Ways the WWE could save tag team wrestling right now

Lets be honest, the tag team division in the WWE right now is a complete joke! Last night at the MITB payperview, they had the tag team champions losing in a dark, non-title match prior to the PPV. It is ridiculous!

Why is the division dead? I feel it is simply b/c there are no real teams anymore in the WWE. Why is this? I'm not sure. Part of it is I feel is the way they have marketed the business in that it is an everyman for himself business now, and thus hard for individuals to stay tied down with another person without wanting to pursue their own singles career. Another thing may be that wrestlers no longer want to stay with teams for long periods of time. Perhaps Vince McMahon himself is no longer a fan of tag team wrestling. Maybe I'm in the minority and fans no longer want to see the tag division. Whatever the case maybe, the division is more or less dead.

The good news for fans of tag team wrestling, like myself, is that there is hope for bringing the division back, if the WWE wishes to do so. It was recently suggested on the radio show "Right After Wrestling" that the Kings of Wrestling from the Ring of Honor promotion be brought in to help save the division. Now having looked up some youtube clips of this team, let me tell you that this team has the serious potential to be the greatest of all time! I've honestly never seen a team that utilizes moves together like they do. However, if they were to join the WWE, I fear they may not last as a team. In part b/c of what one of them said during an interview with Right After Wrestling, saying although he would love to come as a team, he feels they could each make it individually. Also, I'm not sure Vince would let them stay together as a team. And the last flaw is that as of now, there is no real division to compete with them and thus keep the interest in their team alive.

This is why I have come up with a plan that I feel could help save the tag team division without having to bring in the Kings of Wrestling, although I do hope they do sign with the WWE someday! First off the WWE needs to push, re-unite, and keep together the following teams whom are already in the WWE:

The Usos are finally getting pushed as an actual team, which is one of the few things the WWE had done with the tag division in years! Keep doing what your doing with them.

Re-unite the Hart Dynasty. What are they doing now as singles competitors? Nothing, exactly! This was a good team that seemed to work well together. Had great potential till Vince decided to split them. They are clearly a better team then they are singles competitors. have Brett Hart come one and re-unite them or something.

Keep Legacy going as a team instead of two individual competitors whom are just friends. Debiase and Rhodes had a nice run, and have potential for another. Neither have really excelled as singles competitors, and like the Hart Dynasty, seem to do better as a tag team.

Santino Marella and Vladimir Kozlov. I don't love this team, they don't really feel like an actual team. However the WWE has kept them together consistently for approx a year now. Teams are more like teams if they have matching out fits and/or have a team name, which this team does neither. Yet the given the weak nature of the tag division at this time, I feel in order to help get things going, it is important to keep this team together and have them be part of the mix.

There we have 4 established teams, which is a good start, but now enough to keep an entire division together. I have no problem with putting two singles competitors together and making them a team, but if your going to do that, MAKE THEM AN ACTUAL TEAM! Do not just make it two borderline "jobbers" thrown together like the team the WWE has representing the company as the champions right now. This team I'm going to throw at you is pretty much out of no where, but I think has serious potential to be a really great team:

The Miz and Jack Swagger. Right off the bat I see some potential issues, don't get me wrong. I realize that the Miz has already been a TT champ with two different previous partners. I know that people might initially see this as just 2 singles thrown together again. To me, I see two great performers, whom have already been world champion in the singles division, and seem to have reached the pinnacle of their singles careers. To me, it reminds me of the Iron Sheik teaming with Nikoli Volkoff, which worked great. Now I don't think you can just throw them into a title match right off the bat. I think they need to go on a win streak and then eventually compete for the titles. You could even throw in Micheal Cole as a manager type. You could maybe even give them a team name like Team Awesome, or the Awesome Athletes, ect.

Another way a team like Miz and Swagger get a good push, and would really help the tag division is to hold a tag team tournament. Strip the two chumps that have the belts now of the titles (make up some excuse: injury, losing too many non-title matches, being associated with CM Punk, ect) and have a tournament for the vacant titles. I've already listed 5 teams that could be in the tournament, and you could for now throw in 3 sort of make shift teams to fill in the rest of the field (I'm sure the Bushwhackers are available for a first round quicky.) Have the semi-finals be the Usos, Hart Dynasty, Legacy, and the Awesome Athletes. Then go from there. You could have various story lines and rivalries branch off from there.

I do think the WWE needs for then 5 established teams to totally bring back the division, but this would be a good start. Its just a matter of if the WWE has any desire to do so!

Thanks for reading, would love to hear what you think of my proposal and would like to hear you thoughts.

The 6 tag teams that got most SCREWED.

This blog is a simple one. It is referring to the 6 tag teams that I feel got screwed by the industry in one way or another. Reasons for making this list could be not getting properly pushed by the industry, never getting a title reign, having a title reign taken away, ect. I originally had this be a 5 team list, but why I added a sixth one will be quickly explained.

*A disclaimer I must put on almost all my blogs. I personally feel that tag team wrestling was at its pinnacle in the 80's and 90's, with some good stuff in the early 2000's. Thus I will rarely have or talk about any teams from before the 80's, with all due respect to those teams, I do not feel true tag team wrestling in the form of having actual teams instead of singles competitors get together and make a team started till this period.

6. The Rockers:

As you read my various blogs in the upcoming weeks and months, I'm going to sound like a hypocrite when it comes to the Rockers. This is a good reason for this, well maybe not a good reason, but I have a reason. It is b/c I do not feel that the Rockers were all that good of a team. It drives me crazy whenever I see a blog listing top tag teams of all time that have the Rockers in the top 10! Later on I will be making my own list, and I'm not sure if I'd even have them in my top 50! Yet whenever I watch an old WWF paper view, and see the Rockers fighting some other jobber team, I usually watch it and don't fast forward past it. They were entertaining and did serve a purpose in the business and were an excellent opener. So why did I add a 6th spot to most screwed on my list just for a team I just bashed? Simply for one reason. As I was doing some research for other blogs, I discovered that the Rockers in fact at one time did win the WWF tag team titles. They defeated the Hart Foundation. Furthermore there is video evidence of them doing so.

Furthermore, the Rockers actually defending their titles a couple of days later (successfully) against Power and Glory. Yet you will not ever find any record of this in the WWF record books. Why? Honestly no one seems to know. For whatever reason, the WWF at the time decided to take the belts away from them and give it back to the Hart Foundation and simply act like it never happened. Although I personally don't believe the Rockers should have ever been champions, I think it is much more of a crime that they were the champs and the WWF did not even let them loose their belts in the ring and simply tried to erase it from every one's memory. Thus I had to put the Rockers on my list.

5. The Amazing French Canadians:

Now let me make this clear, I'm only referring to this team in their WCW days, not at all about their Quebeccer WWF days. Here you have a former 3 time world champion team coming from the WWF to the WCW. WCW did many things right with this team: they gave them a much better gimmick, way improved ring attire, and a slightly better manager. The only thing they did not do is utilize them properly. Rather then pushing a team that performed well in and out of the ring and were former 3 time champions, they were reduced to mid card status at best. They did pit them a some high profile fueds against Harlem Heat, but that rivalry was mostly centered around their managers rather then the teams. The worst was when they reduced them down to having a feud with High Voltage (a jobber team), and actually lost to them once, and in another occasion the match was interrupted by the Nasty Boys where the AFCanadians ran from the Nasty Boys which is ridiculous since they were a much superior team to the Nasties.

4. The Bolsheviks:

I in no way think that the Bolsheviks deserved to have a title run. However, I do feel they should have gotten a much better push then what they did. You have a team consisting of future WWE hall of famer Nikolai Volkoff and a former AWA tag team champion in Boris Zhukov teaming up, and they are pretty much reduced to jobber status? You have an all Soviet team during the pinnacle of the Cold War and your using them to put over teams like the Bushwhackers and the Powers of Pain? You embarrass them by having them lose in record time at Wrestlemania VI? You have an all Soviet team and you put them in a feud against a team from New Zealand? I honestly thought for awhile that they purhaps had never won a match against an actual tag team. Then I finally found this video of them defeating the Killer Bees. Other then this match, and some wins against some "jobber" teams, I do not believe they ever won any other matches. If someone has a record of them actually winning a match against a legit team, please let me know. This is a shame and why they made my list. They should have at least been able to beat some of the mid-card teams on occasion. Maybe even pull off an upset over a top notch team now and then to help legitimize themselves rather then being labeled the worst tag team by PWI in 1988. The WWF really missed out on a golden opportunity with this team.

3. The Boddydonnas

I know I know, how on earth can you put the Boddydonnas at #3! I will admit that putting a team that was only around for about 5 months and did have a title run this high on a list for teams that got screwed seems hard to swallow. I have them on my list in part b/c they were only around for 5 months. I thought this was a golden opportunity for the WWF to build up a really great heel tag team. You had two guys with bleached hair telling everyone how out of shape they were, and they had great talent. The WWF made a number of huge mistakes with this team in my opinion. The first off was that they made the team more about the manager then the team themselves. I get why Sunny got such a big push, but the team should not of lived and died by her. Bringing in another heel manager would have done wonders for this team (if only hey had been around when Bobby the Brain was around, can you imagine.)

The Boddydonnas also go screwed in their title reign. First off they only got one title reign, I thought they should have been multitple time champions, especially when you look at whom the competition was at the time. Also, they did not even get the opportunity to win the titles during the actual Wrestlemania paper view! They were pushed down to the "pre-show" leading up to Wrestlemania XII. Now had this been a jam packed Wrestlemania, then maybe I could let this slide. But they got bumped on what is easily considered the WORST Wrestlemania of all time. An absolute shame for the tag team title match to not be on the regular Wrestlemania card. I realize Skip suffered from an injury which is part of the reason why the team disbanded. However I feel that this could have been used as an opportunity for the team to return either on their own, or with a new manager and reclaim the titles. Instead we got the Godwins/Smoking Guns feud- how exciting.

2. The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers

Here we have the Fabulous Rougeau Brothers (FRB), a team that was AWESOME on the microphone, were extremely gifted in the ring, and had a manager in Jimmy Hart whom lead Money Inc, The Natural Disasters, the Heart Foundation, the Nasty Boys, and the Dream Team to tag team titles. Yet by the time I started watching wrestling, the FRB had been reduced to either competing against PPV opening darlings the Rockers or losing to borderline jobbers the Rockers. The WWF had this team lose to such horrible tag teams as the Conquistadors for hell sakes. Granted as a kid I loved watching them loose to the Bushwhackers, that how good they were at making themselves seem like heels. Yet for some reason the WWF never really let this team have a legit push in the second half of their careers.

The only reason why they are not higher on my list is that early in their career in the WWF they did get a bit of a push. However even during this breif "push" they got screwed in that they actually won the WWF tag team titles from the Hart Foundation on August 10, 1987! Unlike the Rockers, they were stripped of the titles for using a foriegn object in what appears to be part of the script. None the less, their title win is not recognized by the WWF, which is yet another example of how they got screwed and thus is why they are #2 on my list!

1. The Faces of Fear

When I was first making this list, I originally had the Faces of Fear barely making it. Then the more and more I thought about it, the higher and higher they climbed. This team was billed as two of the most dominant forces in WCW at the time. In fact Meng was pushed as perhaps the most feared man in WCW, was given a winning streak, and a legit shot at ending Bill Goldberg's winning streak. Yet for as dominant as these men were, they never won the tag team titles. Now here is what really gets under my skin and is why I feel the Faces of Fear were my number team that got screwed. Some teams do not get a title run due to a team at that time having a long run, such as Demolition or the New Age Outlaws. This happens, it sucks for the other teams at the time, but its part of the business. Well this is NOT what happened to the Faces of Fear. During their time in WCW, Harlem Heat won the belts 10 times. This means they loss the belts 10 times. They lost the belts to teams such as Barry and Kendall Windham, Bunkhouse Buck and Dirty Dick Slater, and the real icing on the cake: Public Enemy. These title runs often were only for a few days, sometimes even only a day as Harlem Heat went back and forth between title runs. It is ridiculous that during all this title changing that WCW could not give the Faces of Fear at least one title run! Even if it had been for only a week! Especially when they gave a team like Public Enemy the titles! Absolutely ridiculous and why the Faces of Fear make my list!

Thanks for reading, would love to hear what you guys think.

Why I started this blog

I can remember when I first became a wrestling fan. I was about 4 or 5, staying up late watching my first Saturday Nights Main Event. Now don't get me wrong, I was a Hulkamaniac, a Warrior, a fan of Jake the Snake, Andre the Giant, and Macho Man just to name a few. But what I remember most, what really drew me to "sport" was the tag team element. The first match I remember watching was a best 2 out of 3 falls contest between teh Heart Foundation and the British Bulldogs, in which the Bulldogs won the match but not the titles due to it ending in a DQ (something that was very hard for a little boy to understand) but I loved it anyhow!

The problem is now a days tag team wrestling is all but dead. It has been reduced to having two competitors whom in any other circumstance would be jobbers holding the title. Its both ridiculous and sad. I rarely watch wrestling anymore, and this is a big part of it. I'm hopeful that someday the tag division will return, but I fear that it may have seen its best days.

Thus I have created this blog in order to help save the memory of tag team wrestling. I will be posting different blogs on various subjects such as best tag team of all time, most under utilized or jobbed tag team, and best way to save the division, just to name a few. I hope you enjoy, and look forward to your feedback.