WWE: Reviving the Tag Team Division

There’s a WWE Tag Team renaissance on the horizon.

One year following the Divas/Women’s Revolution that took WWE by storm beginning last summer and had its climax at Wrestlemania 32 in a classic triple threat Women’s Championship match between Charlotte, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch, it appears the next resurgence within the promotion centers around its tepid tag team division. While The New Day have held their own as well as their end of the bargain with their impressive near year-long reign as WWE Tag Team Champions and perhaps, more importantly, arguably the hottest and most entertaining act in the company, the trio has done so within a weak tag division.

The New Day secured their second Tag Team championships at last year’s Summerslam in a Fatal 4-Way against the Prime Time Players, Lucha Dragons, and Los Matadores; one is no longer active, one sporadically teams together ever since Kalisto’s semi-singles run, and the latter was repackaged into The Shining Stars. The New Day’s only true competition on the main roster for the better part of the year have been The Usos, and to a lesser degree, the return of the Dudleyz. As of this past Monday Night Raw, the New Day are entering a feud with the returning Wyatt Family.

Recently however, new blood has been injected into the stagnant division in the form of industry veterans, The Club (Gallows and Anderson), and two NXT call-ups: The Vaudevillains and Enzo & Cass. With several segments dedicated to the tag team division, as well as how WWE is portraying and protecting both the Vaudevillains and Enzo & Cass, it appears the main roster has learned from its awful handling of The Ascension.

NXT’s tag division contains some of the finest teams WWE has seen in nearly 15 years

As exciting as the new direction the tag team division is going, perhaps even more enticing are the teams down in NXT. Despite New Day’s immense success and popularity on the main roster, it’s no secret that the tag team matches in NXT are vastly superior to those on Raw or Smackdown, punctuated by the back to back performances of NXT’s top two tandems, American Alpha and The Revival, at Takeover: Dallas and Takeover: The End. Add in Gargano and Ciampa, newcomers TM61, and stalwart workers Blake and Murphy (depending on whether or not they stick together), NXT’s tag division contains some of the finest teams WWE has seen in nearly 15 years.

Even the most loyal and devoted WWE fan can’t hide the fact that tag team wrestling, true tag team wrestling, in WWE has been in a lull for a decade. Post-Dudleyz, post-Hardyz, and post-Edge and Christian, the last real good tag teams we saw were perhaps Los Guerreros (prior to Eddie’s singles run) and The World’s Greatest Tag Team, during the early 2000s Ruthless Aggression era. Since then however, the quality of tag team wrestling has significantly dipped, partly due to a lack of new, tag-oriented talent, thus forcing WWE to embark on a series of portmanteau duos during the PG Era, most notably Rated-RKO and JeriShow.

While Rated-RKO and JeriShow proved to be popular in their own right, as well as tag team champions, at the end of the day, both teams were comprised of great singles stars, not necessarily great tag team wrestlers. The most recent example of this is The Shield: three individual singles stars who have each captured the WWE World Heavyweight Championship (Ambrose once, Rollins twice, and Reigns three times).

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The Shield were brought up together as a stable but they were not necessarily specialists in true tag team wrestling, despite how they were booked as a collective team in the manner of the Four Horsemen and the nWo. The New Day’s formation and formula closely follows that of The Shield as well, except that the New Day utilizes the Freebird Rule, while the Shield excelled in frenzied, chaotic six-man tag combat. Ironically, of the three prevalent trios to to be featured on the main roster in recent years: The Shield, The New Day, and The Wyatt Family (prior to the inclusion of Braun Strowman), the Wyatts are perhaps the unit with the most identifiable traces of what makes a true tag team (especially Harper and Rowan) because they have been together since day one beginning in NXT.

Prior to the New Day, the only one of the three members who had any tag team experience in WWE was Kofi Kingston, a four-time WWE Tag Team Champion himself, even though he has largely been a singles competitor for most of his career. Big E and Xavier Woods were also singles competitors before joining forces with Kofi to bring about the New Day.

It may very well be the appropriately named Revival, that becomes the ones to truly bring about a renaissance in WWE tag team wrestling

In fact, when it comes to new, young, tag-centric talent, it may very well be the appropriately named Revival, that become the ones to truly bring about a renaissance in WWE tag team wrestling. The Revival are both tremendous workers and heels, with a great look and charisma, the latter proving to be one of the most important factors in what makes a great team apart from chemistry (which is largely the reason as to why The New Day has won the crowd over in the manner they did). While The Club and Enzo & Cass will bring some much-needed foils for the New Day in terms of promos on the mic and character presentation, it will undoubtedly be The Revival that brings in honest-to-goodness tag team wrestling to the division when they inevitably get called up (although this may be on hold as The Revival recently won back the NXT Tag Team Championships, prolonging their run down in Florida).

Look for Dash and Dawson to truly revive what WWE tag team wrestling was all about, become champions, and inevitably once again dance with American Alpha when Jordan and Gable get promoted up as well. It will be incredibly exciting to see The Revival mix it up with the Usos, or American Alpha putting on a show with the Lucha Dragons. Don’t be surprised to see the resurrection of The Ascension; with a wave of NXT teams being called up, look for Viktor and Konnor to return and stake their claim as the original dominant NXT tag team.

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Much like how Charlotte, Sasha, and Becky arrived on the main roster to flip the then-Divas division on its head and steal the show at Wrestlemania 32, it wouldn’t come as a shock to see The Revival and American Alpha possibly win match of the night at Wrestlemania 33 or Wrestlemania 34, or whenever it is they get called up. The foreshadowing of The New Day’s name may very well have been to plant the seeds of a tag team renaissance, but the true resurgence rests in The Revival and American Alpha and the bevy of teams down in NXT.

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