20 WWE Ruthless Aggression Era Tag Teams You've Already Forgotten

Current fans may not even understand how good they have it when it comes to tag team wrestling. On the main roster and on NXT, tag teams are a meaningful part of the show, but for many years that simply was not the case. For pretty much the entirety of the so-called Ruthless Aggression Era -- let's say between the breakup of Edge & Christian and the debut of The Shield -- the the tag division was an afterthought, often struggling to maintain more than three teams at a time.

For some reason, WWE spent years calling teams up from developmental, giving them a few wins, then either giving them the titles or setting them adrift on the Heat/Velocity scene, and sometimes both. Maybe it was the booking, or perhaps it's fair to blame the wrestlers themselves, but the teams on this list debuted and vanished with little fanfare and even less accomplishment. Somehow, even the teams who stuck around for years feel like flashes in the pan.

Just for fun, I'll also be offering speculation about where these teams might end up if they found themselves under contract today, with a diverse and competitive tag scene and meaningful developmental program to back them.

The Mexicools were part of WWE's mid-2000's agenda to hire everyone I liked from WCW and use them terribly. Sure, you laugh, but who else remembers Vader's 2005 return just to lose to Batista and take a header off the ring apron?

So anyway, WWE hired cruiserweight standouts Psicosis, Juventud Guerrera and Super Crazy, instructed them never to do any of the things that made them popular, and made them act like indolent landscape laborers. Aside from how horribly racist this was, the biggest tragedy is that the Mexicools never participated in a low-speed chase involving their Juan Deeres and Kerwin White's golf cart.

Today They'd Be: Sending Los Matadores packing to give the Lucha Dragons some real competition.