Worst tag team gimmick?

[TheBigBoot]

Loved that Haas/Holly team at the time and remember that mini-Iron Man Match against MNM was really good. Then again I

[thicko]

I don't know if it's the match you're referring to or not, but I had a Headshrinkers vs Well Dunn (almost squash) match on video which I actually loved. It basically involved Sionne press slamming one of them and that was it!

 

It was a number one contenders match, in the run up to WM XI, where all of the teams that had been in the tag title tournament seemed to get a shot at the Smoking Gunns, leading to Owen Hart complaining that he didnt't get a match because his partner in the tournament, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, had gone.

 

Owen was allowed a mystery partner and went with Yokozuna. On a side note, I remember Wrestlecall at the time reporting that the partner was to be Chris Candido, as they'd been practicing ring enterances at tv tapings. Owen as a Bodydonna maybe?

[TheBigBoot]

Thanks, HappyWanderer. Dustin and Barry had split up by then, as had Vader and Sid who were hastily split up to set up the main event of Starrcade '93 which never happened after Sid was fired for the scissor incident in Blackburn.

 

Of the teams I listed then in the WWF Bret and Owen and Kid and Jannetty were only really around for the first month of the year - although the latter should have carried on much longer. In WCW, The Colossal Kongs were shown the door the second Dusty Rhodes was removed from the booking team, Harris Brothers were fired, rehired then left again and the Scorpio/Bagwell team ended when Scorp was fired that coming spring (although we got Stars & Stripes soon after instead).

 

The thing I don't understand about not having proper tag teams these days is there is so much time to fill on Raw, SmackDown!, Superstars and (until fairly recently) ECW that you would think tag matches are an easy way to do it.

 

Bischoff was never a fan of tag team wrestling was he? He reduced it to next to nothing in WCW in the late 90's. I'm not sure if he had a change of heart at any point but things do seem a touch rosier in TNA at the moment (or at least they did last time I watched on Bravo)

 

Yeah it was always said Bischoff wasn't a fan of tag team wrestling. IIRC, Bischoff himself said (words to the effect of) his long lasting legacy would be as the man who killed tag teams and managers. The impression I always got (although I don't know if he ever outright said it) was that he saw the Cruiserweight Division in the way others in the U.S. had used tag teams in terms of providing the all action matches in a self-contained 'division' that was something different from the main event singles matches.

 

The funny thing about that is that in Bischoff's early days right through to the early days of Nitro WCW had a cracking tag team division. In 1994 you had the teams I mentioned above, 1995 had that near year-long four way feud between The Blue Bloods/The Nasty Boys/Harlem Heat/Studd Stable, then once Nitro launched in September '95 heading into 1996 you had the big push with teams like The American Males, Sting and Lex Luger, plus signing any teams with any name value like The Super Assassins (Powers of Pain), The Road Warriors, The Steiners, Public Enemy and The Rock N Roll Express.

 

Though, I suppose you could argue that was mostly people like Kevin Sullivan and that it was when Bischoff started exerting his influence on the booking more that that was when the tag team started to change.

 

Back to the '94 bit, Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas sprind to mind, had they split by then too?

 

Yep. That Douglas-Steamboat team had split the year before when Douglas walked out and 'The Franchise' had already won (and lost) the Eastern Championship Wrestling championship by 1994.