Makeshift tag teams are a staple of professional wrestling. Sometimes they’re a storyline choice, or a creative experiment to get the most out of talents. Sometimes companies throw wrestlers together for lack of any better plans, to keep those wrestlers occupied.

Related: 10 Tag Team Champions Who Held Singles Titles Simultaneously

A lot of makeshift teams fall apart quickly because of the haphazard way they came together, because they lack chemistry, or because the component members return to bigger solo runs. There are, however, those times when the teams are at least quite good for the short time they have together. WCW had teams fall on either side of that line.

10 Actually Good: The Hollywood Blonds

Austin And Pillman Hollywood Blonds

In WWE’s documentary, Stone Cold Steve Austin: The Bottom Line on the Most Popular Superstar of All Time, Austin discusses how in 1993, he thought he was primed for a big singles run in WCW with Harley Race as his manager. Plans changed when Brian Pillman informed him management was going to have them team up instead.

Related: 5 Great Steve Austin Moments In WCW (& 5 From ECW)

The two men, both reticent to be in a tag team, struck gold when they developed their Hollywood Blonds persona, complete with matching attire, a camera cranking taunt, and informing beaten opponents they’d had their brush with greatness. Both men would go on to bigger things, and Austin would have tag team partners plenty of fans forgot about,  but the Blonds were a bright spot for both men.

9 Didn’t Work: Bret Hart And Goldberg

Goldberg And Bret Hart

In late 1999, rivals Bret Hart and Goldberg put aside their differences to form a tag team. The pairing immediately achieved some success, winning the tag titles even if they'd end up losing them to arguably the best members of nWo, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash.

Hart and Goldberg teaming came down to a storyline contrivance, to extend the program between them and give them something extra to fight about. The pairing made little sense, given they were both top singles stars and were featured for opposite reasons—Goldberg an explosive superhero, Hart an ultra-credible technical wizard. Despite giving each man his only tag title reign in WCW, the team just didn’t work.

8 Actually Good: The Masters Of The Powerbomb

Masters Of The Powerbomb Vader And Sid

In 1993, Big Van Vader and Sid Vicious came together as a pair of imposing heels who both used the powerbomb. Together, they came across as unbeatable, which set up a superstar collision between them and face pairing of Sting and Davey Boy Smith.

Vader and Vicious captured the imagination and could draw. The conventional wisdom was that the team may have carried on, en route to feuding with each other had WCW not let Vicious go after one of the most unbelievable backstage stories of his career.

7 Didn’t Work: Brothers In Paint

Brothers In Paint Sting And Vampiro

Lucha libre megastar Vampiro certainly looked like a match for Sting. Both as an opponent and then as a tag team partner, he put on similar face paint and garb and was of a similar size to make the duo look just right in the ring together.

In the end, the superficial similarities were all Sting and Vampiro had going for them, and they broke up before long to launch a violent feud with one another. Vampiro once discussed their lack of chemistry and particularly that they had one of the real life heated relationships behind the scenes at WCW based on Sting complaining about him coming into the company wearing similar face paint.

6 Actually Good: DDP And Karl Malone

Karl Malone And DDP

Diamond Dallas Page peaked as a wrestler, becoming arguably WCW's best babyface, at right about the same time when Karl Malone reached the pinnacle of his NBA career. Malone was a lifelong wrestling fan and all too eager to bring their worlds together.

The pair of DDP and Malone squared off against Hollywood Hogan and the NBA’s Dennis Rodman at Bash at the Beach 1998. As celebrity wrestling outing goes, this was a good one, with Malone certainly looking the part of a wrestler, and all too eager to enthusiastically play his role his team went on to victory.

5 Didn’t Work: The Giant And Lex Luger

Lex Luger Giant Big Show WCW

Amidst the first wave of the New World Order storyline, Lex Luger and The Giant teamed up to take the WCW Tag Team Championships off of The Outsiders. It made reasonable sense for Luger and Giant to join forces as a pair of main event level guys who stood in opposition to the nWo. However, that’s about where their team chemistry ended.

Both Luger and The Giant were singles wrestlers, and while each found some success in tag teams at different points in their careers, their team together was clearly one of short-term convenience to put a credible duo up against The Outsiders. Before long, they’d return to the singles ranks, and no one really missed seeing The Giant and The Total Package as a team. The Giant then left WCW and didn't seem to have any regrets, one of the many wrestlers who later said they didn't like working for the company.

4 Actually Good: Vicious And Delicious

Buff Bagwell and Scott Norton

Buff Bagwell and Scott Norton got paired up within the ranks of the nWo as two mid-carders without anything better to do. Some tag teams thrive off of two wrestlers with a similar look and style of performance, like the high flying Rockers or the powerhouse Road Warriors. Vicious and Delicious represented a different dynamic, though, of complementary strengths.

Bagwell was charismatic and loud-mouthed. Scott Norton was a stiff powerhouse. What Bagwell lacked in credibility, Norton made up for as a legit butt-kicker. And while Norton was a bit past his prime and showed limited charisma, Bagwell carried the load on that end. Together, they got the best out of each other.

3 Didn’t Work: Jeff Jarrett And Steve McMichael

Steve Mongo McMichael And Jeff Jarrett

In Jeff Jarrett’s first WCW run, he spent a good bit of his time in and out of the ranks of The Four Horsemen, which included feuding with and later teaming with Steve McMichael. While both guys got in a WCW ring at a similar time, their stories couldn’t have been more different. Mongo was a big-bodied, loud-mouthed pro football player who’d come to wrestling late. Jarrett was a third-generation wrestler who worked his first match at eighteen and so had a decade of experience behind him when he got to WCW.

The two weren’t an overtly bad team, but their clash of styles was immediately evident and they never demonstrated any recognizable chemistry in the ring or on the mic.

2 Actually Good: The Insiders

DDP And Kevin Nash

The team of Diamond Dallas Page and Kevin Nash was actually a reprise of their early career work as mid-card heels in WCW, before either broke out and became a main event level star. Rebranded as The Insiders, the two succeeded on star power and charisma, winning the tag titles and enjoying an entertaining run.

Related: 5 WWE Wrestlers Kevin Nash Loved (& 5 He Hated)

DDP and Nash never looked like they were destined for a long run as a team, and weren’t exactly silky smooth in their tandem offense. Their big personalities and the degree to which they were over with the crowd made fans all too eager to invest in them, though, in the latter days of WCW.

1 Didn’t Work: Cactus Jack And Maxx Payne

Cactus Jack And Maxx Payne

In late 1993, WCW didn’t seem sure of what to do with Cactus Jack. He’d been brought in to play a heel madman challenger to Sting and had done surprisingly well recast as a madman face challenger to Big Van Vader. He didn’t fit the mold of a top guy, though, and for lack of any other clear direction, WCW threw him into a tag team with big man Maxx Payne, in one of the tag teams most fans would forget Mick Foley was a part of.

Jack and Payne looked like a reasonable tag team but were painfully thrown together with little chemistry or direction. Backstage strife would lead to Payne leaving the company, and the best this makeshift team really accomplished was laying the groundwork for a better team between Jack and Kevin Sullivan as a pair of hardcore lunatics.

Next: The Most Successful Tag Team Wrestlers In WCW History, Ranked By Championships