Greatest Tag Wrestler ever

[MVZ]

Thanks for the reply Truth. In those terms I found myself picturing Arn and Eaton, bumping around(albeit in different ways) and then cheating creatively before unloading their offense which always looked great.

[JazeUSA]

Stan Lane was in 2 of the top 5 tag teams & 3 of the top 10 IMO

[Captain Conway]

I think Mike Rotunda should be close to the top of the list. He was good with Windham, he was good with Steve Williams, and he was good with Dibiase. Am I the only one who thinks so?

[Johnny Sorrow]

I don't get the whole "Morton was great but only with one partner" deal. Who fucking cares? Jimmy Page is one of the greatest guitar players ever but really only with Robert Plant with him.

[TheBigBoot]

 

I might be alone on this but I really liked Morton and Tommy Rich the Times they teamed up (face and heel). The Halloween Havoc match where the Midnights were leaving felt like a different variation on a familiar story. I don't doubt he could have been a great tag team worker with someone else (although I actually find Gibson a bit underrated).

 

It's an interesting point though, being able to have good chemistry with different partners. For a modern guy who could team with/compliment anyone Christian always struck me as a natural tag team wrestler.

 

He was (is?) a great bumper but he was also good at stifling, selling, facial expressions, and had an ability to connect with the crowd. Plus he was the kind of guy who would never steal the spotlight from his partner and seemed interested in getting the team over.

 

Some of it depends on if you rate Edge and Christian's matches but I thought he was the highlight of them especially the big stunt-fests. When I think back on those matches I think of two things: Jeff Hardy’s dives and Christian’s bumping. The same in "regular" matches really.

 

I'd have to see more of their ‘High Impact’/'The Suicide Blondes’ work to know for certain but everything I've heard is he was a natural and certainly by the time they got to WWF I think he was the better of the two (three if you count Gangrel when they formed The Brood). Obviously he was positioned as #2 in E&C and #3 in The Brood but he was always the workhorse of the team(s) and the one taking most of the umps.

 

I love Matt Hardy as a worker, especially in 2005-08, but it's close between him, Christian and Bubba as far as who held all those matches together. Like Matt he was more than happy to do the setting things up and keeping things moving then sit back and watch his partner shine in the big spots.

 

In some ways he was the least important of The UnAmericans since Storm (and later William Regal) was portrayed as the leader of the group and Test was the muscle, yet it was Christian who carried the group bumping for guys like Hulk Hogan. The partnership with Y2J was similar in that he was clearly positioned as the ‘lesser’ of the two, acting almost Jericho’s henchman in his feud with Shawn Michaels, but in-ring I felt he was the better of the two. He was certainly the more consistent when you look at that period.

 

Both those teams had good to great matches against Goldust and Booker T. In both cases a lot of it was due to how much chemistry Christian had with them.

 

Even in mixed tags with Trish, 'Trishtian’, as they were known, were a really solid team in the few matches they had together. The Jericho match had pretty good heel psychology. Again he was portrayed as the lesser partner to Stratus but most of the work was him.

 

And those were just the pushed teams he was part of.

 

The on-again off-again team with Test was a perfectly acceptable Big Man/small man unit where he worked to emphasise his partner's strengths.

 

The team with Tyson Tomko was a partnership that first looked like it would devalue him. Instead, what started off as an odd partnership with a stereotypical 2000s-style green monster heel, developed into another success due to Christian’s charisma (bringing out the best in Tomko) and the chemistry that developed between the them both in and out of the that carried through to TNA. Those Raw six man tags in early 2005 were great and a lot of that was how Christian played off his partners. Just one of those teams that shouldn't have worked but did and I think a lot of it is due to how experienced Christian was as a tag team worker. Some good work with Styles, Dreamer and Rhyno as well.

 

Christian doesn't have the catalogue of great tag matches most of the others did but he was very effective at what he did do.

A lot of that on it's own but from 1998-2008ish it's a pretty good resume considering tag team wrestling was mostly dead in that era.

 

Basically I thought he was the perfect guy to highlight both his partner AND their opponents which is what a good tag team wrestler should do.

 

On the other side of the fence, when you needed someone who had good matches with different tag partners but was strong on offense Terry Gordy (who was mentioned but not in detail) was pretty great.

 

Not sure how much of the WON Tag Team of the Year with Snuka was taped but the tiny bit I've seen looked like fun. Those of you who watched it at the time will know but it seemed like they were a good fit. Same with the team with Killer Khan. Anyway enough about Gordy teams I wish I'd watched and onto ones I have...

 

I thought all three Freebirds were great tag team workers (Roberts in the original Hollywood Blondes is another team I'd like to see and I even liked the Hayes/Garvin version of the Freebirds) but Gordy is the one I've seen in the most tag team matches with other partners and enjoyed be it as junior partner to Hansen or the veteran with Williams. Even washed-group shell of himself sticking him in a team with Tommy Dreamer wasn't the worst idea (again only seen the one match but they teamed several times in 96) in the role of legend.

 

Even within the Freebirds the teams of Gordy and Hayes and Gordy and Roberts had completely different dynamics. Throw in the MAC and that's three really cool partnerships with three totally different types of tag team partner.

 

My first thoughts (Morton, Eaton, Anderson, Steamboat, Dustin, Windham) have already been written about but I'd put those two up there somewhere.

[Parties]

The correct answer here is Bobby Eaton. The question also reminds me of the brief circa-'92 tag team in WCW that paired Arn and Eaton together as a team with Michael Hayes as their manager. It made no sense and was kind of just throwing three guys who weren't doing anything together, but on paper that is the most brilliant collection of American tag workers ever assembled. The prospect of all three working trios matches against really any other three guys from that era is insane to consider.

 

I like Yatsu as a thinking-outside-of-the-box-pick, in that tag wrestling brought something out in him that made him both stand out and elite as a partner. Everyone in a Yatsu tag seems to benefit from his presence.

[Cap]

I don't get the whole "Morton was great but only with one partner" deal. Who fucking cares? Jimmy Page is one of the greatest guitar players ever but really only with Robert Plant with him.

 

In hindsight Morton would probably be a real top tier for me. The more I thought about this the more he really does stand out as just simply one of the best. He would be at least in my top three to five after more consideration.

 

It really is sort of nitpicky and not a knock on Morton at all, but when one guy has proven success with multiple partners and the guy has success with just one, it’s a consideration. Its like if you are hiring someone to work for, say, a wrestling promotion as a talent scout and both candidates are equally qualified, but one speaks 3-4 languages and had experience in Japan and Mexico in addition to the states, while the speaks just one and primarily worked in the U.S., you notice that diversity. The second candidate might be one of the best talent scouts ever so it isn’t a dismissal of them in the least, but a point of distinction between elite talents. It’s the difference between one, two, and three… these are narrow distinctions, not knocks on talent.

[Sean Liska]

The Ricky Morton/Ken Lucas team is the highlight of 1980 Memphis TV. Ricky was the best. He could have been great with anyone. It's not like Gibson was Kobashi.

[Cap]

I have seen very little Memphis, which I took steps to remedy recently so maybe that small part of my post is null and void.

 

It all sort of misses the forest for the trees though. I conceded my first thought on it was kneejerk and missed the mark, but I am not sure 50 different partners would make him jump Arn or Eaton. Those are the only two I would have above him right now on the working list in my brain.

 

Again, it is parsing out the top five. The positives outweigh the negatives by a country mile, so any sort of criticism is probably a bit of a stretch, very subjective, and/or – as in this case – somewhat fleeting and kneejerk.

[victory]

I think Martel deserves a mention. He had solid to good teams with Piper, Bravo, Garea, Zenk and Tito. He also teamed with Tommy Rich in Georgia. I've personally never seen them as a team so maybe someone else comment if they were any good together.