10 Best Tag Teams In Wrestling Right Now
The Lost Artifice.
WWE have decimated their doubles division in 2017 - a depressing and depressingly predictable development from a company that has attempted to render the art, if not extinct, then irrelevant.
Enzo and Cass are no more: the latter is in the midst of his inevitable singles push, allegedly accelerated by the former's 24/7 obnoxiousness and flippant attitude to the wrestling business. American Alpha were sacrificed at the altar of WWE's now-trademark hot summer angle, the optimistic prefix being just that. #DIY dissolved when Tommaso Ciampa turned on Johnny Gargano after they failed to reclaim the NXT Tag Team Titles from the Authors Of Pain at TakeOver: Chicago. It was probably short-sighted to follow through with the long-term plan when it became apparent that Ciampa was looking at a lengthy layoff - electric though the angle was. While nobody's going to miss the Hype Bros, it looks like they're going missing imminently, too.
Bruce Prichard, on his Something To Wrestle podcast, has shed light on McMahon's mindset: "Why pay four guys for something two guys can do?"
It's a rhetorical question, but to answer it regardless: at its very best, tag team wrestling is literally double the drama, double the excitement. The lost art is lost on McMahon, and far removed from its commercial heights - but is arguably, thanks to these men, at its greatest critical peak in years.
10. Sheamus And Cesaro
WWE, for all its faults, is still good at subverting audience expectations.
The Sheamus and Cesaro origin story was panned at first. They'd wrestled before engaging in their inconclusive best of seven series. It felt like creative was just greasing their wheels to keep them spinning in place. The feud - a logical example of 50/50 booking, for once - was a plot device to create a tag team, and it was a good one; the two men were inseparable in quality and have become inseparable as a team.
Their best match - and you get the feeling they could be even better, if not subjected to repetition and baffling booking, a la Extreme Rules - saw them end the "record" reign of The New Day at Roadblock: End Of The Line. This took place when the two men really started to gel. Sheamus dropped Kofi Kingston with a rolling fireman's carry slam before Sheamus, instantly, caved his chest in with a double foot stomp, exhibiting the chemistry of much more tenured duos.
The pairing gets the best out of the curiously disconnected Sheamus. Cesaro is too awesome to truly hate. He's a hoss who can land on his feet following a monkey flip - an athletic freak. But Sheamus is always there to deflate the pops with his bruising power game, which has rarely worked as well in any other context.