7 Ways WWE Can Salvage Gallows & Anderson

by John Bills

1. What If There Isn't Really Anything To Salvage?

anderson gallows tag team
WWE.com

When it broke that Gallows & Anderson were leaving NJPW, the wrestling press was all ablaze. From January 4, 2014 onwards the two had held the IWGP Tag Team Championships for all but 129 days, their three reigns briefly interrupted by Meiyu Tag (Hirooki Goto & Katsuyori Shibata) and The Kingdom. Gallows & Anderson, as WWE commentators like to tell us, were truly dominant in New Japan Pro Wrestling's tag division.

The truth is however that NJPW's tag division during this time can only be described as being dire. Gallows & Anderson's three reigns were boring at best, with the only memorable matches being two of their title losses (to Meiyu Tag in 2015 and Great Bash Heel before leaving in 2016). The duo had a feud with The Kingdom (Matt Taven & Mike Bennett) in the summer of 2015 that was truly, truly wretched.

Karl Anderson is a world class professional wrestler, and Luke Gallows is a fantastic big man in his own right. The truth is however that as a tag team they haven't exactly been interesting since their inception. When Goto and Shibata defeated them for the IWGP straps at Wrestle Kingdom 9 many were thankful that the Bullet Club duo's tag reign was finally over.

It isn't as if they were running through the great tag teams in New Japan of yesteryear, teams like Tenzan & Chono, Tenkoji (in their tag prime) or even Anderson & Giant Bernard (Albert/Tensai). They were beating Hiroshi Tanahashi and Togi Makabe on their summer off and over thrown together teams.

Gallows & Anderson may well be just fine where they are.

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.