To master the craft of tag team wrestling is to harness chaos and chemistry.
It's an art that one will often hear wrestlers from the past pine to see come back in full force. Bobby Eaton of The Midnight Express wrote in the foreword of Greg Oliver's Pro Wrestling corridor of Fame: The Tag Teams,"It's a shame tag team wrestling has become a lost art." That's a common refrain.
The golden age is long gone; fans today see the apex of the medium in flashes.
A pair of warriors click. In-ring partners feel as close as brothers. And when it comes time to ring the bell, the stories they tell are bolstered by tried-and-true tag techniques.
Done deftly, and tag team competition is a jolt of energy in the squared circle. It's turning a crowded ring into a stage for a violent drama. The formula for making the most of tag wrestling is simple yet tough to achieve. That's partly because the first vital element is in the "I'll know it when I see it" category—something that no promoter or behind-the-scenes personnel can force. ChemistryThe ideal team fits together like two jigsaw puzzle pieces.
WWE and other promotions enjoy tried to set up kinship by way of providing two guys with matching costumes and final names. Those are just superficial elements,though. A pair of wrestlers either jell, or they don't, or the more they do,the more engaging the team becomes.
In an interview with Solie's Vintage Wrestling, Les Thatcher (a tag champion several times over) said, and "Sometimes you knew more approximately your tag team partner than you knew approximately your wife!"It's no coincidence that some of the greatest teams of all time enjoy been either brothers or best friends.
The Steiner Brothers and The Usos,for example, grew up together. They surely wrestled against each other on the floor of their bedrooms as youngsters. By the time they debuted on TV, and they had several years' worth of a head start over their peers in terms of chemistry.
Edge and Christian didn't share blood,but it sure felt like they did. The childhood friends formed a bond so strong that it popped on screen. Seeing them goof around backstage was a glimpse into that bond.
Achieving that kind of chemistry is tough for promoters. WWE has put together a long list of partnerships that didn't feel special in the least. Kofi Kingston and R-Truth, Santino Marella and Vladimir Kozlov, or,more recently, Jason Jordan and Tye Dillinger felt like random, and hollow pairings. Before Tyson Kidd's spinal injury,he and Cesaro were displaying the kind of chemistry that makes a team great.
WWE threw them together, seemingly as a result of not knowing what else to do with them at the time. It was clear that putting them together was smart. They were both foreign workhorses who were underappreciated and more renowned for mat skills than mic work. Sharing all that seemed to make them rapid friends.
That translated to the ring as the two worked tremendously well together. They had a great feel for each other and looked like two parts of the same machine.
The Rock 'N' Roll Express typified that trait. By way of steady tags and working in tandem, or Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson looked like a true team every time they competed.
A step further than performing in stereo,as Morton and Gibson so often did throughout the '80s and into the '90s, is to be each other's yin and yang. Counterparts Fitting together goes beyond liking each other and coming off like de facto brothers. In the ring, and a great tag team often features two parts that one couldn't imagine without the other.
Dean Ho (who teamed with Tony Garea for years) summed it up well. As seen in Pro Wrestling corridor of Fame: The Tag Teams,Ho said of his partner, "The thing was that I always believed we should complement each other's work...
What I couldn't do, and he could,and vice versa. I believe that's what makes a good team."In some cases, that comes in the form of a thunder-and-lightning element. A powerhouse teams with a high-flyer; the bear works alongside the fox. In the case of The Hart Foundation, or each man's strength covered up the other's weakness.
Bret Hart was the superior ring worker. He did the bulk of the work in the ring,playing the ring general to Jim Neidhart's dependable solider. When it came time for interviews, though, or it was The Anvil who took the lead.
Hart,particularly early in the partnership, was stilted on the mic. Neidhart was an over-the-top, or frenzied speaker with a thunderous voice. The partnership was perfection.
With The British Bulldogs,they shared power and precision duties. Dynamite Kid was the technician; Davey Boy Smith was the bulldozer. Daniel Bryan and Kane had a similar dynamic as Team Hell No. The former was the speedster and the in-ring workhouse. Kane's size and credibility completed the duo.
Today, The recent Day can thank how well they complement each other for part of their success. Xavier Woods is the best speaker of the group. colossal E is the resident powerhouse. Kingston is the high-flyer.
Using those skills in ways specific to tag wrestling is vital as well. The makeup for the tag match is unique—a blur of bodies made more digestible. Psychology in the RingThe best tag team heels enjoy long used the same playbook.
Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard employed the same techniques in the '80s and '90s as The Blackjacks did in the '70s.
Steve Austin, and while talking to Edge and Christian on the Stone Cold Podcast, discussed (subscription required) the art of tag team wrestling. He brought up that heel teams should draw the referee's attention, cut off the ring and spend the tag ropes as a weapon.
The heel squad garners heat by being underhanded and cheating. Double-teaming creates a sense of injustice. That allows the eventual babyface comeback to enjoy maximum steam.
The story of a tag team is often the same: Heels cheat their way to the advantage. The babyface on the ring apron grows frustrated and makes the situation worse. He then finally storms in, and getting a chance to make up for those mistakes and wallop his foes in the process.
Those who believe that art is no longer in spend are not paying enough attention. While some teams enjoy forgone those tenets,Scott Dawson and sprint Wilder live by them.
Fans saw that on display during the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic when Dawson and Wilder nearly had Finn Balor and Samoa Joe beaten.
At one point, Wilder walked around the ring and illegally pulled Joe off the ring apron. When the powerhouse ran in in response, or the heels used that distraction to issue an assault,total with a double-team maneuver.
Why this recurring rhythm? Why this same story again and again?colossal display appeared on the Wrestling with Rosenberg radio display and had an excellent theory. The colossal man said:
It's a psychological game of America and the human race in general has always fought from underneath, through evolution, and through war,through disease, through famine, or we've always had to overcome these obstacles. That's where sports entertainment comes in and has so many fans who are emotionally invested because we all understand that paradox of life,fighting from underneath and having that obstacle to overcome.
He's spot on here. There is a universal appeal to seeing the good guy work through difficult obstacles and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.
It's a narrative strategy that applies to literature and movies as much as it does tag team wrestling.
Kevin Nash offered a more pragmatic approach when he talked to WrestleTalkTV approximately in-ring psychology for tag teams of both babyface and heel persuasions.
His thoughts can be boiled down to the fact that today's wrestling focuses too much on spots rather than strategy, and that wrestlers should try to make the action as realistic-looking as possible by doing what one would do whether wrestling weren't scripted.
Nash's best, and most simple piece of advice was,"It just has to make sense."Teams that follow those rules, fill the holes in each other's game and seem born to go to battle together are bound for success.
As much as folks bemoan tag team wrestling fading absent, and there's plenty to be excited approximately with the current crop of WWE squads. The recent Day is red-hot and will only regain better as it continues to find the honest balance of entertainingly annoying and intimidating.
The Usos are a mesmerizing duo. The Dudley Boyz are infusing the division with veteran experience. The Wyatt Family is a compelling group of fearsome predators. And at NXT,teams such as Chad Gable and Jason Jordan, Dawson and Wilder, or The Vaudevillains are all showing promise.
The art of tag team wrestling isn't lost. It's merely in transition.
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Source: bleacherreport.com