Who are the 10 most exciting tag teams of all time?
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You want excitement? We’ll give you excitement. Ten double-doses of it, in fact, in the form of the most heart-stopping, adrenaline-pumping tag teams to ever lace up their boots and execute a tandem maneuver. From fast-paced workhorses like London & Kendrick to Attitude Era veterans like The Dudley Boyz, to modern-day high-flyers like The Usos, here are WWE’s (and one from NXT) ten most exciting tag teams ever, presented by 5-hour ENERGY.
10
Paul London & Brian Kendrick
Sometimes you don’t need flashy outfits to be exciting; you just need to be good. Hence, the appearance of the longest-reigning (for now) WWE Tag Team Champions of all time on this list. A pair of cruiserweights who treated gravity less like a law and more like a friendly suggestion, London & Kendrick never met a dropkick they didn’t love or a high-flying maneuver they didn’t tweak to their exact, innovative specifications. True, a certain bit of unicorn magic might break their record sometime soon, but to be entirely honest, it would take nothing less than sorcery to do so.
9
The Rockers
Even before he was The Showstopper, Shawn Michaels was stealing the show. He just had Marty Jannetty to accompany him. The original free-agent hotness of the Tag Team division, The Rockers’ fast-paced style and eye-popping look made them a top tandem in every promotion they set foot in, including WWE. There’s a chance they’d have been thrilling audiences for decades after their arrival, had HBK not blown up like Krakatoa and ditched Jannetty for the solo spotlight. The implosion lives on in infamy even now, but like everything they did, it was impossible to look away.
They say “Uce,” you say … well, “Whoa,” most likely, when you catch these aerially-inclined Samoans taking to the skies, a blur of torn tassles and war paint streaking toward whatever Superstar they’ve claimed as their target. A model of perseverance and drive, Jimmy & Jey toiled through the doldrums for years to build themselves into the kind of perfectly-synchronized, impossible-to-emulate tag team that ran the roost for years. Even as more boisterous duos came onto the scene, The Usos hung tight, claiming an upset Slammy Award for Tag Team of the Year in 2015. They simply can’t be stopped.
7
American Alpha
Yes, yes, they’re new. Who cares? This team of wrestling machines has been pushing the limit in NXT for close to a year now, riding the wave of a fun catchphrase (“Ready, Willing and Gable”) and the kind of hybrid style that keeps opponents guessing – often fruitlessly – of ways to keep up. True, they aren’t much for high-flying, but Jason Jordan & Chad Gable are mat-game innovators, bending boundaries and opponents’ joints in ways never thought possible. We always used to wonder what would happen if there were two Kurt Angles. Now we know.
6
Team Hell No
Sometimes excitement doesn’t come from what happens in the ring. Team Hell No’s competition style was pretty cut-and-dry: Daniel Bryan did the legwork, Kane was the muscle. What made this odd couple thrilling to watch was the possibility that they’d fight each other with more fervor than the enemy. Hard to expect anything else from a team that was thrown together in anger management class, but by the end, Team Hell No bickered their way to a massive WWE Tag Team Title reign ,and a true-blue friendship that lives on in the hearts and minds of the WWE Universe today.
What’s better than one Guerrero? How about dos? Or, more to the point, Los Guerreros, Eddie and Chavo (Oooohhh, Chavo!), two Mexican born grapplers who never saw a style they didn’t absorb and modify in order to make it their own. (Name another team that included lucha acrobatics, European catch and Japanese puroresu like these two. Go ahead, We’ll wait.) Apart from their physical gifts, these guys were larger than life, boasting the kinds of personalities that made your pulse pound in sync with the bouncing of their low-rider.
4
The Dudley Boyz
You ain’t gonna see Bubba Ray & D-Von Dudley take to the skies. No, sir. But you will see them drive someone through the surface of the Earth, usually through a table of some kind. These ECW Originals perfected the kind of grueling, hard-hitting excitement you’d expect from your average street fight; what their matches lacked in finesse they more than made up for in twisted innovation and absolute ruthlessness. It worked, too: The brothers from Dudleyville racked up nine Tag Team Championships, and they may still get their tenth yet. Oh, testify.
There is a term among certain circles for a crowd reaction that goes beyond support and turns into something incendiary, uncontrollable, volcanic. Basically, the kind of cheers you might get when The Road Warriors showed up. These face-painted monsters were no acrobats in the ring, but they destroyed anything that moved, and their mere presence was enough to rile the WWE Universe into a frothing frenzy. What a rush, indeed.
2
The Shield
Forget the banter that tag teams seem to favor these days: When The Shield’s “Sierra, Hotel, India” hit the loudspeakers, you knew someone was about to get wrecked. There isn’t much anyone can say about The Shield that the trio didn’t say better by virtue of their teamwork, brutality and, yes, brotherhood throughout the course of their nearly two-year rampage through the ranks of WWE. The potent combo of Seth Rollins’ intelligence, Dean Ambrose’s insanity and Roman Reigns’ intensity made for the perfect storm of aggression; there’s a reason they almost never lost. So, yeah. These guys ruled.
1
The Hardy Boyz
You know those kids who walk past an elevated ledge and wonder aloud, “What if I jumped off that?” Well, The Hardy Boyz were those guys. Matt & Jeff never climbed a ladder that they didn’t use as a launching point, turning their own bodies into guided missiles that blazed a trail throughout the Attitude Era, and left a legacy of extreme that eclipsed any and all who came before them. Needless to say, don’t try this at home — not just because it’s incredibly unsafe, but that there’s also no chance you’ll pull it off quite like they did.
