NXT is home to WWE’s best tag team division, but are they really prepared to offer a better future?
The NXT Tag Team Division is the best in all of WWE. They clearly have SmackDown outmanned, and they’re better than Raw, although that is a much smaller gap. The problem is that NXT’s tag teams still aren’t that good.
Look at the main roster, New Day are basically removed from the tag team division and operate as their own separate novelty act at this point. The other teams on Raw (Gallows and Anderson, Sheamus and Cesaro, and Enzo and Cass) have all been booked to make sure that they don’t get over. They have all fought hard to still be mildly interesting, and now that creative has given them something, it’s been fairly entertaining. SmackDown has American Alpha and The Usos, the rest of the teams have been buried beyond recognition. The Usos are kind of over and AA are barely over.
That’s not a big hurdle to clear, and NXT almost doesn’t. The NXT Tag Team Champions, The Authors of Pain, are decent wrestlers, but that’s all they really have to be, since they are such monsters. With Paul Ellering as their manager, it seemed they’d be super over in no time. Not quite. It ended up taking them a while, and they’re still struggling.
There’s the former champions, the team of Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa, also known as DIY. They have never truly gotten over as a team, mostly because a split was teased so much between them that the fans were wary of truly getting behind them. Though that changed in the latter half of 2016, with two Match of the Year candidates with The Revival, and then getting the best match in AOP’s young careers at the beginning of 2017. They’ve always been over as individuals, though.
Then there’s the best tag team in all of WWE, and, possibly the best team in the world, The Revival. Honestly, if The Revival got called up tomorrow, NXT would probably fall to the bottom of the list. The Young Bucks are their only real competition for best team in the world. The overall edge probably goes to The Bucks, but nobody right now can play a heel tag team like Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder.
The biggest problem for NXT’s tag team division is that the list ends there. They have no depth. Sure, there is TM61, but Shane Thorne is hurt, and Heavy Machinery might get there, but they still have a way to go.
Depth is nowhere for WWE when it comes to tag teams, and it’s a mystery as to why that is. Sure, when it’s time for the WrestleMania main event, people want to see two guys go one-on-one, but there’s plenty of room for tag team wrestling in WWE. Look at the NXT awards for 2016, DIY and The Revival won Match of the Year.
Next: Bold Predictions for Fastlane 2017
When tag team wrestling is done properly, it’s great. It’s overflowing with emotion, especially when there’s a team like The Revival that play the heel role so well, but when there’s no depth to the division, it devalues the few teams that are there. Depth is important, and it’s all supposed to start in NXT. Right now, it looks like the dark ages of WWE tag team wrestling will continue for a few years to come.