Hardtime #78: Tag Team Disarray
Submitted by RIPbossman on Friday, August 18, 2006 at 5:19 PM EST





Hardtime #78: Tag Team Disarray


Hey everyone. Just thought I would repost another of my old columns here on the lop main page. I know I haven't responded yet to any of the emails that I have received, but I've been pretty busy as of late getting ready for doing student teaching this fall.

If you have any feedback for this column, you may send it to david12345575@yahoo.com I enjoy interacting with my readers, and I promise to eventually respond to each and every piece of feedback that I get.
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The Rockers. The Hart Foundation. Demolition. The Legion Of Doom. Edge and Christian. The Hardy Boys. The Dudley Boys. These are all legendary tag teams (and I use the term “legendary” very loosely) of WWE’s past. Back in the eighties/early nineties and late nineties/early 00’s, WWE’s tag team division was one of the major staples of the product. It’s true that guys like Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and The Rock were the ones drawing in most of the business during these time periods. However, you can’t have a show with only a main event. People weren’t paying thirty dollars a month simply to see Stone Cold Steve Austin wrestle The Undertaker, as good as they were. They also wanted to see the under card perform, and a big part of the under card was in fact the tag team division. Sure, not all tag teams were legendary, such as The New Rockers and Techno Team 2000 (remember them?). But there were still quite a number of legendary tag teams that helped to draw in crowds over the years.

Now a days, the WWE only has about two consistent tag teams on each brand. Brian Kendrick and Paul London are one team on Smackdown, and Michelle McCool's new team are the other. Certain members of the Spirit Squad form one tag team on Raw, and I don’t even know of any other tag teams on the red brand, to be honest (I don’t have cable). In all my years of watching WWE, I have never seen its tag team division is such disarray as it is in right now. This begs the question, just what exactly has happened to the WWE tag team division over the years? Why is it that legendary teams like The New Age Outlaws used to dominate the under card, but today there are only a few real tag teams to watch between both brands? Why is it that the WWE used to be flooded with great tag teams, but today all the good tag teams are missing in action?

Perhaps it has something to do with the main event scene not being loaded with great mega stars, which in turn causes WWE management to split up several tag teams with the hopes of finding another main event player for the product. Could the reason that the tag team division is in shambles on each brand be because the WWE currently doesn’t have any huge stars like The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin? I’m not saying that the WWE main event scene has to be completely loaded with mega stars of the industry in order for the tag team division to thrive. But still, this theory is saying that the more loaded the main event scene is, the more likely it is the tag team division will thrive. Could this really be the answer? Let’s take a closer look at the matter.

Back during the first golden age of the WWE’s tag team division, the WWE was loaded with great main eventers and very good upper mid carders. Jake “The Snake’ Roberts, Big John Stud, Andre The Giant, Macho Man Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Sid Justice, the Ultimate Warrior, the Undertaker, Roddy Piper, Paul Orndorf, and of course Hulk Hogan were all loading the WWE’s main event/upper mid card scene. (They weren’t all there at the same time, but they were there at one point or another during the WWE’s tag team golden age.) It’s been commonly said that World Wrestling Entertainment management will try to split up already established tag teams in hopes that one of the members can make it big for them. But back then, with all of the stars that the WWE already had, did they really need to have any more main eventers? Did they really have to take a gamble by breaking up an established tag team in hopes to gain another main eventer? No, they did not.

But when the WWE lost most of it’s mega stars, most notably Savage, Flair, Sid, Warrior, and Hogan, it’s tag team division began to go down the tubes. Don’t get me wrong, it was ok, but nothing compares with the WWE tag team era of the eighties/early nineties except for the tag team era of the late nineties/early 00’s. There were fewer tag teams, and the fact that Barry Horrowitz and Aldo Montoya were tagging together on a regular basis really showed just how far the tag team division had sunk. Is it any coincidence then that the tag team division got a lot stronger once guys like The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin started coming into their own and dominating the main event scene? I don’t think so.

When you’re strong at the top, there will be a domino effect that goes all the way down the card where good guys who are deserving of main event spots are wrestling in the under card simply because the best of the best is ahead of them. When guys like Triple H, Mick Foley, Kane, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker, and the aforementioned Steve Austin and The Rock are at the top of the main event scene, it’s hard for any newer stars to break into the top level, as deserving as they might be. That’s why stars such as Edge are only now getting their main event pushes, simply because there are not many real big stars around. And of course, when you don’t have a strong upper card, the lower card need to have wrestlers move on up to the main event scene and try to see if they can become the next big thing. And of course, often times that will require splitting up already established tag teams

Perhaps this is the real reason behind the WWE tag team division being in such a mess right now. Maybe it all has to do with the lack of big name talent in the World Wrestling Entertainment product right now, and they are forced to move should be lower card talent up into the upper card, often times meaning that lower card tag teams will have to be broken up. Or maybe, just maybe, this is not the reason at all. Maybe it all has to do with something else entirely. Does it all have to do with the roster split simply not allowing for a complete, strong tag team division? Let’s see if this is indeed the answer that we are all looking for.

Before the brand split, WWE had several hours of new wrestling programming shown on television. There was Raw and Smackdown, which was 2 hours each, and then Heat , which was another hour of new wrestling footage for WWE. When you consider that all of this was dedicated towards one whole roster, five hours (or more, because I don’t remember ALL the WWE programming back then) was plenty of time to give deserving wrestlers time to shine. Teams like Edge and Christian, The Dudley Boys, The Hardy Boys, The Acolytes, the on and off tag team of Kane and The Undertaker, The New Age Outlaws, and so forth were all given their appropriate time to shine. Besides Kane and The Undertaker, the other 4 teams mentioned were probably the 4 biggest regular tag teams of the Attitude Era, with the addition of a few other tag teams thrown in as well.

But today, there are really only 2 hours of television time a week (not many people watch Velocity or Heat anymore since it only gets broadcasted on the internet now) for each tag division to shine. IS two hours a week really enough time for the tag team division to do well? Let’s see. Back in the mid nineties, there was basically only 2 hours a week for the tag team division to be shown, (Monday Night Raw and Superstars) but even then, the division was not all that great. Back in the early nineties, there was Prime Time Wrestling, Superstars, Challenge, and All American Wrestling. That was plenty of time to showcase a lot of superstars, including tag teams. And is it any coincidence that the tag team era was in a golden age back then? I think not.

Also because of the roster split is the fact that the tag team division through out all of WWE has been divided in two. With the current WWE product, there is only enough room for so many tag teams to be formed and get enough air time, probably due to the first argument I outlined. But when you consider that the division is being split into two, it is going to be twice as hard to build a credible tag team division, not once, but twice. That is clearly ridiculous that the tag teams are distributed across BOTH brands. Good tag teams are something that that just can’t be thrown together on short notice. Both wrestlers have to have good chemistry with each other, and work well in tag team matches. Another obvious reason is that it takes two people to form a tag team, meaning that there can only be so much room for tag teams when you want to have a good, solid singles division.

Take the WWE Women’s division for instance. Do they split up this division across both brands? No, they do not. Why? Simply because there aren’t enough women to distribute across both brands and have a solid women’s division on each brand. If they did that, they would have two watered down versions of the women’s division. And no one wants that. The same goes for the Cruiserweight Division. If they split that division up across both Raw and Smackdown, there would be two watered down versions of the Cruiserweight Division. But alas, this is what they have done with the tag team division, and it has lead to two diluted versions of the same division. It would be ridiculous if they did that with the tag team division, but never the less, that is indeed what they have done to it.

Or perhaps the reason that this tag team era of WWE is in shambles is due to something else entirely. Maybe what I just outlined is not the real reason at all. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that WWE’s fans are simply outgrowing tag teams altogether? Perhaps this is all due to simple evolution of the WWE product, due to the WWE listening to fans and thinking they know what they want? Let’s take a closer look at the matter, shall we?

Evolution is a normal part of every industry. Pepsi evolved from putting their product into glass bottles to putting them into cans and plastic bottles. They changed their logo from having a white background to having a blue background. Coca Cola changed their label to say “Coca Cola Classic”, and are only keeping the rest of their logo the same to cash in on nostalgia, which clearly a different reason for having the label then when they first developed it. The band Metallica evolved from a hard, heavy metal band designed to entertain the cult like heavy metal fans to simply being more of a hard rock/ light metal band that could be considered trendy and acceptable to be listened to by the general public.

Through evolution, things change. New things get phased in, and old things get phased out. If things stayed the same forever, people would eventually get tired of it, regardless of what it is. Professional wrestling is no exception to this. Back in the 80’s, the WWE was a product that was oriented towards families. Then it became oriented towards mainly children with the New Generation. Then with the additions of such characters as Sunny, Sable, and Marlena, it became more teenage/adult oriented. Then with the Attitude Era, it became full blown TV-14 entertainment. Glorified comic book characters such as Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior were phased out, and in their place were edgier characters such as The Rock, Mankind, and Stone Cold Steve Austin. It’s just like you don’t see much hardcore wrestling anymore in WWE. The fans have evolved to enjoy regular, standard matches more than people swinging cookie sheets at each other over and over again.

This could very possibly be what is happening with tag team wrestling. I understand that tag team wrestling is still prominent in such organizations as TNA, but lets face it, WWE is the one who sets the trends in the wrestling industry (most of the time). People probably just tired of seeing the same old same old tag team matches over and over again, and WWE realizes this. I mean, the WWE tag team matches are exact replicas pf each other except for the endings. There will be some back and forth action, with one of the face members playing the face in peril for a while, and then they make a hot tag to come back, and from there an ending evolves. Seriously, it’s like that every time.

It might also be true that fans just don’t like tag teams as much as they do singles wrestlers, both for their characters and for their wrestling styles. People probably realized this over the years that tag team wrestling is holding back their enjoyment of the product when singles wrestlers hold more potential for more entertainment. I’m not saying that ALL tag teams are boring, but rather that singles wrestlers hold more potential for more enjoyment of the product for most fans. There have been very few tag teams that have ever reached main event status in professional wrestling. This is because the promoters know that the singles stars can usually deliver. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather watch MNM vs. The Mexicools than Orlando Jordan vs. Tyson Tomko, but for most wrestlers, I’d rather see them in singles matches.

Now we get to the part of the column that I’ve been leaving out from the columns that follow this standard Hardtime formula. I have outlined several POSSIBLE reasons why WWE’s tag team division is in the toilet, but I never told you which one of them I agree with. I actually think it is a combination of the first two arguments, with the main event scene not being loaded with enough big stars, but also because of the roster split. Most people seem to realize that the more big stars you have, the more other wrestlers seem to be held back. But most people don’t seem to realize WHEN it happens. That is, they don’t realize in the present when it happens, they only see it in hindsight. As far as the brand split holding back tag teams, I strongly feel that splitting up the tag team division is as stupid as it would be if they split up the women’s division or the cruiserweight division. There aren’t enough women or cruiser weights to establish two sets of divisions, just as there aren’t enough tag teams to separate them onto two different brands.

The WWE tag team division certainly has gone down the drain as of late. If you were to call this era one of the golden eras of WWE tag teams, you’d certainly be lying to yourself. So then, why exactly is it that this current tag team era sucks so bad? It could possibly be that the WWE main event scene isn’t loaded with big stars, and the stronger the main event scene, the stronger the tag team division is. Or it could possibly be because the roster split has severely hurt tag teams by splitting them up between two brands, and by not allowing them to have enough air time to be showcased. Or it could possibly be because the industry is simply evolving past tag teams, seeing as it is more prevalent than ever that singles wrestlers are usually more entertaining than tag teams. I personally think that it is due to the first two arguments outlined in this column, but regardless of my opinion, there’s no denying that the WWE tag team division right now is in disarray.
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I hope you all enjoyed that. Once again, if you have any feedback for this column you may send it to david12345575@yahoo.com Remember, I promise to respond to everyone who sends me feedback.








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