The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic was (and still is) a great idea. Generally, tournaments are great ways to have a long-term program and series of matches to fill your shows, and they can elevate a performer or team in the process. However, there was one major flaw with the inaugural tournament: A duo that had never teamed before (at least in NXT) won the whole tourney. In fact, the two teams in the finals were comprised of first-time partners who defeated regular tag teams in the semis earlier in the evening to advance. Of the 16 teams in the whole tournament, nine were regular tag teams. Four of them lost in the first round. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65PsS4TLJQU Granted, theres a fair amount of star power in the top teams in the tourney, but it could have been a great opportunity to elevate a regular tag team, say Jason Jordan & Chad Gable, rather than giving NXT Champion Finn Balor and Samoa Joe another piece of hardware for their shelves. Just a thought going forward for next years tournament.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
