8 Mind-Blowing Early Versions Of Famous Wrestling Tag Teams

Despite everyone's best intentions, most tag teams don't come out from behind the curtain fully formed. As with any gimmick, there's constant tweaking to the characters based on audience reaction, personnel involvement, and natural evolution. It's this slow and constant development that has created legendary, Hall of Fame caliber duos.

Just like the best TV shows, it might take a while for them to really get going. And you might not like them all that much in the beginning.

The unfortunate part of roster development is that because there's a historical record of most things ever done inside a wrestling ring, we're able to dig up the often embarrassing origins of these tag teams and view these "rough drafts" with the benefit of hindsight. And mock them accordingly.

It's a little tough to reconcile these early images with the finished product, but then that's half the fun.

Unlike many of the teams on this list, The Bushwhackers will never be considered wrestling legends. They had a hokey gimmick that centered around a couple of imbecile cousins, Butch and Luke, who licked each other and walked funny. That was pretty much it. They were a mid-card comedy act, albeit an immensely enjoyable one from time to time.

The Bushwhackers' place in the Hall of Fame still seems questionable, at best, although anyone familiar with their pre-WWE work knows these two gave plenty of blood, sweat, and tears to the business.

Before they put on the camouflage pants and started marching like doofuses, the duo routinely wrestled in barbed-wire cage matches against their foes, The Fantastics. Those old pictures you always see of Mick Foley and Terry Funk bloodied beyond recognition? That was Butch and Luke after most of their matches in the mid-80s.

Luke, especially, has been vocal about their role in pioneering hardcore wrestling, claiming he and Butch were "hardcore before they called it hardcore" and, judging from this photo and others like it, that's no lie.