10 Most Over WCW Tag-Teams Ever
Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were supposed to be heels, but they were undeniably cool...
World Championship Wrestling may have been consigned to history, but there's still a lot of strong feeling for the once-proud promotion. Today, a lot of older pro wrestling fans look back on what the company achieved and realise there was a lot to enjoy under the WCW banner. Tag-team wrestling was most certainly one of those aspects, it was something WCW routinely treated with great respect.
Naturally, during the Vince Russo era of booking in the late-1990's there were periods when the WCW Tag-Team Titles were thrown around from team to team without any real regard for credibility. Things weren't always that way though, there were times when the championships were viewed as entirely credible.
Once known as the NWA, the WCW name really came to prominence in 1988, as Ted Turner looked to forge his own path. WCW was still affiliated with the NWA, but now had standalone titles and trademarks. Therefore, only teams who worked from 1988 up until the promotion's demise in 2001 are included here, but there are some colourful duos to look at.
From those early days of '88, right up until near the end of WCW's shelf life, tag-team wrestling was a popular feature that enthralled fans and led to many teams getting seriously over. The sheer variety on offer across the board shows just how seriously WCW's often-skewed power men took tag wrestling.
10. Chris Benoit & Dean Malenko
Even though they only held the WCW Tag-Team Titles once, Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko were very much over with fans. At the Uncensored 1999 pay-per-view, they defeated Curt Hennig and Barry Windham in quite the bout to become the new champions, and fans greeted the decision favourably. It didn't hurt that the match itself was high on quality.
As part of the revamped Four Horsemen faction in the late-90's, Benoit and Malenko always worked well together as a tandem. Individually, they were regularly received well by audiences, but there was something cool about seeing them together as a team. Indeed, Benoit and Malenko came across as a modern-day version of Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, a great unit from the halcyon days of the NWA.
Both were excellent in-ring technicians, and Benoit brought an intensity to proceedings with moves like his diving headbutt from the top rope. Malenko and Benoit would be gone by the turn of the new millennium, which shows how badly WCW dropped the ball with them. They really could have had more success as a tag-team, fans reaction wouldn't have been an obstacle.