Stop me if you heard this one before: a wrestler who toiled for years in the tag team division suddenly gets a chance to become a singles star, and either excels or flops on the attempt to strike out on their own?
It’s not like it hasn’t happened before: Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Edge and Jeff Hardy are four examples of guys who started their careers in a tag team before breaking away from their respective partnerships to pursue a career in singles action. All of these aforementioned men eventually won numerous championships on their own.
But those examples are mainly relegated to the annuals of wrestling history. These four would mainly be remembered within the confines of their singles careers, though with Jeff Hardy’s case his association with his brother Matt will be long remembered by fans regardless.
How have WWE, AEW or other promotions fared when it came to booking tag team talent into legitimate singles competitors?
Consider the recent case of Kofi Kingston, who for years was a tag team champion on both WWE’s main brands as part of the New Day even though before that he was a singles competitor who had won various singles championships on his own. In February 2019, while Mustafa Ali was out with an injury leaving him unable to compete in the Elimination Chamber match that month, Kingston took his spot in the match and left with an impressive performance in that WWE championship match.
So much so, that Kingston was booked for months being denied getting his shot before finally earning the opportunity at Wrestlemania when he pinned Daniel Bryan to become WWE Champion for the first time in his 11 year career with WWE. You include several weeks of booking whereby Vince McMahon himself put obstacles in front of Kingston from getting a title shot and the slow burn leading to his eventual triumph was very compelling storytelling.
Unfortunately, Kingston’s title run was not as impressive as it could have been and was quickly snuffed out by a returning Brock Lesnar later that year. It remains to be seen if WWE can replicate that similar success with Big E and booking him in a singles run.
Over on NXT, we are about to see Undisputed Era member Kyle O’Reilly get his first opportunity at the NXT Championship at Takeover 31 against current champion Finn Balor. O’Reilly’s unique hybrid style of wrestling with mixed martial arts was seen for years as part of a tag team mainly with fellow UE member Bobby Fish. O’Reilly actually has held the NXT Tag Team titles with every other member of the Undisputed Era.
With Adam Cole recently completing the longest reign as NXT Champion, there was no doubt that the potential to have another UE member strike out on his own was always there; it just wasn’t clear whether that was going to be O’Reilly because he’s been mainly a tag team guy; after all Roderick Strong was recently North American Champion and would naturally be more inclined to have a singles run.
But as the above video package demonstrates, O’Reilly himself has a compelling backstory, he’s more of a natural babyface alongside Adam Cole than current Roderick Strong or Bobby Fish. There is also word that the UE could be repackaged as a faction with half of the members (Cole/O’Reilly) being babyfaces and Strong and Fish as heels. Not sure how that will work, but the O’Reilly booking so far is something to keep an eye on.
Outside of WWE, one competitor to pay attention to is Scorpio Sky. Who knew that the supporting character of “Harold” during one of Daniel Bryan and Kane’s therapy sessions under “Dr. Shelby” in WWE would end up being a breakout wrestler on All Elite Wrestling?
Since leaving WWE, Sky has excelled as a tag team wrestler in the group So Cal Uncensored with veteran wrestlers Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian. He and Kazarian became AEW’s first ever Tag Team Champions, and even before his current singles run Sky was the first person in AEW to pin Chris Jericho.
I like how in AEW the booking direction is more open than in WWE; they simply had Sky state that would like to focus on his singles career and remain part of SCU. He’s already racked up a winning streak on AEW programming, as well as challenging Cody for the TNT Championship and mixing it up with Brodie Lee. With this solid booking, it’s easy to see Sky as a top contender for either TNT or the AEW Championship.
The formula of transitioning a tag team guy into a singles star doesn’t always yield the desired fruit; it depends on the person being booked. So far with the examples given, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
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