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MIKE JOHNSON LOOKS AT THE STATE OF TAG TEAMS IN WWE AND HOW KILLING THE CRUISERWEIGHT DIVISION CAN IMPROVE IT

This past weekend, I was in Charlotte, North Carolina at the NWA Legends convention, sitting ringside watching four of the greatest tag team wrestlers of all time weave their magic in the form of the Midnight Express vs. The Rock N' Roll Express. Just prior to that, I watched NWA Tag Team champions The Naturals face America's Most Wanted in an excellent match that was probably better then anything the four had put together on PPV. I was having the time of my life when I suddenly realized that magic like this is so rare these days, since the era of great tag teams in professional wrestling has long been extinct.

Think about it. What great tag teams have been developed in the last several years? The last true great tag team that comes to mind is the Dudley Boyz. No other team has hit the level of the amazing teams of the past like the Road Warriors, The Hart Foundation, The British Bulldogs, The Fantastics, Williams & Gordy, Edge & Christian, Blanchard & Anderson, the Hardy Boyz, or The Rockers. Hell, we don't even have a Killer Bees in this era.

It's an important piece to the tapestry of the business to have tag teams, on many levels. The tag team division has always provided a forum for wrestlers to improve and grow. Anyone who tracks the careers of Shawn Michaels or Bret Hart can see that. It provides a different storyline angle for talents in the way of the Tag Team championships. It allows for a different style inside the ring to break up the monotony of a professional wrestling event, and let's face it, a great tag team bout, such as the ones I witnessed last week, is a lot of fun.

While TNA already has a solid tag team scene, It's time for WWE to bring back the tag team division, and do to so, it's time for the Cruiserweight division to die. Ending the Cruiserweight division would be a mercy killing at this point. The matches are Velocity fodder. The talents are treated as nobodies, which is a travesy. When WWE cares so much about the Cruiser title to do a switch on Velocity, with no build and no follow up and no mention anywhere else, you can see where the Division stands in the eyes of the creative team. So kill it off. Just drop it now, out of nowhere. Exterminate it.

Of course, killing it off leaves you with a lot of Cruiserweights with nothing to do. It might be in vogue these days to release the lot of them, but instead all of them should be paired up and turned into tag teams, then split between Raw and Smackdown. This gives both rosters new teams gunning for the respective Tag Team belts. Without even thinking about it, the Tag Team divisions are now boosted with the teams of Super Crazy & Psicosis, Nunzio & Big Vito, Paul London & Spanky, and Jamie Knoble & Funaki (doing a "Odd Couple" pairing comedy bit, complete with vignettes, right out of the film "Rush Hour" with Knoble as the country boy replacing the Chris Tucker character).

Mix those teams in with MNM, The Heart Throbs, Hurricane & Rosey, Animal & Heideinreich, and the proposed Mike the Miz & Matt Cappotelli team. Now WWE has got quite the tag team division. If you find the proper partners for talents such as Scotty Too Hotty and Stevie Richards, performers who are underappreciated for their hard work, there's even more great talent you can use to augment it. They can even take it a step further by bringing the Dudley Boyz back in a bully role where they can play Goliath to the smaller teams' David and you've got tons of fresh matches involving Bubba and D-Von that immediately freshen them up for another run with the company.

Although WWE management doesn't want the aerial moves that a lot of Cruisers use coming off the ropes, they can still give the fans the style of fast, hard hitting action by using the speed and style of a tag match to provide fans with those moments, with the teams using fast back and forth action, double team moves, and the occasional top rope move behind the referee's back for heat. If WWE put a little effort into it, complete with vignettes and storylines where the Tag belts meant as much to those in that division at the World and WWE titles mean to the singles performers, you have a nice undercard attraction that fans care about, and can even do a "dream tournament" once a year as a house show or PPV attraction.

If time and effort is put into the division, the art of the tag team in 2005 doesn't need to be nearly extinct. While the Cruiserweight division sadly seems to be a lost cause, the positives and the hard work of those wrestlers can be used to breathe new life into the tag divisions, giving WWE a new asset and those tremendous performers a new lease on life.

Mike Johnson can be reached at Mike@PWInsider.com.

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