WWE’s Thriving Tag Team Division

Let me be clear and say that I had a spell of switching off of WWE and losing track of the active roster and stories, in all honesty from Wrestlemania XX I didn’t follow at all, only tuning in again at Royal Rumble 2013, and again to be honest the only draw for me was to see The Rock vs CM Punk. But I had it as a New Year resolution to myself to follow it this year, and so far I’m glad I have been. Now onto the main part of the article…

I mainly started following WWE when it was WWF and during the attitude era and ruthless aggression era. During these years there didn’t seem to be any cap on how far the violence went in ring. 2 by 4’s wrapped in barbed wire, thumb tacks, an almost endless supply of weapons under the ring of all shapes and sizes. Blood was a frequent occurrence on the shows. It has to be said that a lot of the more entertaining matches took place involving tag teams of that era. Most notably would be the Hardy Boyz, The Dudley Boys and Edge & Christian, but there were also 2 Cool, APA, Rock n Sock connection and even to a lesser extent T&A would provide some entertainment purely because Trish Stratus accompanied them to the ring.

When you read back on it, that is a very impressive list of talent to fight over the Tag titles, and due to the intense rivalry in that division, particularly between 3 of the teams, some incredible matches spawned from this. “Tables… Ladders… and Chairs… Oh my!” But that match aside, the division at the time was highly entertaining, the varied teams and matches that were scheduled would rarely disappoint.

Well 2013 appears to have really upped the ante on their tag team division. When I re-joined the ‘WWE Universe’ as it’s now called (What the hell?), I came into Team Hell No as the reigning champions, and it was the introduction of The Shield. What an incredibly impressive stable The Shield are, they’ve been on such an incredible debut year, each member holding a belt, which includes the tag team titles. And featuring very heavily in the majority of the year’s major storylines from Rock vs Punk at the start of the year, right down to being the ‘muscle’ in the current corporation events. Granted they’ve now since lost the titles to an equally impressive tag team in ‘The Rhodes Family’. Another triumphant return for the never aging Goldust, he’s provided some excellent matches against The Shield with Cody, and the mocking of them in matches has been quite literally gold.

But we can’t forget the debut of another stable that have had an impressive start to the WWE in the Wyatt family. I’ll be first to admit that they are carried more so on the excellent persona of Bray Wyatt. He’s clearly the main draw for this stable, but the cronies he’s got following him are beasts towering over the majority of the roster. Again they’ve found themselves drifting in and out of storylines and appear to now have direction on targeting the bigger main draw stars such as Bryan and Punk.

With the likes of the Uso’s & Prime Time Players finding their way back onto the show or PPV even if it is only a backstage promo, the emergence of the ‘Real Americans’ as looking like a genuinely decent tag outfit as of late, and the rebranding of Primo & Epico as Los Matadores who somehow are winning matches and fans under this ridiculous gimmick, it’s a sign of how strong and large the current division is. And long may it continue, looking forward to some more triple threat tag matches or specialized tag matches in the coming weeks and months. But do we still believe in the Shield or should we follow the buzzards?

– Murr