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Is Claudio Castagnoli/Antonio Cesaro the best tag worker of this century?


KawadaSmile

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I know some of the vets here have more knowledge regarding the Eatons, Mortons, and Gibsons(es?) of the world, but at least in this century, is Cesaro the best tag worker in the world? The volume of his work with the likes of Chris Hero, Tyson Kidd, Sheamus, and even Nakamura is staggering.

How does he fair, historically speaking?

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Cesaro is great, and is great at working tags is part of that. I don't see him as a top 10 tag team wrestler all time or anything though.

I really think for the most part the wrestlers who are best at working tags are the best at putting on entertaining matches in general. Like the best tag worker ever for me might be Kenta Kobashi.

 

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I'm pretty much always going with Eaton on the question of the all-time GOAT.

I also think you may be overrating Cesaro based on the variety of partners. He's very good, but even in this century, there have been consistent teams where the members are a little hard to rate individually but almost have to be above Cesaro. The Young Bucks, Usos, ReDragon, FTR, New Day, the Briscoes - all of those teams have more high end matches than Cesaro has been involved in. The Dudley Boyz and the Hardyz as well. 

If you're requiring that this be across multiple partners, he's probably higher up the list. Hard to find guys who've been as good as him with many partners in this century. Rocky Romero? Edge? Kofi? Kenny Omega?

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Oh, surely, there are better tag teams - although The Bar is a really fucking good one. The point was more about how Cesaro can be consistently good with many different partners. There was also his team with Swagger which was also really good, and I could've sworn they had a title reign as well.

I guess Kofi is a contender, and technically Goldust is still active and is still really fucking good.

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Yeah, Eaton basically eliminates Claudio from this conversation. He had all time tag teams with Condrey and Lane, one of the most under rated teams of all time with Koko. None of Claudio's teams touch those, and I love Claudio. Hell, honestly I think the Bar overall was a giant letdown of a team, and it always felt like those 2 should have worked much better then they actually did.

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It's very tough for me to rate somebody higher than Bobby Eaton and Ricky Morton. To me, those guys are untouchables. I'd agree with @southofheavy about Cesaro being particularly good at doing the basics and the little things that adds to a match. I'd bet that there's a trainer job waiting Cesaro once his active days in the ring are over.

But to answer the question, if we look at the current crop of the past 10-15 years, Cesaro is definitely one of the best tag workers. If you can gel with so many guys (Tyson Kidd, Chris Hero, Sheamus, Shinsuke), that says something about you.

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I'd say Kobashi is the tag GOAT because he excelled in virtually every conceivable role in a tag setting. He was great as the guy at the young up-and-comer at the bottom of the totem pole in the Jumbo/Misawa feud, Misawa's junior partner, the senior member of Burning, and the legend working dream matches and mentoring young boys in NOAH. He's probably the greatest hot tag of all time and one of the top handful of FIPs in history. I guess he never really worked heel, but he could get pretty heelish when working over the likes of Ogawa.

I agree with Matt about WWE tag wrestling being broken, but my main issue is the inexplicable insistence on simultaneous tags.

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This century?

I would say he's up there but I don't know if I would really need to think about the best. Guys like the Bucks, Briscoes, KO, Zayn, Baretta, Dustin and Revival come to mind. Even guys like John Morrison and James Storm were in multiple good successful tag teams.

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3 minutes ago, El Dragon said:

Are you just gonna keep naming wrestlers that can't hold a candle to Cesaro or.....

Cesaro is a great wrestler but WWE style is rated on a curve. I'm just naming great tag-team wrestlers from the same time period. Robert Roode was a terrific tag-team worker for a long time. 

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Just now, El-P said:

Cesaro is a great wrestler but WWE style is rated on a curve. Robert Roode was a terrific tag-team worker for a long time. 

And none of his tag teams were as good as as the Kings of Wrestling. Hell, Beer Money wasn't as good of a tag team as Kidd and Cesaro. 

If you want to name some contenders here, you'd want guys who have had great tag matches with multiple partners in multiple settings in multiple roles. I'd look more Roderick Strong then James Storm, for example.

 

You could also make a decent case for the Briscoes, if you wanted.

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Goldust when he wasn't on drugs has to be up there for this century. His tag team with Booker T in 2002-03 had lots of really good matches, I prefer their team to any combination of the Smackdown Six in that same period. He was easily the better wrestler of the Rhodes Brothers team in WWE and I'd even say AEW as well.

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