10 Instant Wrestling Title Devaluations
2. From The Smoking Gunns...To Owen Hart & Yokozuna (WWF World Tag Team Titles)
The Smoking Gunns weren't the greatest tag team of all time, by any means - but they were a team, at least.
When they lost the straps to the strange bedfellows pairing of Owen and Yokozuna, it signalled the death of traditional tag team wrestling as we know it. That might be overstating matters - WWE's doubles division is in remarkable health these days, after years in ostensible exile - but the trope is never too far away.
Would the ghastly pairing of Kenzo Suzuki and Rene Dupree have existed without it?
Worse still, feuding singles stars would also get inexplicably get thrown together. Tag teams are meant to be specialists - throwing two singles stars together undermines what is meant to be its own entity entirely. Having two opposing stars atop the tag mountain doesn't so much pull the rug from under itself as wrap the titles within it and throw it unceremoniously into the river.
Happily, Paul Heyman subverted this trope in 2002 by bandying it around the waists of the SmackDown Six - Chris Benoit, Kurt Angle, Edge, Rey Mysterio, Eddie and Chavo Guerrero - who could only claim the recently created WWE Tag Team title when they were shown to fully cooperate to respect and learn the tag team art.