10 Wrestling Tag Teams That Should Never Have Split
3. The Dudley Boyz
WWE do deserve some credit for trying something different with The Dudley Boyz during the first ever brand extension in 2002. Bubba Ray Dudley continued as a babyface brawler on Raw and D-Von Dudley was completely recast as a Baptist preacher who extorted money from fans over on SmackDown.
Whilst the idea was interesting, it was a million miles from what fans wanted to see from the table-breaking tag-team and wouldn't work out. Proving the split was a failure, WWE elected to reunite the storylines brothers at Survivor Series and in turn pretty much pretended that D-Von's religious gimmick hadn't happened.
The Dudleyz shouldn't have been split in the first place though. There was no reason to mess around with a formula that hadn't yet grown stale.
Keeping both Bubba Ray and D-Von on one brand would have strengthened the tag-team division on that show and would have avoided the need for both to fight for space in the mid-card pack on Raw and SmackDown. The fact they were shunted back together so quickly shows that WWE knew they had made a mistake with The Dudley Boyz.