Boy, I sure know how to pick ’em, don’t I? After spending most of my last column singing the praises of Luther Reigns, even going so far as to declare him the Next Big Thing, what happens…WWE only goes and bloody releases him! Sorry if I jinxed your career there, Luther. Who knows, maybe he can get booked in Japan and become the next Stan Hansen. We can only hope – all the best, big guy. Special thanks goes to my good bud, Graham Wise for pointing out just how piss-poor my precognitive powers are in a text message sent the very second he discovered the news.
Daniel Peck also put a grin on my face with the following brief missive…
“Nice call on Reigns…He’s set for big things, all right
@ Home Depot”
You know, it’s worth being a crap wrestling pundit, when you get gags like that in you Inbox.
Chad Smith also had something to say about my column, though he was more concerned with my literary abilities rather than the content of the article itself…
“Whilst I like your column, I think you should maybe get a thesaurus. The article was good, whilst at the same time, seemed to be repeated a word. I can’t quite put my whilst on it. I mean my finger on it. Whilst at the same time, I think I might know what you’re talking about. It was a good column, but whilst I agree with it, and I too think Horshu will be a pretty damn good wrestler, I think you’re selling the baby killer a little short. He must be about #2 out of the 6 you mentioned. Uh, whilst.
Whilst.
(5 times in 1 whilst, I mean article, is a little excesswhilstive, wouldn’t you whilst? I mean say?)”
Dammit! People actually read my stuff – what’s that all about? Personally, I don’t think that 5 times in a 1500+ word column is excessive, but you obviously found it intrusive, so I can’t really argue with that. Your criticism is well noted…I’ll fire up the old thesaurus in future.
Also, now that Reigns is gone, Snitsky might well be the new Next Big Thing. On the other hand, if the WWE is on a cost-cutting exercise, they may well decide to fire a man whose only storyline is as the murderer of Kane and Lita’s hellish offspring. Of course, given my recent track record, that’ll probably mean he’ll be world champion come SummerSlam.
Finally, I had a follow e-mail from Giaginta, who had previously called me on my Ivan Putski comments from a while back. I said then that I wasn’t going to cover my views on Putski in any more columns and I intend to stick to that. That said, he did bring up a very good question as part of his response to my response, as it where. In among his fairly lengthy e-mail (and I will get back to you on this personally, Giaginta, as soon as time permits), he asked me whether I would have liked Putski any better if he were a heel and, do you know what, I’m not sure.
I want to be be able to say, without any hesitation, that Putski was just crap and there’s an end to it and, whilst I still believe that to be the case, I can’t help but think a heel Ivan Putski would have been something worth watching. One of the best heel tactics, at least as far as I’m concerned, is telling the crowd that the heel is just so much better than they are. It’s a method that worked for Rick Rude, Jesse Ventura and Billy Graham, among a whole host of other legends and, of course, it is still used today by current superstars like Triple H, JBL, CM Punk and Chris Masters. On this level, I think Putski could have kindled my interest and, with a physique like his, he could easily come across as an arrogant, narcissistic heel. A bit of a shame, really.
Anyway – onto this week’s column…
It seems that, wherever you look on the ‘Net these days, there’s always somebody calling out for a return to the good old days of tag team wrestling. The long for the days of the Midnight Express, the Road Warriors, the Hart Foundation and the British Bulldogs. If they’re more recent converts to our great sport, then they’ll tell you that they want to see the sort of tag action we had in the Attitude era when the Hardyz, the Dudleyz and Edge and Christian battled each other all over the country. They’ll tell you that the current WWE tag belts are next to meaningless, that tag teams are just thrown together these days seemingly without rhyme or reason and that the tag rosters on both brand are depressingly shallow. I can’t argue with any of that logic, but really, who gives a shit?
The fact of the matter is that tag teams, as a whole, serve little purpose, other than to promote feuds and elevate new stars – as an entity in their own right, they are indeed meaningless. Now, before all of you tag team lovers jump down my throat (you know who you are) let me just clarify a few things.
I love watching tag team matches, for the most part. The Bulldogs, the Harts, Demolition, Legion of Doom, the Rock ‘N’ Roll Express, the Heavenly Bodies, the Rougeaus, the Hollywood Blondes, the Sheepherders, the Fantastics, the Freebirds…I have fond memories of all of these teams. I love the way that tag matches tend to follow a certain pattern, one that is seemingly set in stone, but still mananges to get the job done. Heels attack before the bell – faces clear the ring – heels isolate one member of the face team – lengthy beat down ensues – other member of face team gets the hot tag, clears the ring and they go to the finish, whatever that may be. It’s as regular as the seasons, but no less enjoyable for that. I spoke earlier about heel tactics and one of the finest is when a tag team isolates one of there opponents, using all kinds of chicanery to lure his team-mate into the ring, so that the ref is distracted by forced him back out again. It’s great – tag team matches rock.
Also, I totally understand the need to put newcomers into a tag team as it helps them to learn from a more experienced individual as well as give them the opportunity to hide some of their more glaring weaknesses. This is the reason a green and uncoordinated Brutus Beefcake was thrown in with veteran Greg Valentine to form the Dream Team and also why the spotty, though undeniably talented, Paul London was teamed up with Billy Kidman to try and adapt to the WWE style. It’s a technique that can work wonders, giving newbies a chance to work live TV and PPVs, whilst effectively continuing their training in the ring.
Having said all of that I cannot understand the need of some people to see “proper” tag teams – as in, tag teams that have an actual name and matching ring gear, like all those ones mentioned above. Again – I can sort of see the attraction that this would have, but what difference does it really make. The Rock ‘N’ Sock Connection, for instance, consisted of two former WWF champions in the Rock and Mankind and just giving them a collective name doesn’t alter that fact, just as it doesn’t alter the fact that, no matter how entertaining they might be, I still sooner see either man wrestle a singles match. Similarly, the MegaPowers may have had a name and a manager in common, but they were still Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, two of the biggest icons that ever drew breath. Everybody knew that the MegaBucks were Andre the giant and Ted DiBiase who just happened to be indulging in a bit of tag action to pass the time; ditto with the Colossal Connection (Andre and Haku), Strike Force (Tito Santana and Rick Martel), Rhythm and Blues (Honky Tonk Man and Greg Valentine). Yet there persists this need to give tag teams an easily defined label – when Goldust and Booker T were tagging the IWC had all kinds of names thrown up, including BookDust and Black Gold; people wanted to see Kidman and London called the Shooting Stars. Across the Web I’ve seen the formidable tag team of Terry Gordy and Steve Williams referred to as the Miracle Violence Connection, but in all Japanese tapes I’ve seen, the announcers call the by their given names.
This idea that two superstars thrown together is not a real tag-team also grates on me for similar reasons. A tag team, surely is just two guys wrestling on the same team – it doesn’t get more simple than that. They may not have a long history of tagging together, nor might they have entered the promotion as a tag team, but so what? Saying that Kane and RVD weren’t a “proper” tag team, simply because they didn’t suddenly develop matching gimmicks overnight is ludicrous. Even JR got in on the act for that one, calling Kane and RVD and “unlikely pairing”, despite the fact that they’d been tagging for months and had developed something of a friendship, storyline wise, as well as the fact that Kane had already tagged with someone lighter on his feet than he, when he was tagging with X-Pac back in the day. I read a report on this year’s Backlash (sorry if I can’t remember the author) that berated the Tag Team Turmoil match, wondering what the point of it was to take the belts from one thrown together team (William Regal and Tajiri) only to pass it onto another (the Hurricane and Rosey). Again – a tag team is a tag team, no matter how long they’ve been doing it. Also, Hurricane and Rosey have been tagging for over a year now, if memory serves and share both a gimmick and the same dress sense. Just because the WWE aren’t calling the the Superheroes as some nice little package deal, doesn’t detract from them as a team with a history. By that logic, La Resistance is a real tag team, despite the fact that Rob Conway wasn’t an original member.
Take a good long look at Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio. Both men are accomplished wrestlers, both in tag action and in their singles work. Rey may well be the most famous Cruiserweight working today and Eddie Guerrero is a former WWE Heavyweight Champion. Does putting them into a tag team together detract from either man’s accomplishments? Of course not – if anything it only adds to them as they were the most exciting thing to happen to SmackDown!’s tag division in ages. Their eventual split and Eddie’s heel turn was excellent and has produced an emotional and exciting feud that guarantees a good match at Judgment Day. When Kidman and London split as a team, it generated a similarly gripping storyline, as did the Christian/Chris Jericho split prior to WrestleMania XX and the split between Hogan and Savage in the run up to WrestleMania V.
I’ve heard it said that putting teams together only to have them split is just a case of lazy booking, but consider the above list – Eddie and Rey’s tension spread from a combination of ill-judged attacks on Eddie’s part that lead to DQs for Rey (although the verdict’s still out on whether it was deliberate ploy on Eddie’s part or not) and Rey’s mistrust of Eddie; Kidman and London split because Kidman refused to hit his finisher followed his botched Shooting Star Press on Chavo Guerrero; Christian and Y2J were torn apart over Trish Stratus whilst Savage suspected Hogan of cheating with Miss Elizabeth, which lead to the MegaPowers exploding. There’s a fair bit of creativity going on in there. Could they have built up a singles feud for each case – of course they could, but by having the participants tag for a few months or weeks beforehand it added another dimension to the feuds.
One final word on the tag belts. They mean nothing whatsoever and they never have – not even in the so called “golden age” of tag wrestling. They are nothing more than a trinket, something to show that a couple of guys are making those first tentative steps towards the big time. Let’s face it, has anyone ever come into a promotion and cut a promo saying that the one thing they want to achieve above all others was to hold the tag team straps? Of course not. From a storyline point of view, all that matters is the big belt – be it WWE Heavyweight, World Heavyweight or any of the smaller promotions’ equivalent…the tag belts are just a stepping stone and, often, not even that.
I don’t want to leave this column with people thinking that I’m down on the whole tag team issue – as I said near the start, some of the best matches I’ve ever seen have been tag bouts – so, to close, I’m going to give you my personal top five tag teams.
5. The Steiner Brothers
A prime example of the purpose of tag teams, in that they mixed contrasting styles together and produced something greater than the sum of their parts. The atheltic, high flying Scott and the rough and ready brawling Rick combined power and agility in the early days of WCW that made them stand out from the crowd.
4. Kane and Rob Van Dam
I’ve always marked out for Kane, even when his career seemed to have little, if any direction and this “unlikely” pairing provided me with more than a few laughs, particularly when RVD tried to explain to his hulking partner why his Christmas gift of Hungry Hungry Hippos was a metaphor for life. They had some good matches, some great bits of backstage interaction and, as with the Steiners, blended their contrasting styles into something that was compelling to watch.
3. Edge and Christian
A great tag team that more than held their own against the Dudleyz and the Hardyz, wrestling all over the world to determine who was the better team. In terms of in-ring talent it was a fairly evenly matched contest, but E&C stole the show when it came to cutting promos and backstage skits, particularly hose involving Commissioner Foley. Great matches + great stick work = a fantastic tag team.
2. The Legion of Doom/The Road Warriors
One for the old-school fans here. True, they may never have been the most techincally proficient of tag teams, their selling may have left something to be desired and they may not be in the same league as other teams from their era like the Midnights and the Rock ‘N’ Roll Express, but for sheer mark-out value there is no better tag team than the Monsters of the Midway, the Road Warriors. They were a breath of fresh air at the time and proved that you didn’t need fancy double team spots to get over, you just had to run in and attempt first degree murder every night of your life.
1. The Hollywood Blondes
What, no Bulldogs, Rockers or Hart Foundation? I’m afraid not. As fun as it is to watch those guys in action, I think it’s safe to say who’s carrying who in their matches, whereas the Blondes were a different prospect altogether. Much like Edge and Christian, they were as entertaining outside of the ring as they were inside it and, make no mistake, they were phenomenal in-ring performers who, it could be argued, ushering in the Attitude Era. The Blondes were heel bastards to their very core and yet, like the nWo that would follow them, the crowds loved them. Quite why WCW couldn’t see this is a matter best left to a team of experienced psychotherapists.
That’s it for another column. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with some more disjointed opinions for you all to enjoy. In the meantime, I’m reviewing a couple of albums for InsidePulse Music, which should be up by the weekend as well as putting the finishing touches to my first short story, which is to be entitled ‘Mother’s Milk’.
Full details on all this to come in due course.
Until the next time…farewell.
