There’s no denying that tag team wrestling has experienced somewhat of a resurgence in the last few years, but that depends on which promotion you’re talking about. While some have revitalised their tag team scene, others have floundered.
It is challenging at times because you either need to find two guys/girls who have chemistry or two singles stars that don’t look like they’re just paired together for the sake of having a tag team. Nevertheless, there are many that haven’t been broken up because the promotion needs to push more singles stars.
With that in mind, here is my compilation of the current tag team division in WWE, AEW, Impact Wrestling, and NXT. I lumped in tag teams in both RAW and Smackdown under WWE because I am treating NXT as a separate ‘promotion’ since they kind of operate in a silo from the main roster. Teams include both men and women when applicable.
WWE (Raw and Smackdown)
- Street Profits (Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford), RAW Tag Champions
- Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura, Smackdown Tag Champions
Andrade and Angel Garza(Garza injured)Viking Raiders(Ivar injured)New Day(inactive due to Kofi and Woods injured)- Lucha House Party
- Heavy Machinery (Otis and Tucker)
- Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler (Women’s Tag Champions)
- Riott Squad (Ruby and Liv Morgan)
- Natalya and Lana
- Dana Brooke and Mandy Rose
NXT
- Breezango (Tyler Breeze and Fandango), Tag Champions
- Danny Birch and Oney Lorcan
- Undisputed Era (Roderick Strong and Bobby Fish)
- Legado Del Fantasma (Wilde and Mendoza)
- Imperium (Marcel Bartel and Fabian Aichner)
- Drake Maverick and Killian Dain (maybe???)
- Indus Sher
All Elite Wresting
- FTR (Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler), AEW Tag Team Champions
- The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson)
- The Inner Circle (Chris Jericho and Jake Hager, Santana and Ortiz)
- Lucha Brothers (Penta El Zero M and Rey Fenix)
- Butcher and the Blade
- So Cal Uncensored
- Private Party
- ‘Team Taz’ (Ricky Starks and Brian Cage)
- Jurassic Express
- Natural Nightmares (Dustin Rhodes and QT Marshall)
- Chaos Project (Luther and Serpentico)
- Best Friends (Chuck Taylor and Trent)
- Dark Order (Evil Uno/Stu Grayson, Silver/Reynolds, “5 and 10”)
- Kip Sabian and ‘Best Man’ Miro?
- Hybrid2 (Jack Evans and Angelico)
Impact Wrestling
- Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin), Impact Tag Team Champions
- The North (Josh Alexander and Ethan Page)
- Madman Fulton and Ace Austin
- Good Brothers (Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson)
- Rascalz (Dezmond Xavier, Trey Miguel & Zachary Wentz)
- Reno Scum (Adam Thornstowe and Luster the Legend)
- Heath and Rhyno?
- Larry D and Ace Romero
- Fallah Bahh and TJP
Sorry if I missed anyone, and if you feel I did miss a team that is worth mentioning please let me know. But let me generally unpack the tag scene on each promotion a bit. With WWE’s two main rosters, because of a litany of circumstances, a number of their tag teams are out of commission. Having Street Profits vs Cesaro and Shinsuke was simply a reflection of the shallowness of their tag talent pool at the moment.
The NXT roster is actually as shallow but not yet noticeable. It’s either going to be Oney and Danny or the Undisputed Era getting another title shot against Breezango, and my money is on Oney and Danny as UE may be heading into a storyline of internal struggle. Drake and Killian Dain could be a team, but it’s a slow burn right now and Indus Sher hasn’t been on the show in months.
Clearly, AEW and Impact Wrestling are showing more strength or better booking for their tag team division. Impact has an obviously smaller roster which is reflected in the number of tag teams that have been featured on their weekly programming. AEW also has numerous tag teams, and when they want to actually push one of them there is effective storyline booking, complete with well-produced video packages to provide the narrative.
I’m more interested in any new teams that may emerge in any promotion going forward, whether it attempts to do something with singles guys/girls not going anywhere right now or teams forming from within factions. Dark Order, the Hurt Business and (Gawd) maybe even Retribution come to mind.
If this leads to a resurgence in tag team wrestling across the industry, all the better.
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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