Favorite Tag Teams
1. Fabulous Freebirds
The Freebirds were THE reason I watched World Class Championship Wrestling as a kid. In the latter years, it became the Eric Embry-Skandar Akbar feud that ended WCCW.
It didn’t matter which variation of the Freebirds they had, as long as it included Michael Hayes. He was the spokesman for the group. When Fritz tried to reorganize it after Gordy, Hayes and Garvin left, the trio of Buddy Roberts, Blackbird Parsons and Gordy was never even close to the same. The fans didn’t even react to them as much.
2. Rock & Roll Express
Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson were the ultimate fun-loving good ol’ boys. I’m pretty sure they were put together as wrestling’s version of Bo and Luke Duke.
The Rock & Roll Express had great feuds with about every major tag team in wrestling in the 80s and early 90s. They were never greatly pushed in WWF or WCW toward the tag team titles, but they are still one of the most respected tag teams in wrestling history.
3. Midnight Express
The Midnight Express had many incarnations throughout its thirty-year existence, from Dennis Condrey and Randy Rose to Stan Lane and Bobby Eaton to Bob Holly and Bart Gunn. My favorite time was in 1988 when you had Paul E. Dangerously managing Condrey and Rose as the Original Midnight Express and their feud with Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane. They had a feud that was supposed to end at Chi-Town Rumble (2/20/89). Unfortunately, politics led Condrey from leaving before the match.
My favorite combination for the tag team was Beautiful Bobby and Sweet Stan with Jim Cornette (although you’ll find Cornette on my most hated managers list next week). They were the ones who brought status and prestige to JCP’s United States Tag Team Titles.
4. Road Warriors
Who didn’t like the Road Warriors in the AWA in the 80s? Two rough-and-tumble guys from the streets of Chicago tearing things up. I had hoped that maybe they could have done a heel run at one point and teamed up with One Man Gang, but they never seemed to be in the same place at the same time.
I did enjoy their six-man tag team matches with Dusty Rhodes, especially the barbed wire match at Clash of the Champions I with Ivan Koloff and the Powers of Pain. The problem was that they needed competition. There never seemed to be another tag team that could hang with them power-for-power except the Powers of Pain.
5. Dudley Boyz
The only reason I ever watched ECW wrestling. D-Von and Bubba Ray were two bad dudes who just loved putting people through tables. When they made their way to WWE, they were gladly greeted by the Hardy Boyz and Edge & Christian for a series of Tables, Ladders and Chairs matches.
One of my favorite moments was actually while they were in TNA at the same time as the New Age Outlaws (as the Voodoo Kin Mafia) and the Steiner Brothers. At one time, these three teams were the three biggest World Tag Team champions. They had a brief feud between the three to settle the score as to which team was better. As you’ve probably guessed already, my vote would be for the Dudleys, although the New Age Outlaws would be a close second.
6. New Age Outlaws
I’ve followed Jesse James Armstrong since he came into Memphis wrestling as part of Smoky Mountain Wrestling’s invasion angle. His best moments are when he is teamed up with Billy Gunn. Those two mesh together just wonderfully. It also helped to have the backup of guys like HHH, Chyna and X-Pac in their corner as well.
7. Outsiders
When you do an invasion angle, you need to have guys that had very little to do with each other in their previous federation. When Scott Hall and Kevin Nash first started appearing and causing trouble on Nitro, I was all excited. While the nWo angle didn’t go quite where I wanted it to go, I still enjoyed Hall and Nash together. It wasn’t until DDP got upset about not being asked to join earlier that I realized that Hall and Nash had teamed together in the AWA ten years earlier. Amazing what a little time will do.
8. Moondogs
A rough and tumble tag team of super heavyweights that had six members throughout its history. The best combination was Spot and Spike. These guys were the innovators of the hardcore wrestling experience in Memphis. Spot was the first wrestler I ever saw bring the ring steps (really a flimsy step ladder) into the ring as a weapon.
9. Rockers
The team of the 80s. They were the high-flyers that picked up the mantle from Greg Gagne and Jim Brunzell in the AWA and took it to new heights. I had hoped that they would continue their run when they jumped over to the WWE, but Marty had a couple of legal issues and couldn’t fulfill his obligations in the same way Shawn could. This opened the door for the Heart Break Kid gimmick. Definitely took a while to get used to seeing Shawn alone in the ring, but he definitely proved himself. Marty, on the other hand, never really had the same level of success.
10. Hardy Boyz
Rounding out this top ten is another set of high-flyers. These two brothers fromNorth Carolina burst onto the scene and nearly obliterated the tag team division in WWE. Although their work in TNA and now ROH is a little “broken,” they are a heck of a tag team.