If WWE Was Being Honest About Tag Team Wrestling
In parallel, Vince infamously burdened the former Road Warriors with “Rocco”: a ventriloquist dummy that had apparently supported a young Hawk and Animal throughout their troubled childhoods. Whenever a shoulder to cry on was needed, Rocco was there. Whenever Animal needed to learn the difference between right and wrong, their “little wrestling buddy” Rocco was there. Whenever the most badass, apocalyptic, no-selling, reckless couple of ultra-ripped warlords needed neutering, Vince McMahon was there.
Somehow, the Legion of Doom were spared the biggest indignity. They were lumbered with a dummy; they weren’t dummies themselves.
An entire event, Survivor Series, was once dedicated to the promotion of a super-sized version of the incredibly popular art. Is it little wonder that, in 2010, Vince declared the brand “obsolete”? It was as if he had formally declared tag team wrestling itself obsolete in the preceding two decades, with one notable - and telling - aberration.
The TLC Era yielded three iconic, unforgettable acts and a brand new, state-of-the-art match genre. Much like Jeff Hardy must still feel the effects of those crazed bumps today, those who watched with mouths agape can never forget them. They evidently hurt, and they mattered. They had to matter; the company’s “survival” - or, unrevised, its big boy perception - depended on it. At the height of the Monday Night Wars, in a segment-by-segment fight for supremacy, each segment held a purpose: even tag team wrestling, a genre that had suffered through strange bedfellows and broad comedy fatigue throughout the commercially poor New Generation Era.
Almost immediately following that pyrrhic victory, Vince dropped the pretence altogether. He never really cared for tag team wrestling and, faced with no competition, really didn’t have to. The lineage of the various split and confusingly-named doubles titles reads now like both a series of difficult trivia questions and a list of Vince McMahon’s self-indulgent leanings.
The gay-but-not-gay Billy and Chuck didn’t really court one another: just controversy. Foreign Heels (TM) the Un-Americans; Strange Bedfellows (TM) Kane and Rob Van Dam; Foreign Heels (TM) La Résistance: all held fool’s gold in tandem with directionless, thrown-together midcard acts (Air Boom) and colourless developmental graduates (The Corre). This slew of short-term, why-not? acts lasted for years and years. And years. In the SuperCena era, teams weren’t even cannibalised to initiate a singles run.
There was no meat left.
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