It’s not unusual for wrestlers to change gimmicks and placement on the card over the course of a career. Even a top star like John Cena spent years in developmental honing his Prototype character that featured him speaking in reverse to “rewind” promos and repeat key parts of them—something that would come across as cartoonish even by Cena’s not entirely serious standards nowadays.
A part of that transformation for quite a few stars has been enrollment in tag teams. Tag teams are a fine way of introducing or making use of talents. Some example include pairing a relatively inexperienced talent with a veteran to offer more credibility in front of the camera and mentorship behind the scenes. Others involve isolated storylines, or just seeing if a pairing will work in lieu of any better ideas for the singles performers involved (the recent tag team of Bobby Roode and Chad Gable reads like a prime example of this dynamic).
This article takes a look at ten instances from WWE and ten instances from WCW of one or more major stars being involved in a tag team that has largely been lost to the sands of time. That’s often a matter of one or both members of the team going on to bigger and better things, or the team only lasting for a short period of time relative to the individual stars’ careers. Some of these teams were quite good and had the potential to achieve greater historical notoriety than they have. Others are probably best left forgotten, as they really weren’t the best case scenario for the talents involved.
20 WWE: Edge & Hulk Hogan
Edge retired as a highly decorated multi-time world champion who was undeniably worthy of his “main event” spot when he got inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. It wasn’t always so clear that he had that kind of destiny in front of him, though. He went from his celebrated period in a tag team with Christian, on to an elongated period as an upper mid-carder that ran the risk of him turning out more like a Kofi Kingston or Cesaro type figure who never cracked the glass ceiling.
One of the indicators WWE was serious about him, though, came when he was positioned for a tag title run with his real life childhood hero Hulk Hogan.
It was a terrific pairing to give Edge the rub of working with a legend, while Hogan had a young workhorse to carry the load in the ring.
19 WCW: Cactus Jack & Maxx Payne
Before Mick Foley became the Hardcore Legend in WWE he had a multi year run in WCW. This included two spells as a main eventer, first as a monster heel antagonist against Sting, and then as a madman face to rival Vader. Afterward, WCW seemed at a loss for what to do with him. His tag team with Kevin Sullivan made some good sense as a pair of crazy guys prone to violence. The pairing with Maxx Payne is in hindsight, an odder fit.
Jack and the eventual Man Mountain Rock were basically big bearded guys with nothing better to do when they paired up for a run that most notably included challenging for the tag titles. The pairing underscored how badly WCW missed the boat on Foley’s potential.
18 WWE: Brock Lesnar & Shelton Benjamin
To look at them today, Brock Lesnar is one of the biggest stars in wrestling history, while Shelton Benjamin goes down as a widely respected athlete who nonetheless never realized his full potential.
It’s striking to think that, back in their developmental days, the duo was actually cast as a tag team.
Interestingly, Benjamin could actually be viewed as a more athletic, less jacked Lesnar as they shared an amateur pedigree and size that made them reasonable choices to pair up. In the end, though, Benjamin has become much better known for his long running partnership with Charlie Haas, while Lesnar is of course a huge singles star.
17 WCW: The Undertaker And Dan Spivey
WCW assembled a formidable tag team in young Sid Vicious and Dan Spivey—a pair of big men billed as The Skyscrapers. Out of the pair, it was clear early on Vicious was destined for a big push, though Spivey seemed like he could be a star in his own right.
That team alone is a bit of a forgotten gem, but even more overlooked was the follow up team that came about when Vicious got injured and WCW plugged in a replacement tall wrestler, Mean Mark Callous, also known as The Undertaker. WCW certainly never realized what it had in the eventual Phenom who would become one of the biggest stars in WWE history.
16 WWE: Road Warrior Animal And Heidenreich
Animal was half of one of the most iconic tag teams in wrestling history when he teamed up with Hawk to form the Road Warriors, also billed as The Legion of Doom.
In the latter stages of the team’s run and Hawk’s life, Droz got drafted as a third member but the angle never fully stuck. Years later, WWE would try again after Hawk had passed. They brought back Animal in his mid-40s and teamed him up with young Heidenreich, an edgy, muscular young talent.
On paper, the idea of reinventing the Legion of Doom and passing the torch to the next generation made reasonable sense. In practice, however, Animal was past his prime, and Heidenreich wasn’t really a fit as Hawk’s successor, making for a largely forgettable team.
15 WCW: Goldberg And Bret Hart
The most famous association between Goldberg and Bret Hart is that the two were rivals. Their story included one of The Hitman’s more iconic WCW moments when he wore steel plate to fend off Goldberg’s spear, besides the tragedy of a misplaced kick from Goldberg leading to the end of Hart’s career.
Amidst this program, though, the two were paired up as an odd couple tag team that even won the tag titles on an episode of Thunder.
They’d drop the titles just a week later, underscoring that the story of their team was built much more to further the story of them as opponents than to serve any other purpose.
14 WWE: CM Punk And Kofi Kingston
CM Punk’s WWE legacy is in many ways best remembered for him being an anti-authority loner, but he did have his partnerships, like stints leading the Straight Edge Society or the New Nexus, or when he teamed with Paul Heyman as his manager.
Punk also realize some success early in his main roster run, too, by teaming with Kofi Kingston. Punk won his first World Heavyweight Championship via Money in the Bank cash-in earlier in 2008, but then won the tag titles with Kingston in the aftermath. The win was especially noteworthy as it contributed to Punk’s run in becoming the quickest WWE Superstar to become a triple crown champion—from first to third belt--when he won an Intercontinental Championship, too, the following January.
13 WCW: Buff Bagwell And The Patriot
Though fans tend to remember Marcus Alexander Bagwell by his arrogant heel Buff Bagwell persona first and foremost these days, he had a run as a successful tag team wrestler for several years leading up to that point. One of his most off forgotten teams was Stars and Stripes, for which he partnered with The Patriot.
This was probably Bagwell’s most serious, credible team prior to his nWo days, relative to an earlier pairing with 2 Cold Scorpio in which both were marketed as rookie sensations, and the silly American Males tandem with Scotty Rigs. Both men would go on to bigger things—Bagwell as an upper mid-carder in WCW, while The Patriot would go so far as to challenge Bret Hart for the WWE Championship.
12 WWE: Batista And D-Von Dudley
When WWE first introduced Batista to the main roster, the company followed the time honored route of pairing a blue chip prospect with an established veteran to both give him the rub in front of fans and have a hands on mentor backstage.
Unfortunately, D-Von Dudley, working a heel reverend gimmick, wasn’t exactly over as a singles star, and didn’t exactly help Batista’s prospects.
Batista worked in a bodyguard-type role, and as D-Von’s occasional tag team partner before WWE scrapped the gimmick with a Dudley Boyz reunion and Batista heading off on his own, en route to the formation of Evolution.
11 WCW: Scott Hall And The Big Show
The New World Order era of WCW was largely defined by chaos and an overwhelming number of top shelf stars, leading to more than a few oddball pairings of Hall of Fame caliber talents. One of them was Scott Hall and The Big Show (then known as The Giant). Together, this big man team won the tag titles on behalf of nWo Hollywood.
Hall’s personal issues would catch up to him, and he was missing in action for the tail end of this tittle reign. Scott Steiner wound up filling in for him in the match when the team lost the titles to Rick Steiner.
10 WWE: Kane And The Hurricane
Fans tend to mock Glenn Jacobs’s early days with WWE, when he played characters like Isaac Yankem DDS and the fake Diesel en route to finding his footing as Kane. Though that last gimmick would end up defining his career, he wasn’t always on top with it. Indeed, The Big Red Machine found himself more than once cast into the tag team division with an oddball partner, and one of the most random pairings of all saw him team up with The Hurricane.
The tandem held the tag titles for a brief stretch, winning them from Lance Storm and Christian only to wind up dropping them to Christian and Chris Jericho.
9 WCW: Paul Orndorff And Paul Roma
Paul Orndorff will always have a slot in history as part of the very first WrestleMania main event, teaming with Roddy Piper against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. Mr. Wonderful had a long career before and after that time, though, including a goodly amount of time working for WCW.
In WCW, Orndorff spent one stretch teaming with Paul Roma under the moniker Pretty Wonderful.
While not an all time great team, it was a positive step for Roma who had previously been cast as a Horseman and teamed with Arn Anderson. This heel duo that followed was a much more natural fit for his talents and the fans’ perception of him.
8 WWE: X-Pac And Hardcore Holly
Before X-Pac was one of the defining members of D-Generation X, he was billed as The 1-2-3 Kid—an underdog face who never gave up against larger opponents. One key part of his early run as the Kid saw him team up with Bob Holly (before he was Hardcore, when WWE was still aiming to get him over as a race car driver).
This undersized, underdog team wound up winning the tag titles after Shawn Michaels and Diesel vacated them. The Kid and Holly won their way through a tournament bracket to achieve this early, largely forgotten token of success.
7 WCW: Sid Vicious And Randy Savage
Sid Vicious and Randy Savage were major stars on the national wrestling scene from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. Interestingly, they scarcely crossed paths in their primes, often working for different promotions or booked in separate angles until one left the shared roster.
In 1999, though, the stars aligned and Vicious wound up returning to WCW and being booked onto Team Madness—a stable led by Savage—where the two finally shared substantive screen time and worked together as a tag team. Each man remained more focused on singles pursuits, though, and Vicious’s run at this time tends to be better remembered for his program with Goldberg and their competing undefeated streaks.
6 WWE: The Big Show And Billy Gunn
Billy Gunn is known as a pretty legendary tag team performer in WWE, who most famously combined forces with The Road Dogg as The New Age Outlaws, but also had meaningful, championship winning runs with Chuck Palumbo and Bart Gunn. He also had a short lived team with The Big Show.
Show is generally considered a legend, and teaming with Gunn—particularly in a partnership that didn’t render any hardware.
The Show Gunns team came about at a relative low point for the giant, though, as he was transitioned away from the top of the card to get in better shape and learn to work better in the WWE style. The team didn’t add much to either participant’s legacy, but it did keep them both on TV during a time when they might have otherwise lost their footing altogether.
5 WCW: Arn Anderson And Bobby Eaton
Arn Anderson and Bobby Eaton are both pretty iconic tag team wrestlers. Andersons is best known for his work with The Four Horsemen, teaming with guys like Tully Blanchard and Ole Anderson. Eaton’s most famous work came with The Midnight Express, though he also worked with a number of other teams including a good one with William Regal, billed The Blue Bloods.
Anderson and Eaton would come together as sort of a tag team dream team in the early 1990s, representing Paul Heyman’s Dangerous Alliance stable. Together, the two would add to their collection of tag team gold, and contribute to an overarching sense of the faction’s dominance over WCW at the time.
4 WWE: Booker T And Test
One of Booker T’s greatest claims to fame is being not only a home grown star for WCW, but one of the very few guys with that pedigree to successfully transition to WWE and meaningfully further his legacy there. Booker himself has referenced in interviews that a lot of that came down to rolling with the punches, adapting, and most of all keeping his head down and continuing to work hard to justify his place on top.
Early in Booker’s time with the company he was teamed up with Test as part of the larger Alliance faction that threatened to steamroll WWE. This was not either man’s pinnacle even within the tag team ranks (Booker, in particular, can hang his hat on Harlem Heat in WCW, and his oddball pairing with Goldust in WWE). Just the same, the did win the WCW Tag Team Championships for a spell, before they were unified with WWE’s title.
3 WCW: Lex Luger And The Big Show
During the original New World Order run, few faces gained more by standing up against the group than Lex Luger. He’s most famous for both being one of WCW’s three representatives against the invading stable at Bash at the Beach 1996, and for briefly unseating Hollywood Hogan for the WCW Championship.
Luger’s run against the nWo also included an on again off again partnership with The Big Show, then known as The Giant.
Though The Giant himself would be in and out of the nWo ranks (before that was true of Luger, himself, too), he was consistently featured, and if he wasn’t a part of the table he was usually positioned against them. So, this duo teamed up first to take the tag titles off of The Outsiders, and down the road to oppose the team of Hogan and Dennis Rodman.
2 WWE: Tyson Kidd And Justin Gabriel
Tyson Kidd and Justin Gabriel are both pretty universally perceived to be outstanding in ring talents, held back because their relatively small size. Kidd’s biggest claim to fame in WWE was his Hart Dynasty tag team with DH Smith, where as Gabriel peaked early in his tenure as a featured member of The Nexus faction.
In an in between time, when it appeared WWE didn’t have anything in mind for either performer, they would up in a high-flying, technically proficient tag team together. They certainly had the talent to go the distance as a tandem, but WWE seemed to position them as a unit more as a placeholder than with any meaningful plans.
1 WCW: Earthquake And Kurrgan
Earthquake was a main event level super heavyweight for WWE in the early 1990s. He lost some of his luster over time, including a middling run with WCW for which he changed gimmicks too frequently to be taken all that seriously. He would wind up his career on the national scene under a mask as Golga, back in WWE.
As Golga, the man who had once feuded with Hulk Hogan at the top of the card, and been part of featured tag team with Typhoon, became more of an afterthought, teaming with fellow big man Kurrgan as part of The Oddities. While their size made them formidable, they were never booked to achieve much success as a pair.