enzyte commercials. One of the unfunniest parts of television today. Honestly, who has watched those commercials and laughed? It’s not bad enough that it’s unfunny the first time you see it… then you see it about 65,495 more times during the course of a TV show. They run that damn commercial so much, I almost want to go blind. And seriously… in the event that you have a small penis, do you really get inspired to buy Enzyte by looking at this moron? Not only does he look like he never gets laid, it looks like he has to pay for it. At least get a porn star or something to endorse it… not someone who looks like he just got out of tea time at the pretentious dickheads convention.
2. The Olympics
Well… it’s not necessarily the Olympics that piss me off, far from it. I like the competitiveness of the events and I appreciate the life long struggle it was to get to the Olympics. It’s not a matter of me not rooting for my country, which I do.
I just don’t like that in the U.S., these athletes for 2-4 weeks only are touted as the greatest athletes in the country… and THEY ARE!! No doubt about it, they are. But it pisses me off that these people, who by all rights are the best athletes, are praised during the Olympics and a little while after, then are forgotten, unless, of course, they do something extraordinary. I’m willing to bet that at this time next month, we will rarely, if ever, hear the name Carly Patterson again… and it’s tragic because she is a great athlete, but she will be forgotten by many because she not in a mainstream sport in this country.
Want proof? Check this out. I was talking to my girlfriend who says she’s a big fan of the Olympics. I asked her simply who Rulon Gardner was, and she didn’t know. She didn’t remember until I told her. She forgot about him because the media decides to cover other athletes who are more interesting… but a Greco-Roman wrestler who pulled off one of the biggest upsets in recent Olympic history, beating someone who hasn’t lost in 13 years… is an afterthought. It’s just a little troubling to me that’s all.
I know that there are reasons these sports aren’t mainstream and there are reasons that non Olympic athletes get touted, but sometimes it just bothers me.
The Caboose
What did we learn today?
- We learned that the WWE could have a good chance to have a good tag team division if they really wanted to try at it.
- We learned what I am favor of in certain situations, and what I am not in Cheers and Jeers
- We learned math in Feedback O Rama
- We learned that Bob and Enzyte are extremely stupid… so stop the fucking ads.
That’s it for this week… Come back next Saturday for my next column and the Tuesday after that for my ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY COLUMN!!!!!!!!!!!! Where I will Interview a Legendary LOP Columnist. Who will it be? We’ll see soon….
----------------------------------------- Da J-Train -------------------------------------
merlinJAP@hotmail.com (If you email me, put FEEDBACK in the email subject or it will be deleted)
AIM: JPAW101…. Feel free to talk to me, I am friendly and give good hugs!
*NEW GALLERY* Must See Hot Shots of the TNA Knockouts CROSSING THE LINE!
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