How to Build a Tag Division.
Greetings readers and welcome to yet another installment in the Weekly Wednesday Stop for all things Wrestling! The O’Really Report featuring your host Rhett Davis. With WrestleMania around the corner, both Raw and SmackDown are really stepping it up with their feuds for the biggest show of the year. Now without any more hesitation, let’s get into the task at hand…
The first thing that any recipe needs is the ingredients. So let me ask you, faithful audience, how many tag teams does the WWE have today? Hmm? If you count the two factions on Raw and SmackDown, then there are only four. In a company where there is only one set of tag belts, there are only three possible tag teams for them to really face. This is of course taking out such absurdities as Cena and The Miz (or any other grouping of opponents) as a tag team. There are the champions The Corre (Slater/Gabriel), Santino Marella and Vladimir Kozlov, The Nexus (any combination of McGillicutty/Mason Ryan/Otunga), and The Usos. It’s fine for Slater and Gabriel to have the belts as they have teamed since the summer and are the best team in the WWE today, but for them to lose the belts so abruptly and reclaim them shortly after ONLY because The Miz cheap shot Cena as they did last week on Raw? That does nothing for the tag team division. All that did was make Slater and Gabriel look like two scrubs that can’t do the one thing that they are the best in the ‘world’ at: Tag Team Wrestling. Taking Cena and Miz and putting them in Slater and Gabriel’s element should have been a HUGE advantage to the champions, but instead Cena and Miz defeated them in mere seconds. It’s time for a change WWE. It’s time to stop feeding Cena/Triple H/Orton these tag teams. A few years back Cena fought Umaga, Lance Cade, and Trevor Murdoch in a handicap match and can you guess who won? Not the tag team champs even with the help of the The Samoan Bulldozer. Truthfully Cena had help when Jeff Hardy took out Umaga, but even with the largest threat taken out, Cade and Murdoch should have whipped the floor with Cena’s handicapped self. But no, the Tag Team champions (or the best in ‘world’ at what they do) folded under pressure like a deck of cards when a gust comes by. Making the tag champions job to the top guys in tag team matches may make the Orton/Triple H/Cena look like Superman and makes the tag team division a waste of time. This may blow your mind, but The Corre is the WWE Tag Team Champions. This means that no matter who they may face in two-on-two action they should beat unless that team is to take the straps off of them. The Corre shouldn’t have lost their titles to Cena and The Miz in ten seconds if they weren’t going to have Cena/Miz have a go with the championships. Anyways moving on…
In order for the tag team division to have any sort of depth, then there absolutely has to be more teams that are strictly there for tag purposes instead of just teams of two people put together. The only team like that left is the Usos and they have yet to really impress. The best examples of this in recent years have been The Hart Dynasty, Cryme Tyme, Cade & Murdoch, The Hooliganz (Paul London/Brian Kendrick), The Hardy Boyz (before the break up first time), The Dudley Boyz, Edge & Christian, La Resistance, Hawkins & Ryder, MNM, and I’m sure there are a few I’m forgetting to mention. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think its detrimental when top stars get in tag teams (such as DX, ShowMiz, JeriShow, Brothers of Destruction, etc). However it’s wrong when Cena and Michaels are given the tag titles just to use them as a feud basis. Whenever those single stars move on from the tag title scene then there needs to be something left behind besides just two teams.  This is why having teams only working in the Tag Division is needed. Tag Teams (along with the Divas division) just need to be taken more seriously to WWE than it has been in years past.
The biggest confusion in the stirring pot of tag team wrestling is unnecessary break-ups. It seems most of the tag teams today don’t stay together very long and it really hurts the tag division when each month there is a new ‘brother v. brother’ type feud with tag partners. More often than not, the tag team members don’t do anything after the break-up and that’s where the real confusion sets in. Why break-up a team such as Cryme Tyme if they are only going to have JTG as a jobber on the show and attempt a push with Shad only for him to not meet their standards and be shortly released? A team that really disappointed me with the fallout was The Hart Dynasty. Both of these men aren’t exactly money in the ring, but together they actually had a good thing going. DH Smith was the powerhouse of the new Hart Foundation and Tyson Kidd was the shock-n-awe, so to speak. It worked. But then the WWE decided they were going to tear them apart with the only real storyline coming out of it was a failed push attempt for Kidd and Natalya moving into the Divas Division to win the title for a short period.  Now Kidd is fighting the likes of Percy Watson in dark matches, DH is nowhere to be seen, and Natalya is dwindling in the ever-changing tides of the Divas division.Â
With so many lower-level talent on both SmackDown and Raw, why can’t the WWE just put two and two together and start to make some tag teams? This way these guys can still put over larger talent in singles, but have a purpose other than ‘hey I have a job and get paid for walking out to generic rock music and having my ass handed to me on a weekly basis, but sometimes you can catch me on Superstars looking like a beast.’ Chavo, Masters, Reks, Hawkins, Barretta, Primo, Henry, Khali, Regal, Ryder, Yoshi, Darren Young, R-Truth, DiBiase, Kidd, Smith, and JTG are all examples of guys who don’t really have any kind of direction right now and would benefit from being in a tag team. I’d love to see Hawkins and Ryder back together instead of doing absolutely nothing as they are now. JTG and R-Truth would be interesting as would the Hart Dynasty back together.
Altogether the Tag Team division in the WWE is hanging on by a thread and really could learn a few things from TNA who seems to have grasped the concept. Beer Money is a great team, but it’s very rare when they lose and they don’t get beaten by a team of top guys just to make a point.
Taking a look at the rest of the site…
We have the debut of The Big Tuna with Kyle Fitta here with his look at who is the better wrestler between The Rock and John Cena.
A new edition to the site in The Rager is here with Chris Sanders’ views on the hits and misses of the WWE product today.
Anddd… to continue the trend of relatively new columns here is Mike Gojirra’s perspective on the effectiveness of a select number of factions in his column: The Stomping Ground.
Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment in the area below. How do you think the WWE can rebuild the once amazing tag team division?
And quite frankly my dear… that’s a wrap.
