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Submitted by Andy Savana on Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 6:31 PM EST
 Monologue of Enjoyment "Don't you find it kind of funny that since the year of 2005 there has been reports of Vince McMahon constantly taking more and more control of the company. Eventually the dude is going to have to be around the total control mark and I do not believe McMahon having 110% control of the WWE is possible. I'm just a punk teen making smartass comments about some news I been reading up on. Guess I'll move on to reading about Taker's latest antics with McCool and just why she is the Diva's champion when she is being built up so horribly. Sigh. At least tag team wrestling still has its dignity in terms of news. Mainly because no one bothers to ever make up bullshit about the tag division. Fair enough I would say because I'm here to write a whole columns worth about it."  Tag Team Wrestling on the Rise If you’ve read any of my mid-early columns you would know that one of my favorite aspects of wrestling Tag Team matches. They always add a new level of excitement to the match and can keep me on the edge of my seat. Usually you can tell what is about to happen in a match by simply watching the first five minutes but the WWE has recently been switching it up. Things are not as simple as the heels cheating their way to victory of the faces getting the lucky roll up. Tag Team wrestling has slowly been built up as a legit battle for about three months now. Priceless This is the sole tag team I would give credit to for jumpstarting the competition in the tag team ranks. Cody Rhodes would drop Hardcore Holly as his tag team partner and win the titles with a man he believed he could achieve more with, Ted DiBiase. That proved by its self that the division was depending on more than simply being teamed up and winning. It made it all seem like working in the tag ranks took strategy and skill to master. You never team up with some random person and assume good things will happen; you have to pick someone with great chemistry. Not only did Priceless add something deeper to the division by actually choosing who it is they wanted to perfect the skill with, but they then added something deeper to themselves as a team. They won the titles and immediately started getting airtime to talk trash about how they were better than some old legends that bring feelings of nostalgia to us. They pushed forward the feeling that the two of them could not be overcome by anyone else in the company, and for that, we loathed them. The team even managed to look like a true tag team in losing the titles. Even in a match where these two were booked to lose the title in an attempt to put heat between two feuding people, these two still managed to look as if they did not want to let go of their titles. Their title loss to Cena and Batista would have hurt any other tag team in the division but Priceless just had too much invested in them already. A week later the tag team proved that they wanted their titles back and rolled up John Cena for the win. This is when the tag division actually starts to gain momentum. As soon as they win the titles back from Cena and Batista, Cryme Tyme insert themselves into the mix and steal the titles from Dibiase and Rhodes. This is not the first time that the storyline had been played but the way it turned out was different for this time period. Priceless didn’t simply talk trash until they had some little blow-off match to decide who got to keep the titles but they went and got them back for themselves. The desire to have what proved they were the best made them even more legit. Things would surely get more exciting in the future. Cryme Tyme I credit Priceless for the uprising of the tag division but I give credit to Cryme Tyme for making tag team feuds all the more enjoyable to watch. I could easily dig the style that in which Priceless carries the tag team titles, but I love how Cryme Tyme manages to get the fans involved in tag team feuds. The running theme in the column is that tag team wrestling can be greatly improved by simply getting their characters involved in the storylines. Cryme Tyme has that fun gimmick that many people cannot help but sit back and enjoy a laugh as the two stereotypical black men beat up some white dudes and steal their things. It was, and still is, great entertainment. Their main problem for a time was that they were not able to capitalize on the connectivity to the fans and kept disappearing for weeks at a time. Their feud with Priceless would seemingly change all this. They have been entertaining the masses on a consistence base ever since they got involved with the tag champs. Though they came up short at Unforgiven and would fade out of the tag title hunt, they then decided to help get another team some TV time. They began online segment wars with Miz and Morrison that later progressed into a TV feud. Once again if this were a year ago, they would have had a match or two followed by one of the teams fading off of TV for about three months. Tag team wrestling is on the rise so they are still feuding to this day and leaving me unable to actually finish this particular section. Miz and Morrison These two almost tie together the tag team division for me. They almost add the intense realism that you have to know how your partner works in order to start gathering victories. While Cryme Tyme has been a team longer, they have not been in enough matches to warrant that they are experts. Miz and Morrision are built up as tag team masters because they’ve really showed that they have the chemistry as such. While being a heel tag team might make it easier to give off that illusion, face teams have managed to handle the formula. London and Kendrick really had this down during their underrated feud with Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch in 2007 for the tag titles. That was one of the only true tag team feuds from 2007. London and Kendrick really gave off the vibe that they were masters of the others mind and abilities and it showed. They had to go through much more such as learning when and how to work with their partners and make it seem like they actually were the underdogs. Miz and Morrison have a much more clear way to put off this illusion. They are heels and while any team can easily cheat; Miz and Morrison have taken it to a new level of cheating. When Miz and Morrison cheat their way to victory, they have everything planned three steps in advance and they always seem to come out on top. A great example would be when they took on Cryme Tyme on RAW just a couple of weeks ago. They got past that first level of cheating but Cryme Tyme, being the badasses that they are, managed to reverse the tide back and almost pick up the victory. Morrison had things thought out and delivered a sneaky kick to the back of Shads head. CM Punk and Kofi Kingston These two are not exactly a tag team but they are given off the right kind of vibe. What’s that vibe you might be asking? Well it is easily described as trying to work together to get their objectives achieved. CM Punk was cheating out of his title after Priceless attacked him from behind and let Orton knock him in the head. Kofi just likes sticking up for fools who try to pick fights with three guys. Thus, we have two guys trying to get justice for wrongs done against them that the fans really don’t approve of. This sounds like every other thrown together tag team but there is much more to them. The truth is that Kofi and Punk are just two people thrown together to act as a challenge towards the tag team belts. The truth is also that they are the most realistically thrown together random people that I have ever had the pleasure of viewing. In any match encounters that have involved Kofi and Punk against Priceless in whatever combination has ended with a Priceless victory. No, the ending to each match was not mind-blowing but Rhodes and Ted were actually the victors. It made sense that they be the winners of the match in my mind. Kofi and Punk are barely starting to tag together so their working together could probably still use some working on. Rhodes and Ted have the chemistry already and they have the better ability to work over the newer tag team. This is once again making wrestling seem more legit in that the new team has to learn the ways of tag team wrestling if they actually want to be able to capture some gold. The General Feel of Tag Team Wrestling On Smackdown and on RAW you can tell that the tag team division is getting much more attention that they were in 2007. Smackdowns tag division was rocking in 2006 while Kendrick and London were whooping some ass but that easily faded by the beginning of 2007 and stayed that way until MVP and Hardy captured the titles and actively started to defend them. Miz and Morrison brought the titles to prestige in a great feud involving Jimmy Wang Yang and Shannong Moore, but things looked kind of in a slum when they lost them to Curt and Zack. I thought they were about to fade into obscurity again. Things got better though when Carlito and Primo made their way towards gold and picked up the titles from Zack and Curt. I know you might be getting the feeling that I am contradicting myself by saying that The Colon’s were a new tag team but Zack and Curt were never really built up as that great of a tag team. You have to at least be built up as a good team to be seen as one. Now the Colon’s are starting to get the tag titles some decent TV time and I am left hoping that nothing changes in the near future. I’ve practically already gone over the general feel I get from the RAW tag team scene. It is getting deep and much more realistic. Both of these things really help me enjoy RAW since both of them are often what Wrestling is bashed for in the real world. Not that I would ever give a two thousand word speech over just why tag team wrestling is realistic Some Things to Look Out For in Tag Team Wrestling -The heels and how often they are actually going over on RAW. While this is usual, I am getting the major feeling that we could see a dominate Face team for the first time since the Hardy’z were tag champions and they only ever wrestled Cade and Murdoch. Holly and Rhodes don’t count since they lost every other week. They were on to something near the end when Holly and Rhodes were really trying their best to get on the same page and get some consecutive wins. It was traded in though for a much better team of Rhodes and Ted. The heel teams are really looking like they are shaping up the face teams to take control of the division for a couple of months. -Be on the lookout for the Smackdown tag team division because its about to take off without you. While it was formulaic for a little while, it has really got off on its own and started forming its own sides. The faces are actually getting over and forming a bond with the fans as the heels are floundering but at least making some sort of progress. I get this good feeling that a solid heel team will make its way over to Smackdown and get over massively. This will make the Colon’s seem like even better faces in the long run. -Finally, be on the look out for CM Punk and Kofi Kingston as a tag team. These two really make the fans stand on their feet as they challenge the evils of Priceless. I have no doubt in my mind that they will get a title shot at Survivors Series or probably at Armageddon. I doubt they will win because Priceless as long term champs is just something I can’t wish against.  That wraps up this edition of Savana’s Chamber of Pain, readers. I been really digging tag team wrestling as of late and could not pass up the opportunity to write about just what is going down with them. I read some really good columns in the forums part of this site so be sure to check those guys out. I will also use this paragraph to apologize to those who really disliked the fact that I wrote a column that was hardly about wrestling but more of a tribute to some misspelled pink medicine that helps with the runs. It was in bad taste to disgrace the main page with it and I promise never to do so. Until Next Time, Andy Savana Email:fireman10128@yahoo.com
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