411’s Top 25 Tag Teams of the Last 25 Years (#25-#21)

Steve Cook: Steve Austin & Brian Pillman weren’t supposed to get over, at least not to the level they did. Pillman had turned heel late in 1992, and started teaming with Barry Windham, another man who had just turned heel. When Windham got a big singles push, he introduced Pillman to his new tag team partner, Stunning Steve Austin. Austin was just off of a successful run as the Television Champion with the Dangerous Alliance, but once the group split up they didn’t have any plans for him. Austin wasn’t sure about the teaming at first, as he was hoping for a huge singles push and didn’t want to be a tag team guy. It ended up being exactly what Austin needed, as Pillman became one of his best friends & the Hollywood Blondes became one of the best in-ring tag teams in WCW history. Flyin’ Brian & Stunning Steve were just the right blend of chickens*it heels & talented pro wrestlers to get their matches over no matter who they were up against. Fortunately for them, many of their matches were with the team of Ricky Steamboat & Shane Douglas. Steamboat already had great chemistry with Austin and was the perfect babyface to work with the Blondes. Douglas was young and not quite the worker that Steamboat, Pillman or Austin was, but he was smart enough to follow their lead and not drag things down.

The Blondes won the Unified Tag Team Titles from Steamboat & Douglas in March 1993, and were able to hold on to the straps for several months by utilizing their superior in-ring skills & by breaking nearly every rule in the book. After disposing of Steamboat & Dogulas, they turned their attention to the returning Ric Flair, who had reformed the Four Horsemen along with Arn Anderson & Paul Roma. This led to the legendary “Flair For The Old” segment that still gets featured on Austin DVDs. Anderson & Roma won the titles from the Blondes…well, from Austin & Lord Steven Regal anyway. Pillman was out with an ankle injury, but they had to do the title change because WCW had already done TV tapings with Anderson & Roma as the champs. Regal filled in for Pillman for the title change, and this began the Blondes’ downfall.

Certain people backstage began to take note of the heat that the Blondes were getting. They were becoming the most over heels on the WCW roster, and that wasn’t something that was meant for them, daddy. After the Blondes lost the titles, Austin hired Colonel Robert Parker as his manager and cast Pillman aside. Austin finally got the singles push he was hoping for…but he knew that it was because the Blondes were too popular. They feuded for a little bit after that, but it didn’t really go anywhere & the two wouldn’t interact again until they both popped up in the World Wrestling Federation in 1996. They re-kindled their friendship for a brief time, but did not get to have any tag team matches with each other since Pillman was injured at the time. They did have a singles feud after Austin turned on Pillman again and created the Pillmanizer, but they never got to have the run with or against each other that their longtime fans were hoping for.

Scott Rutherford: Wrestling politics can be almost as nasty as the politics used to get your way to the White House. This tag team, which had the potential to be literally the best of all time was formed because of politics and split up because of the same. It may very well be the most perfect example of cutting ones nose off to spite your face. These two were paired out of nowhere. Steve Austin was more than perplexed by this because he assumed he was going to be starting his ascent up the card off the back of his highly successful WCW TV Title run. Brian Pillman had been turned heel but was doing much of nothing. They were never supposed to get over and they damn sure were never supposed to be as good as what they became. Which is funny because even the most casual insider knew if you paired Pillman and Austin together you were going to get dynamite.

While they never were formed as The Hollywood Blondes or with any purpose, Pillman and Austin set about making the most of their situation. At the suggestion of Raven, they dubbed themselves The Blondes and started to look and act like a team. They developed perhaps the greatest catch phrase ever (“Your brush with greatness is over”) and would do incredible dick actions like after hitting a move then pretending to film it with an old school, hand cranked film camera. Jesus, they even brought back the trick knee during matches! Thanks to their hard work and fantastic matches they got over. No, they didn’t just get over; they were completely fucking hated for being incredible jerks.

Since they dared to get over (by pretty much ignoring what WCW told them to do), management was forced to push them and after a great series of matches with Shane Douglas and Ricky Steamboat they were made tag team champions. They followed that up with another terrific feud with Arm Anderson and Ric Flair, providing even more memorable material with their “Flair For The Old” skits. So now after being positioned as can’t miss heels and with a couple of smart booking moves, guaranteed draws, they get jobbed. Well, not even jobbed since Pillman wasn’t even around for their last match. Thanks to the ridiculous Disney taping schedule they had been slated to lose to Arn Anderson and Paul Roma months before, Pillman was injured and Steve Regal was plugged in as a substitute.

So after doing all the hard work to get themselves over and positioning themselves to be one of the main draws for WCW, they were summarily split against their will. Pillman was turned face (a move that took him years to recover from), Austin was given a run as US champion but then jobbed to Jim Duggan in a “Friend of Hogan” moment just after gaining serious traction. No reason was given as to why they were broken up, but both men speculated that some people got bent out of shape for getting themselves over.

It’s all a great shame really. You had two men that were enjoying what they were doing. Give them two men to wrestle, and they will give you a great match and entertain the masses and put asses in seats. You didn’t even need to split them us as they could have interesting, albeit parallel careers as singles heels (just like TNA are doing with Beer Money). Instead they were a brief flash in the pan that left behind and astonishing body of work.

Jeremy Thomas: Being a Portland native and a professional wrestling fan, I grew up as an Art Barr follower. Unless you completely ignored the local wrestling scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it was pretty much impossible not to be. Barr’s colorful rip-off of Beetlejuice as a gimmick was highly entertaining and he was an incredibly talented guy to boot, meaning that for young fans like me he was someone to really cheer for and love. Unfortunately for us young Portland wrestling fans, he also ended up as a convicted sex offender when he accepted a plea deal on charges laid against him by a nineteen-year-old girl. He always claimed he could have beat the charges but that he was advised to take the plea as it meant no jail time, and whether it’s true or not, the fact remained that he was a kid favorite who had just pled guilty on charges of first-degree sex abuse and it was no surprise that his wrestling license (yes, Oregon still had wrestling licenses at the time) was not renewed. That conviction kept him from finding success in WCW, but it also led him to AAA where he found his greatest success alongside a guy who would later be a world titleholder.

Art and Eddie Guerrero didn’t actually get along together at first. However, Barr had just turned heel in Mexico after a stint as a babyface in EMLL, and the two recognized that they would make a good tag team. Eddie turned on his tag partner El Hijo del Santo and Art and Eddie became La Pareja del Terror, later renamed Los Gringos Locos. If you’ve never seen a match from these guys, you’re missing out. Eddie and Art are considered to be one of the greatest heel teams in lucha history, and deservedly so. Not only were they great in the ring as partners and individually, but they got enormous crowd reactions. In that way there were almost the precursors of the Dudley Boys; people just loved to despise these two “crazy Americans” and their feud with El Hijo and Octagon was enormously popular, to the point that they got the semi-main event spot on the When Worlds Collide pay-per-view and pretty much stole the show. Unfortunately, it would also serve as the capping point in Barr’s career as three weeks later, just before the two were about to go to ECW, Barr died in his home in Springfield, Oregon of a suspected drug overdose. Art’s was a heavy influence on Eddie and Eddie took on the frog splash in tribute, a move that would eventually become synonymous with his name. The two were a great team and had Barr not passed away when he did, there is every likelihood that they would have gone on to even greater things in ECW.

Scott Rutherford: It’s almost clichéd now (sadly) that you look at wrestling’s past and see the unfortunate tragedy that has befallen so many. LGL is one of those occasions. Two extremely talented men, one gifted like few others, who could have had the world at the feet but ultimately had their demons overrun them. For those of you that have been living under a rock, Los Gringos Locos was the short-lived team of Eddy Guerrero and Art Barr. Barr died in 1994 from a drug related heart attack at 28, Eddy as well all know left us in 2005 from heart failure almost certainly related to drugs.

Perhaps lost in the sadness of each mans passing is the simple truth that this team was fucking awesome. People talk about today how wrestling has gotten away from itself and it has forgotten one of its most simple rules…keep it simple. You keep it simple (and logical) and the fans will invariable go along with you. The formation of this tag team was so simple and so logical it was instantly successful.

Art Barr was the hated American wrestling in Mexico for AAA going by the name “Love Machine”. Eddy was the son of a Mexican wrestling legend who was part of the successful tag team La Pareja Atómica (The Atomic Pair) with El Hijo del Santo playing off the tag team that their famous fathers had once been. When Eddy turned on Santo to joining that hated Barr it was one of the most volcanic shifts in Mexican wrestling history.

Their M.O was to be American as possible. Barr was already there but once Eddy, one of their beloved started to act that same way, they quickly became the most hated team in Mexico and to those in the know, considered to this day to be the most hated team ever. The term being “a dick” does not do them justice. Mexico uses the term Rudo to describe a heel and a more perfect name they could not find to describe these guys. They went by the name La Pareja del Terror (The Pair of Terror) to begin with and primarily feuded with El Hijo del Santo and his new partner Octagón. When Santo and Octagon beat them to become the inaugural AAA Tag Team Champions, it was on.

Soon they were joined by a phalanx of others like Konnan, Chicano Power, and Madonna’s Boyfriend (Louie Spicolli) and became known as the stable Los Gringos Locos. The reality was that people only cared about Barr and Guerrero. They won the tag titles from Santo and Octagon to further escalate their feud, which culminated in one of the most famous matches in wrestling history at the When Worlds Collide PPV on November 6th 1994.

The tradition of the Hair vs. Hair or Mask vs. Mask match in Mexico is extensive. In a land where stipulations still mean something, to lose one of these matches is the ultimate humiliation. So imagine when it was announced The Los Gringos Locos where going to have a feud settling grudge match with El Hijo del Santo and Octagón in a Hair vs. Mask match. Who would win? Would the arrogant Gringos get shamed by losing their hair? Would the babyfaces face the humiliation of losing their identity and revealing their faces? To add further spice to the match, it was announced it was be a 2/3 falls encounter.

What followed was one of the finest examples of tag team wrestling ever witnessed. For those who think the Lucha Libre isn’t for them, you obviously have not seen this match. This match was so good that Dave Meltzer loosened his sphincter and actually rated it ***** ( a rarity outside Japan and a Ric Flair match). It had everything, including the liberal use of one of Los Gringos best heat getting devices…laying and the mat and swimming to avoid the border guards. Los Gringos lost the match but created a legend and a hell of a reputation.

Paul Heyman was set to bring them to ECW, a move that they were happy to make as they were looking to break out from Mexico but on November 23, 1994 Barr was found dead at his home. 17 days after amazing the wrestling world with his amazing talent. The obvious will be said in that it was a life, career and tag team ended much too soon. Guerrero took on Art’s finisher as his own (the frog splash) and worked variations of the Los Gringos gimmick working his way to superstardom in the WWE. Just when he was about to ascend to the top once more, Eddy was found dead in his hotel room on November 13th 2005. Almost 11 years later to the day.

The Observer named them Tag Team of the Year in 1994 and likely only missed Match of the Year because Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramone created history with a ladder at WrestleMania X. They were outrageous and outrageously talented. They were heat getters that probably would have draw big money if given the chance in the U.S. Sadly they are a footnote in wrestling history, as they were not even together for 2 years.

Everyone needs to, anyway they can, find their Hair vs. Mask match with El Hijo del Santo and Octagón, sit down and relax and enjoy the mastery of one of the best teams in history.

Mike Campbell: “The Holy Demon Army” comprised of “Dangerous K” Toshiaki Kawada and “Dynamic T” Akira Taue, are one of the most revered teams in all of Japan. They hold the record for the most reigns as AJPW World Tag Team Champions, and they’ve been involved in some of the greatest matches of all time.

Kawada and Taue were brought together in 1993 by Giant Baba. The main feud had been Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, with Kawada as Misawa’s #2 and Taue as Jumbo’s. Tsuruta had contracted hepatitis and was going to be out indefinitely, so Misawa needed a new rival. Baba asked Kawada to team with Taue and be that man. After a thirty-minute draw against one another, Kawada and Taue ended their rivalry with a handshake and the Holy Demon Army was born.

Kawada and Taue’s chemistry was instant, they quickly won the AJPW Tag Titles for the first time from Dr. Death and Terry Gordy and on 6/1/93, they had the first of several legendary matches with Misawa and Kenta Kobashi. They’d follow that up with great matches with the same team on 12/3/93, 5/24/94, 6/9/95 (what many say is the best tag match of all time), and 10/15/95. Later, when Misawa and Kobashi dissolved their team and Misawa took on Jun Akiyama as his patner another round of classics took place on 5/24/96 and 12/6/96 (which I consider to be better than 6/9/95). Kawada and Taue would wear the AJPW Tag Team Titles on six occasions. The team would officially dissolve in June 2000, when Misawa split off from All Japan and formed NOAH, with most of the roster, Taue joined Misawa while Kawada stayed with AJPW. Kawada and Taue had a one-night reunion in 2009, in NOAH for the Mitsuharu Misawa Memorial Show on 10/3, defeating Jun Akiyama and KENTA.

What made Kawada and Taue so great? It certainly helped that they formed when Kawada was already coming into his own as a world-class worker. Teaming with Kawada did wonders for Taue, although it took a few more years for Taue to reach his peak. But, quite frankly, they were the personification of evil. Kawada was well known for his love of stretching people out and using stiff slaps and kicks as a primary means of attack (in a famous AJPW match he once broke Misawa’s orbital bone thirty seconds into the match with a single kick), and Taue was more than happy to jump on the bandwagon. Many of their famous matches revolved around Kawada and Taue brutalizing their opponents.

Ryan Byers: The Holy Demon Army grew out of the dissolution of two other teams, with Toshiaki Kawada moving on from a partnership with Mitusharu Misawa and Akira Taue being left in the lurch when the pro wrestling career of his regular partner, Jumbo Tsuruta, came to an end. It wasn’t readily apparent when the two broke away from their established partners but, by the end of their run, the HDA wound up being one of the most accomplished tag teams in Japanese professional wrestling history. Formed in 1993, the group gained some success almost immediately, winning their first All Japan Pro Wrestling Unified Tag Team Titles within months of first teaming together. They would go on to hold those championships on five more occasions, for a total of six reigns, which still stands as a record in AJPW. In addition to the title victories, Kawada and Taue also had two big tournament victories, capturing back-to-back Real World Tag League crowns in 1996 and 1997. In both of those years, the finals came down to the Holy Demon Army and Taue’s former partner Mitsuharu Misawa, who had subsequently paired up with Jun Akiyama. However, the Holy Demon Army doesn’t just make a list like this one because of their kayfabe accomplishments. The HDA also makes a list like this because, top to bottom, they have a longer list of quality matches than just about any other tag team from any other promotion in any other nation at any other point in history. People in the United States speak favorably about the “Smackdown Six” and the great series of matches that they had against one another, but that series was nothing compared to what the four pillars of All Japan Pro Wrestling, Misawa, Taue, Kawada, and Kenta Kobashi were doing against each other in the early and mid-1990’s. It was like these guys couldn’t get out of bed in the morning without having a match that was at least ****, and most of the crew’s best work came in tag team matches with the Holy Demon Army on one side of the ring. In fact, as a team, Taue and Kawada were involved in seven different matches that received a full complement of five stars from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter between the years of 1993 and 1997, most of which have received serious consideration from a variety of sources as being the greatest professional wrestling match of all time. Though they didn’t have another five star classic from 1997 through 2000, they did remain an active team during that time, continuing to win championships. The only thing that could have ended the reign of the Holy Demon Army was the split of All Japan Pro Wrestling into two separate companies, with Mitsuharu Misawa leaving the promotion to form Pro Wrestling NOAH, taking Taue with him while Kawada was one of the few Japanese-born wrestlers to remain in AJPW. With two companies being formed out of All Japan and a bitter rivalry existing between the two groups for several years, Taue and Kawada were largely kept apart from each other. It would, sadly, take a tragedy to reunite them, as the legendary team did not form again until October 3, 2009 as part of Pro Wrestling NOAH’s tribute show to the now-deceased Misawa. The reunion match featured Misawa’s old partner Akiyama teaming up with his protégé KENTA. It wasn’t exactly a classic, but the match was a great way for fans to look back on the glory days of a team that will be remembered for decades to come.

RC Sutton: In the early days of TNA, there was one tag team that was always solid, put on great matches and stabilized the division. The team that did that was America’s Most wanted. The team of the “Cowboy” James Storm and “Wildcat” Chris Harris were formed during the infancy of TNA’s weekly pay per view shows and gave the fans something to watch every time they stepped into the ring. They were the 2nd team in TNA history to be tag team champions as well. Their 4-year run not only helped stabilize the tag team division within TNA, but cemented their legacy as one of the great tag teams of the modern era.

America’s Most Wanted really made themselves in a cage match against Triple X in TNA’s very first cage match. The 4 men in that match delivered a worthy match for a company’s first ever cage match. To this day it is one of my favorite TNA matches. The Asylum exploded when AMW won the match and it put them on the map to stay. One interesting quirk about AMW is that, for every time the storyline has been played out of tag team dissention and split up by companies over the years, during America’s Most Wanted run, no matter how many times it was teased they would split up, they always managed to stay together. Eventually they would split up, but they disagreed and made up with each other more than any tag team I can remember.

America’s Most Wanted had many entertaining feuds, some of which include: Team 3D, Daniels & AJ, Triple X and LAX. During their time together, they managed to win tag team gold 6 different times and were named the PWI tag team of the year in 2004. Many will remember their time as the muscle for Jeff Jarrett , and the group of Jeff Jarrett, America’s Most Wanted and Gail Kim. It was during that time when they feuded with Team 3D in some very entertaining and fun matches. They ended that run as heels in an amazing set of matches against AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels.

For those that don’t know the story of America’s Most Wanted split, Storm played the villain when he busted a beer bottle over Chris Harris intentionally. Chris Harris would go onto a very mediocre WWE run and limped back to TNA recently for a weak, short lived return. James Storm has continued his tag team greatness with the likes of Bobby Roode. In the early days of TNA wrestles were allowed to just go all out on many occasions. The performers put everything they had into matches in an effort to entertain and amaze. Two of those entertainers that helped solidify TNA’s place as a wrestling company were James Storm and Chris Harris. They were a shining light within the new company, and are historically significant for being part of the rise of TNA. They also set the bar, as to what tag team wrestling in TNA was going to be.

Steve Cook: Chris Harris & James Storm got their jobs with TNA due in large part to each other. It was a singles match they had on a show in Nashville, Tennessee where the crew that would produce the first TNA PPV was testing stuff out that got them noticed by Jeff Jarrett. They had not teamed before their first appearance together in TNA, but people within wrestling will tell you that sometimes the best opponents make the best tag team partners. Indeed, Harris & Storm had outstanding chemistry together and it showed from the first time America’s Most Wanted entered a TNA ring. They became one of the highlights of TNA during the first half-decade of the company’s existence, as they were the focal point of the Tag Team division from September 2002 until their split in December 2006. They were faces for most of their run, though a heel turn in 2005 did freshen them up and kept their team viable longer than most people expected.

AMW won six NWA World Tag Team Championships during their time together, giving them more reigns with that prestigious championship than any team in the long & illustrious history of the National Wrestling Alliance. They began to be noticed by tag team aficionados during a feud early in their run with the Disciples of the New Church, but their main rivalry during their time as a tag team was with a group that called themselves “Triple X”. Christopher Daniels, Elix Skipper & Low Ki became the main challengers to AMW’s throne in 2003, and in 2004 Skipper & Daniels kept up the challenge. They had multiple classic matches that culminated at Turning Point 2004 in a Six Sides of Steel match that still rates as one of the best matches in the history of the company. Another top rival of theirs was the tag team of the Naturals. For a long time, Chase Stevens & Andy Douglas had AMW’s number like no other team before them, and it made for interesting television whenever the teams stepped into the ring.

AMW’s run came to an end rather abruptly, as they lost a match to the Latin American eXchange where the losing team had to split up. The match took place on an episode of Impact and basically got no build…AMW lost when Storm turned on Harris, and that led to a feud between the two. Storm went on to form Beer Money Inc. with Robert Roode, a tag team that many say ended up being better than his tandem with the Wildcat. He’s one of TNA’s most tenured wrestlers, and recently won their heavyweight championship for the first time. Harris floundered a bit in TNA before going to WWE, and had an ill-fated stint there. He hasn’t done much of note since then, though he did return to TNA for a couple of shows in May 2011 to put over his old partner’s new tag team. No discussion of TNA tag teams is complete without mentioning America’s Most Wanted.

Jack Bramma: Claudio Castagnoli and Chris Hero, better known as the Kings of Wrestling or KOW, have skyrocketed up the annals of tag wrestling in only 5 short years. Within a year of formation, the KOW were crowned the first ever Chikara Campeones de Parejas (tag team champions). Less than a year later, the KOW would complete the modern independent tag team triple crown by simultaneously holding the Chikara, ROH, and PWG tag team championships. This wouldn’t have been possible without a perfectly played heel turn by Claudio during one of the best tag brawls you’ll ever seen between CZW and ROH at the 100th Show. The sky seemed the limit for the pairing but their peak would have to wait a few years.

After a red herring alleged signing with the WWE for Claudio and a couple of years of singles success, the Kings reunited to a raucous ovation at Final Battle 2009 by attacking the Briscoes after a classic with the American Wolves to ignite one of the best tag feuds of recent years. Armed with two of the most kayfabe devastating moves in wrestling history the KRS1 and the Big Swing into a dropkick and one of the most consistently effective weapons in the lucky/loaded elbow pad, the Kings were able to topple the Briscoes and win the ROH belts for a second time. With no Fed tease looming, there was no stopping Claudio and Hero as they racked up one successful defense after another over the Briscoes, the American Wolves, and the Murder City Machine Guns on their way to the longest tag reign in ROH history at 363 days. Along the way, they successfully made the transition from comedy, sneaky, cowardly heels to hardened, weathered veterans who could beat the Briscoes at their own game at Death Before Dishonor VIII. The only thing that could stop them again was the WWE calling again but this time, rather than just one, they wanted both members of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Tag Team of the Year for 2010. Even though they will have to abandon their epically awesome entrance theme and likely have to give up being VERY European, going forward nothing can stop the Kings of Wrestling.

Greg DeMarco: At one point, Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli held the CHIKARA, CZW and ROH tag team titles all at the same time. That was over three years ago, and the Kings of Wrestling never looked back. The team broke-up amidst Claudio Castagnoli’s first WWE signing, one that never materialized. This lead to a feud that many considered to be a weak moment for the duo. A reformation of the team lead to another ROH tag team title run, one that lasted nearly 12 months when they were unseated by Charlie Haas & Shelton Benjamin.

But The Kings of Wrestling were more than a tag team that collected gold to achieve a certain number. Their story comes in the miles logged traveling North America, reportedly driving across many states at a time to work a show for little to no money, but to gain experience. The KOW even footed the bill for their own trip through the Mexican independents, just to add to their already impressive in-ring repertoire. These efforts gained notoriety spanning the globe, from the United States to Japan.

Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli wrestled their last match as a tag team in ROH at the company’s first television tapings under the Sinclair Broadcasting Group umbrella. While it was reported that both had signed with the WWE, only Castagnoli has reported to FCW. Chris Hero most recently appeared in a replacement role at the Wrestling Revolution Project tapings in Hollywood.

Will the Kings of Wrestling ever grace a WWE ring as a tag team? Only time will tell. But if this is truly the end of the road for them as a team, it’s a road paved with hard work and an unmatched (and often under appreciated) dedication to their craft.

– Listen to the latest edition of the 411 on Wrestling podcast! On the show, 411’s Larry Csonka is joined by co-host Steve Cook to discuss the latest editions of IMPACT Wrestling and WWE Smackdown. From there the guys discuss Larry’s night out with the mariachi band, the Bound for Glory buyrate, mainstream wrestling – the major problems with it in both TNA & WWE, and why the guys are so frustrated. Plus, Andy and Trent call in to celebrate the Cardinals winning the World Series, and we discuss your calls, questions and more! Plus some bonus time, discussing Nigel McGuinness, football and other random topics…

You can listen to the show on the player below, or you can download the show here.