4. The Shield vs. Cody Rhodes and Goldust (Monday Night Raw, October 14th)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSLseNGspRs The resurgence of the tag team division has been one of the highlights of the 2013 fourth quarter. Cody Rhodes and Goldust have spearheaded the effort. Their dramatic storyline with The Authority in September and October led to excellent television and the 2013 TV Match of the Year when they captured the Tag Team Championships from The Shield on October 14th. One might automatically scoff when reading the latter half of the preceding sentence, given CM Punk vs. John Cena on February 25th, but nothing was truly on the line with Punk vs. Cena. We all knew that Cena was facing Rock at WrestleMania by then, thus making Cena vs. Punk little more than a creative placeholder as the writing team came up with a way to start the Punk vs. Undertaker feud. Rhodes and Goldust vs. The Shield was the culmination of several weeks' worth of TV and followed a PPV match that many have put on the short list for "best" match of 2013 at Battleground. Few matches throughout the year captured the audience's emotions as much as the tag title match. It currently sits as the bout that brought tag team gold back to a place of importance without the assistance of a pair of main-eventers without anything better to do a strategy used numerous times to stimulate the division since the TLC era ended. The Shield had been used as an Authority conduit, doing Triple H and Stephanie McMahon's bidding in a degrading situation that had also featured Dusty Rhodes being knocked out by Big Show and Randy Orton beating Cody just days before his real life wedding to create a kayfabe story that yielded the youngest Rhodes the biggest reactions of his career. Sweet redemption was reached both for the Rhodes brothers in story and the tag division in stature with a memorable Raw main-event.
Chad Matthews
Contributor
"The Doc" Chad Matthews has written wrestling columns for over a decade. A physician by trade, Matthews began writing about wrestling as a hobby, but it became a passion. After 30 years as a wrestling fan, "The Doc" gives an unmatched analytical perspective on pro wrestling in the modern era. He is a long-time columnist for Lordsofpain.net and hosts a weekly podcast on the LOP Radio Network called "The Doc Says." His first book - The WrestleMania Era: The Book of Sports Entertainment - ranks the Top 90 wrestlers from 1983 to present day, was originally published in December 2013, and is now in its third edition.
Matthews lives in North Carolina with his wife, two kids, and two dogs.
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