The Issue #11
By: Bryon Frazier
September 8, 2003
(There were no Issues or Reasons last week due to a trip to Chicago. There were no Issues or Reasons this week up until now because I'm incredibly lazy.)
The Issue
Rumor has it that Vince McMahon lost his cool at a house show when he felt that a Tajiri vs. Rhyno match was a little too boring. It seems that the two gents were using a slowdown style as suggested to them by the WWE brass, but Vince was unhappy about this. "How dare they do what we say" he apparently thought, as he came out, chanted "boring" at them, and had an impromptu bikini contest. This has been your weekly news update. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
. . . and that's why I refuse to say "I love you" on the first date. Moving on, if it wasn't for The World's Greatest Tag Team, the WWE would be devoid of any tag duos worth watching. By my count, the company has maybe ten teams on the entire roster, and of those only the Dudleyz, and WGTT have actually been working regularly as a team for an extended amount of time. La Resistance and the Acolytes have each wrestled many matches, but neither do too much tag cooperation and therefore I don't consider them to be "working regularly as a team," and as far as I'm concerned that's the whole point of tag wrestling. Cooperative maneuvers are what are supposed to convince us that a great tag team can beat a two great singles wrestlers.
Then again, the WWE hasn't pulled a trigger on something like that in quite a while, which is really sad. This is what lead to such legendary tag champions as "Steve Austin and the Undertaker," "Steve Austin and Mankind," and of course "Steve Austin and Triple H." I personally hope that such days never return. I hope that the Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin hold onto their Smackdown Tag Titles forever. The Raw Tag Titles on the other hand . . .
I'm all for the injection of some young blood into the WWE shows, and La Resistance definitely qualifies as that in more ways than one. However, these guys desperately need experience, and I just don't think they get it working WWE-style televised matches. They don't get any real match time and 90% of their finishes are belt shots. This will not result in a great tag team, especially since each member individually is so inexperienced. At least Haas and Benjamin spent years in OVW, and a lot of that time as parts of tag teams down there, before being promoted to the big show.
I'm only complaining about the current crop of tag wrestling because it's always been something I've enjoyed. There are so many things that two men can do that one man can't, and that element alone makes the tag division a must. The problem is that they seem to be doing the old "mix-and-match" approach to fixing the situation and that won't cut it. They need to make actual teams instead of combining two singles competitors and hoping they become popular. Get the guys to learn cooperative spots to work into their matches, give them matching tights, have them hang out at all times. The goal is to give them the appearance of unity; make them seem like they work together better than as individuals. This is the psychology of tag team wrestling and it's been mostly absent in recent years of the WWE.
I suppose it doesn't help that the only heel tag team on Raw is La Resistance and the only face team on Smackdown is the Acolytes, but that's getting a little ahead of things. Let's improve the teams themselves first, then worry about having a balanced alignment.
A Reason Why I Miss WCW
When it gets right down to it, all we have left today is Garrison Cade and Mark Jindrak, and that's just sad. I'm referring to jobber tag teams, and when it comes to that, Cade and Jindrak are as weak as it gets. In WCW, you had duos like Disorderly Conduct and High Voltage for the bigger teams to kick around, and I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm a big fan of jobber matches. Sure, there are some JTTS teams running around in the WWE today, such as the FBI and the Bashams, but when it comes to the "always losing" variety of jobbers, it begins and ends with Cade and Jindrak.
I suppose really I miss all the tag teams in general in WCW. They had all levels of tandems from jobbers to main eventers. Sometimes the strength of a tag division isn't in the talent of the teams, but in the sheer number of teams running around, and that was one thing that WCW could afford since they had 700 gentlemen on the roster. So because of that, you had high-level guys like Lex Luger being relegated to full-time tag duties. Even guys like Booker T and Chris Benoit worked extensively as parts of teams during their WCW careers.
Toward the end of WCW's existence, they still had an emphasis on tag teams, complete with cruiserweight tag titles which were fought for weekly by combinations of Jamie Noble, Shane Helms, Shannon Moore, Kaz Hayashi, Jimmy Yang, and Evan Karagias. Even their biggest coup in their battle for Monday Night supremacy, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, were primarily a team for a great stretch of their WCW stays.
Damn it, I miss that Atlanta-based wrestling promotion's love for having two guys team up. In fact, it's Reason #11 for why I miss WCW.