Not everyone is going to make it as a singles star in WWE. As much as fans want them to, sometimes a wrestler just doesn’t have what it takes to make it on their own. Sometimes, WWE just forget about them and leave them to flounder at the bottom of the card. Other times however, WWE puts two of its singles stars into a tag team.
Several times in WWE history, throwing two floundering singles guys together to form a team has saved the careers of both men. The New Age Outlaws, The APA, Morrison and Miz and more recently The Bar and The New Day were all tag teams thrown together because WWE had nothing for them as singles stars. After some rough starts, all these teams went on to become firm favourites with WWE fans worldwide, with The New Age Outlaws and Faarooq of The APA now Hall of Famers.
However, not every thrown together tag team works. Some were just doomed to fail from the moment they got together. This could have been for any number of reasons. There could’ve been injuries, suspensions, or they could have just been downright awful.
Some notes before I begin. Although there have been literally hundreds of thrown together tag teams, I’m only mentioning ones that had a minimum of 10 matches together as a team. This means that all of John Cena’s tag teams won’t be included (there are more than you think, actually) and teams that were put together for one or two TV episodes (e.g. Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt). Got that? Cool, let’s begin.
5. Charlie Haas and Hardcore Holly
These two could have a list each of times they were part of a thrown together tag team. Charlie Haas was best known in WWE as a tag team competitor, famously forming The Worlds Greatest Tag Team with Shelton Benjamin, with the team having moderate success, winning tag titles on numerous occasions. Haas has also teamed with Rico, Viscera and Mike Knox during his time in WWE.
Hardcore Holly, although primarily a singles wrestler, was in a lot of thrown together tag teams. In his 15-year run with WWE, he teamed with just about everyone, with tag partners ranging from The 1-2-3 Kid (A young Sean ‘X Pac’ Waltman) to Al Snow to Cody Rhodes. He won tag gold three times, with Kid, Crash Holly and Cody.
These two made little sense as a tag team (A common theme in this list) and the chemistry they had was non-existent. They had several shots at MNM’s WWE Tag Team Championships, including a 15-minute Iron Man match on SmackDown, before quietly disbanding and going back to their mediocre singles careers.
4. Santino Marella and Vladimir Kozlov
This one might be slightly more controversial, as I know that Marella and Kozlov were very popular as a team. However, this is my list and I think that these two just plain sucked. They had one great segment as a team (A tearoom segment with Sheamus on the November 8th, 2010 episode of RAW, which was hilarious and even caused Sheamus to break character and laugh), but other than that, they were dreadful.
Marella was mainly a comedic wrestler in WWE and was never really taken seriously. Despite this, he had some success, becoming a two-time Intercontinental Champion and a United States Champion, as well as being a tag champion with Kozlov.
Kozlov, being huge and foreign, was pushed very hard by WWE initially, quickly getting a WWE title shot at Survivor Series in a match against Triple H, which might have been the most boring WWE title match in years up to that point. He was undefeated for a while, before losing to Shawn Michaels and Undertaker and then getting drafted to ECW.
As said above, these two did have success as a tag team, holding WWE Tag Team gold before losing it a few months later to Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel. Kozlov then unfortunately got injured, which ruled him out of a spot at WrestleMania, before getting released a few months later.
3. Brodus Clay and Tensai
Oh, Tensai. WWE didn’t have a clue what to do with you, did they? Everyone had such high hopes for the former A-Train when he returned after a spell in NJPW in 2012. He quickly went on an undefeated streak, beating a whole host of lower card wrestlers as well as John Cena and CM Punk. However, that was soon forgotten as he suffered numerous losses, and looked destined to become another WWE failed project.
Speaking of failed projects: Brodus Clay. He was just DREADFUL. Labelled ‘The Funkasaurus’ and using Earnest ‘The Cat’ Miller’s theme tune, however nothing he did was funny. He somehow managed to go on a big win streak and he even scored victories over people like The Miz and Dolph Ziggler, both of whom were hugely over with the fans at this point.
These two as a pair were just the pits. Tensai should have been booked as a monster, not as a dancing buffoon who wore lingerie by mistake. Brodus was a charisma vacuum and being saddled with him was just awful for Tensai. Thankfully, Matt Bloom is now the head coach at the Performance Centre, due to his stellar work in the past, and not as part of Tons of Funk and being called Sweet T.
2. Rene Dupree and Kenzo Suzuki
The fact that these two had a three-month reign as WWE Tag Team Champions is proof of how barren the tag division was on SmackDown in 2004. They had only been put together a few weeks earlier, and by winning the tag belts, it meant that they were the top tag team on SmackDown for that small period of time.
WWE tried hard to make Rene Dupree a star. He became the youngest ever champion in WWE history by winning The World Tag Team Championships with Sylvain Grenier at the age of 19, a record he held until last year, when 10-year-old Nicholas won tag team gold with Braun Strowman. He was traded to SmackDown and immediately placed in a feud with another hot young star in John Cena, for Cena’s US Championship. The problem with Dupree was that fans struggled to care about him, and his matches weren’t all that great.
Dupree and Suzuki had virtually no chemistry with each other, and their reign was awful. They defended the belts on PPV just once during this time, picking up a cheap win. Thankfully, it only lasted three months before they dropped the belts at Armageddon 2004 to another thrown together tag team in Rob Van Dam and Rey Mysterio.
1. Animal and Heidenreich
These two are without a doubt, the worst tag team in 21st century WWE. Heidenreich was already bloody awful, thanks to some terrible matches and implying that he sexually assaulted Michael Cole. Pairing him with a guy whose best years were long behind him meant that these two were always gonna be bad. However, no-one expected them to be as bad as they were.
WWE had already tried to bring the Legion of Doom into the modern world, thanks to the LOD 2000 gimmick they made Hawk and Animal do. Bringing it to 2005 WWE, where most of the young crowd had no idea who the Legion of Doom were, was a bad mistake on WWE’s part, and more proof of how barren the tag divisions were in WWE at this point.
The thing is, it COULD have feasibly worked if they hadn’t saddled Animal with a dead lump of wood like Heidenreich. If they had given him someone young and exciting to work with, then it could have been a success. However, they didn’t; they gave him Heidenreich and the rest is history. They won the WWE Tag Team Championships from MNM at The Great American Bash 2005 and held the belts for three long months before thankfully dropping them back to MNM on an episode of SmackDown in a match also involving the Mexicools and William Regal and Paul Burchill.
As said at the beginning of the article, there were several teams who just missed the cut, most of them involving either Charlie Haas or Hardcore Holly. WWE have a long history of just throwing singles stars together and hoping that magic happens. However, as this article has just proven, it doesn’t always work. There’s no doubt that WWE will throw some more singles stars together soon. Let’s hope they become more like The Bar and less like Tons of Funk.
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You can find me on Twitter @bannister007. Thanks for reading.