Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, The: The Tag Teams

Also in this series

The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Canadians

The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Heels

The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: Heroes & Icons

THE

PRO WRESTLING

HALL OF FAME

GREG OLIVER & STEVEN JOHNSON

ECW Press

This book is dedicated to Terry Dart, the biggest wrestling fan we’ve ever known

Billy Red Lyons and Terry Dart, April 2004 (Meredith Renwick)

The Medics offer special treatment to Louie Tillet (front) and Al Costello (Chuck Thornton Collection)

The Kentuckians stand triumphant over the Assassins (Chuck Thornton Collection)

Acknowledgements

It’s important to acknowledge that we are writers, not historians. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people out there who research wrestling’s past on a day-to-day basis and preserve it for future generations. In today’s wired world, that can mean browsing websites, skimming through newsletters, flipping through old newspapers or winding rolls of microfilm. Of partic- ular help were Scott Teal of the awesome Whatever Happened To . . . and Shooting With the Legends newsletters, Fred Hornby, Don Luce, J Michael Kenyon, Dr. Bob Bryla, George Schire, Jim Melby, Mike Rodgers, Gary Will, Vern May, Tom Burke, Rich Tate of Peach State Pandemonium, Dick Bourne and David Chappell of the Mid-Atlantic Gateway website, Mike Mooneyham, Michael Norris, Tim Dills, Tommy Fooshee, Jim Zordani and John Pantozzi.

This book would also not have been possible without three different organizations that inspire us with their dedicated work and commitment to pro wrestling. The Cauliflower Alley Club is the closest thing that wrestling has to an alumni association, and was invaluable with help in tracking down old-timers. President Red Bastien probably has wrestling’s longest list of friends and was always ready with an anecdote. CAC honchos Dean Silverstone and Karl Lauer get a shout-out, too. Thousands of miles separate Amsterdam, N.Y.—site of the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, run by Tony Vellano and Mike Capano—and Newton, Iowa, site of the Mike Chapman’s George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame. But both have set out with the intention of having a permanent home to honor the men and women who made this sport great.

Finally, in the wrestling acknowledgements section, kudos go out to Jack David, Michael Holmes and the folks at ECW Press for seeing a void in the publishing world and filling it with wrestling books; to Canoe.ca, which continues to believe in SLAM! Wrestling; and to the staff at SLAM! Wrestling, which continually proves that good pro wrestling journalism doesn’t have to be an oxymoron.

In the personal category, Greg Oliver would like to thank his wife, Meredith Renwick, for her love, support and patience—I’ll clean up the office soon, I promise!; Wayne Parrish and Jim O’Leary for the leave of absence and years of fun times working together; the many friends he’s made through wrestling and the people who took the time to call, email or write with their thoughts on the first book.

Steven Johnson’s wife Cindy waited patiently while her husband talked for hours to retired wrestlers, bookers and promoters about obscure facets of a strange world. Her support and affection throughout a quarter-century of marriage deserves its own book. Moms get a bad rap for overly aggressive housecleaning, but Steve’s mom, Sherry Propheter, had the foresight to keep years of results, clippings and photographs. Kudos to her, as well.

Now, on to the reading! We learned tons calling around, conducting interviews and checking facts. Hopefully you’ll learn something too.

Greg Oliver

Editor, SLAM! Wrestling

slam.canoe.ca/wrestling

goliver@canoemail.com

Steven Johnson

Editor, Steel Belt Wrestling

www.steelbeltwrestling.com

blakeslee_74@yahoo.com

Foreword by Bobby Eaton

U.S. tag team champion Bobby Eaton (Mike Lano)

What was going through the mind of Bobby Eaton? is the question I’m sure most people will ponder when they see the photograph on the cover of this publication. It’s really hard to say exactly what was going through my mind that night during Starrcade. I really don’t recall. I’m sure my adrenaline was pumping to the point to where I didn’t have anything on my mind other than making sure we presented the absolute best match possible.

Ironically enough, the scaffold matches I’ve had through the years are probably my most memorable matches as far as wrestling fans are concerned. However, I feel that they are definitely not the best matches I’ve ever had. I guess it’s a similar thing to Mick Foley being remembered for his 1998 Hell in a Cell match with the Undertaker, yet not feeling that it was his greatest match.

I’ve been a wrestling fan all my life. I fell in love with the business at a young age. Several great veterans helped me at various points during my career. Early on, I worked as a singles competitor and would do so later in WCW. However, I have always felt drawn to tag team wrestling.

A tag team match features four men, two teams of two athletes. While some may think that four’s a crowd, I look at having a partner and two opponents as an opportunity to do so much more. The intensity of moves is doubled.You can’t do a double team maneuver by yourself.

The psychology of a tag team match is different. You can’t just worry about your opponent.You have to have a good working knowledge of who your partner is.

I think a solid tag team division is missing in today’s professional wrestling world. It’s a shame tag team wrestling has slowly become a lost art, but that does not keep us from looking back at the teams that made tag team wrestling so enjoyable. I, for one, am looking forward to this book and I hope you are too. Enjoy!

What was going through the mind of Bobby Eaton? (Ed Russino)

Introduction

For downright action, underhanded buffoonery, and athletic promenading, there is nothing like a tag team match among wrestlers.

— Bakersfield Californian, March 26, 1942

The young man with the bleached blond hair and the colorful wrestling tights was lying face down on the canvas. Agony and fatigue were etched on his face and blood flowed freely from an open wound on his forehead. Only minutes ago, this happy wrestler was full of cheer and enthusiasm as he bounced from backstage to the ring aside his partner and road-mate, flashing an ear-to-ear smile and slapping hands with jubilant fans as he made his grand entrance. He knew this match was sure to be tough — those two opponents were known throughout the land for their brutality and deceit — but he and his partner had promised — no, had vowed — that they would fight for the right, fight for the fans and show those rulebreaking rivals what justice as all about. Now, though, the tables had turned in a terrifying manner. The wrestler was being pummeled and kicked in the head and face, and his anguished cries of Oh, God! were audible above of the din of the delirious crowd. Time and again, he struggled and strained to break free in hope of touching his partner’s hand — it was a miracle that he could make out the visage of his partner under the outpouring of blood — but his rival repeatedly pulled him back and continued to bite him in the face. He doesn’t know where he is! an announcer shrieked. He is bewildered. He is hurt. He is a very, very seriously hurt young man right now. Outside the ring, the partner stomped on the apron, exhorting his best friend to give it one last try, one final outstretched hand so that he could come to the rescue . . .

The battered hero was Shawn Michaels, one-half of the Midnight Rockers, in a 1986 tag team match, but the scene just as accurately describes the awful plight of hundreds of wrestlers throughout the years. One of the most familiar and vivid scenes in professional wrestling is the beaten and fallen wrestler trying to summon every last bit of energy to get to his corner and his ally for help, and it happens only in tag team wrestling. For nearly 70 years, the equation for tag team wrestling has been simple yet effective — double the number of wrestlers in the ring, and you’ve created unprecedented opportunities for excitement, entertainment and even fan riots. It’s hard for an individual, in shape, to outperform four guys in shape, said Bill Eadie, a member of the Mongols and Demolition. Tag team wrestling entertains fans, and also affords smaller wrestlers the chance to make it to the big time. Michaels, one of the greatest stars in WWE history, is just one of many well-known wrestlers who broke in as an underszed tag team specialist. Skilled wrestlers who lacked the aura to reach the top as singles workers have long found refuge and success in tag team wrestling — Bobby Eaton of the Midnight Express openly acknowledged tag team wrestling was the best thing to happen to his career. And tag teams provide a haven for older wrestlers who can still attract a crowd to the arena, but have too many aches and creaks in the joints to work extended singles matches. Carolinas legend George Becker worked in tag teams for the last 20 years of his career and used his popularity to help his partners win the hearts of fans when they ventured on their own.

The Origins of Tag Team Wrestling

It might seem as though tag team wrestling has been around forever, but that’s hardly the case. Some sources contend that tag team wrestling started at the turn of the last century. In their book, Wrestling to Rasslin’, Gerald M. Morton and George M. O’Brien rehash the familiar yarn that unknown promoters in San Francisco invented tag teams in 1901 to enliven their dreary exhibitions and increase the appeal to fans. In another academic work, Professional Wrestling as Ritual Drama in American Culture, Michael Ball credits the legendary Joe Stecher, an early world champion, with inventing tag team wrestling with his brother at the time of World War I.

In fact, modern historians reject these accounts as undocumentable. There is nothing in San Francisco newspapers of 1901 to support the contention that promoters there hit upon the idea of tag team wrestling. In fact, far from the sports entertainment we know today, wrestling at that time was still looked upon as at least a semilegitimate activity. The role of Stecher is potentially interesting — he had a brother named Tony who also helped to manage his career. Still, he was a great singles champion and no expert has been able to verify that he was the mastermind behind tag team wrestling.

England, 1937 (Greg Oliver Collection)

Newspaper reports from the 1920s show that handicap bouts — pitting one wrestler against two — were commonplace. But the first recorded team match in the U.S. did not occur until October 2, 1936 in Houston, Texas, according to the findings of wrestling historian Tom Burke. Long-time Houston promoter Paul Boesch said that the idea struck Morris Siegel, his predecessor as promoter, and wrestler Karl Sarpolis after Siegel’s nephew wondered why four-man matches never occurred. Profound question, Boesch wrote Burke in a 1975 letter. The card indicates that two wrestlers from India, huge men and tough, Tiger Daula and Fazul Mohammed, were teamed against the fabled Whiskers Savage and strongman Milo Steinborn on October 2, 1936. The match had all four men in the ring at the same time, in what today’s fans would call a tornado match.

The idea of a multiwrestler match spread fairly quickly. Boesch said he came across four-man team matches in the Pacific Northwest when he wrestled there in late 1937 and 1938. In addition to the Northwest, team wrestling soon became a regular feature of wrestling cards in much of the country. Newspaper records show that team bouts were held in Georgia, Missouri, Ohio and Texas in 1938. Famous Columbus, Ohio, matchmaker Al Haft put on the first match in that city in September 1938. Under the rules in his promotion, all four men were in the ring simultaneously. The match ended when both wrestlers on one side were pinned using a count of five, which guaranteed a lot of double-teaming moves. It is unclear when matches switched to two contestants at a time, with two of the wrestlers outside the ring clinging to a tag rope. Boesch believed the tag portion came soon after the first tornado match, to make the enterprise appear a bit more orderly (towels were used instead of tag ropes in Washington State as late as 1949). Newspaper stories and clippings suggest tag team wrestling as we know it today was in place in at least a few localities by 1939.

(Chuck Thornton Collection)

Few promotions kept the detailed records that make Boesch’s company historically remarkable. As a result, details about the development of tag team wrestling are sketchy and tend to be based mostly on news accounts, which should be taken with a grain of salt. The earliest recorded brother teams appeared in 1938 — Pete and Ivan Managoff (Muscovich) in Texas, and Roy and Herb Welch in Tennessee. In February 1939, a match with Sid Marcus and Joe Gunther facing Jack Steele and Charley Keene headlined in New Orleans. In August 1939, the first tag team bout hit Kansas City. The distaff side got into it with the first women’s tag match on December 28, 1939. Mildred Burke and Princess Rose White Cloud defeated Wilma Gordon and Gladys Gillem in Columbus. In Atlanta, the first tag team event was in May 1940, with Cowboy Luttrall and Herb Freeman battling Hans Schnabel and Angelo Cistoldi.

At that point, matches were also commonly referred to as relay bouts, so-called because partners relayed in and out of the ring. They quickly gained a reputation for out-of-control behavior. Tag team wrestling hit the West Coast in 1940, with wrestlers such as Vic Christy and Jules Strongbow featured in top events. The first tag or relay match in Washington, D.C. came on August 8, 1943 with Maurice LaChappelle and Johnny Long squaring off against John Vansky and Dick Lever. None of the foursome paid the slightest attention to the alleged rules or referee, Oscar Elder reported in the Washington Post. The first tag team match in Miami came later that same month and included Jack Steele, who had broken similar ground in New Orleans. When Gorila Ramos (a future trainer of The Great Goliath) teamed with Pete Mehringer against Ali Pasha and Mike Nazarian in November 1945, the Arizona Republic called tag team wrestling probably the wildest sort of wrestling conceivable.

Tom Zenk reaches desperately for Brian Pillman against the Samoan Swat Team in 1990 (Howard Baum)

Within a few years, titles became a fixed part of tag team wrestling. With them came the first teams to form long-term partnerships. In 1944, a Texas tag team title was introduced and the Southern tag team title was defended in Kentucky and Tennessee by 1945 (the Welchs were among the early claimants to that). The Dusek Family Riot Squad from Omaha, Nebraska, consisting of brothers Ernie, Emil, Joe and Rudy, had gained fame as singles champions. When they started working together in tag team matches in the 1940s, they became the first team to popularize tag team wrestling in multiple territories.

Tag team wrestling was much slower to gain a foothold in the Northeast. While tag team action was seen at some shows in the metropolitan New York area, it didn’t make its appearance in Madison Square Garden until 1953. In part, that’s because there was no wrestling of any kind in Madison Square Garden from 1938 to 1949, because of promotional infighting. Not until January 5, 1953, would team members wrestle on the biggest stage in the game. Steve and Gene Stanlee took on Rudy Kay and Al Williams in a contest Richard Watts Jr. of the New York Post found mildly amusing. I soon became so confident about the triumph of virtue that I knew those two stalwart young blonds, Gene and Steve Stanlee, couldn’t lose in the tag team match with such obnoxious villains as Rudy Kay and Al Williams, particularly when Williams appeared with sinister tattooing all over his back. The villainous pair, I should report, also have a comedy act wherein one partner slugs the other uproariously.

For many years, announcers and promoters referred to their events as Australian tag team matches, leading many to believe tag wrestling started with the Fabulous Kangaroos, a combination of Australians Al Costello and Roy Heffernan. The fact Costello and Heffernan, who started in 1957, explained their proficiency by pointing to the popularity of amateur tag team wrestling in their homeland only muddied the waters. However, the use of Australian as a modifier was in place by at least November 1944, according to a variety of newspaper clippings and stories. The simplest explanation for the term might have come from Milo Steinborn, who was in that first match in Houston in 1936 and later promoted in New York and Florida. I asked my dad one time, ‘Why Australian?’ his son, wrestler Dick Steinborn, said. He told me, ‘Because nobody can check on it.’ In short, the term sounded exotic and added to the mystique of pro wrestling. With authoritative-sounding TV commentators such as Gordon Solie and Lord Athol Layton later referring to Australian Rules matches, the description became part of wrestling lore.

Tag Team Wrestling Goes National

Tag team wrestling really took off with the advent of television. The heyday of televised wrestling from Chicago and California, and many other places, ran from 1948 to about 1955 on the Dumont network and other channels. With the black-and-white screens of early TVs came the need for fast-paced action to attract and retain viewers. Tag team wrestling fit the bill perfectly. Teams like the Beckers and the Garibaldis became icons across the country from their base in, appropriately, Hollywood, California. While Gorgeous George and Antonino Rocca became household names as singles wrestlers, tag teams were not far behind, and the 1950s became the first Golden Era of tag team wrestling. After thoroughly reviewing the disparate promotions around the country, noted historian J Michael Kenyon concluded that by 1950, Buffalo represented probably the last major promotion in the country not to be infected with ‘tag team disease.’

Bobby Shane and Doug Gilbert face down The Assassins before trying to unmask them (Chuck Thornton Collection)

Perhaps the preeminent tag team outfit was Jim Crockett Promotions in the Carolinas and Virginia. From the early 1950s, with Bobby and George Becker and the Smith Brothers, until the mid-1970s when booker George Scott overhauled the territory, tag team matches were considered more important than singles contests. In part, that was the preference of Crockett, who used Becker as his primary booker for many years. But it was also a response to what the fans had indicated, through their ticket-buying power, they wanted to see. It was really the main territory, Tinker Todd said. They’d come in from all over the world . . . Take my word for it, we had the finest teams around here.

Not far behind Crockett was Tennessee, where the Gulas-Welch promotion was separated into eastern and western components, both of which relied heavily on tag team action. Roy Welch was a big believer that tag team matches generated more excitement, so from the time he developed the area into a wrestling territory, tag team matches were featured, said wrestler/promoter Jerry Jarrett. When I broke into the business, this is the style I learned and loved. During my promotional days, I simply followed suit and presented the tag team action that the fans expected.

While the Northeast had been late to embrace tag team wrestling, it more than made up for its tardiness, especially when Vincent J. McMahon consolidated promotional control in the mid-1950s. McMahon’s style of wrestling emphasized more brawling and outside-the-ring action, which squared with the idea of tag team wrestling. Using the popular Rocca and Miguel Perez to appeal to the Latino crowd, McMahon gave tag team matches top billing in an amazing 90 percent of his 30 shows at Madison Square Garden from 1957 to 1959. Even after he moved an aging Rocca from the top slot, McMahon used a powerful combination of Nature Boy Buddy Rogers and Bob Orton Sr. to continue the main-event position of tag teams and often draw crowds in excess of 18,000. The move from singles to tag team wrestling in the Garden did not escape the dry wit of reporters. "Today, instead of phony British noblemen wearing monocles, we have tag team matches, in which men behave as nature intended them to — one partner in the ring butting the referee in the peritoneum, the other outside reading the Daily Racing Form," John Lardner wrote in Newsweek in March 1957.

Tag team wrestling took a slightly different turn in Canada, with the advent of the Canadian Open Tag Team Title in 1952. Whipper Billy Watson and Pat Flanagan won a tournament to become the first champions and received the Calvert Trophy for their labors. By treating the tournament as a prestigious event, tag team wrestling was imbued with an air of credibility and legitimacy. (Typically, the trophy was smashed to bits in an angle with the Mills Brothers in 1954.)

Other parts of the U.S. used tag teams in different ways. In the Midwest, tag team wrestling became a featured attraction in Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association after its creation in 1960. As he aged, Gagne kept his position as the most important singles worker in the promotion, but wrestled less frequently. As a result, teams like Dick the Bruiser and The Crusher, or Nick Bockwinkel and Ray Stevens, filled main-event positions in the territory. On the West Coast, the Sharpe Brothers dominated tag team wrestling in the 1950s. But after they departed, long-time Los Angeles promoter Mike LeBell said that fans in his area did not seem to respond as well to tag matches as singles matches until the coming of Goliath and Black Gordman in the 1970s. In St. Louis, promoter Sam Muchnick emphasized an old school, no frills type of wrestling, and often relegated tag teams to the preliminary matches, when he booked them at all.

Tag team matches can help build singles feuds, as with this WWE match with Chris Jericho and Kurt Angle getting the better of The Rock and Steve Austin (Mike Lano)

The Second Golden Era

While tag team wrestling was not in serious decline in the late 1960s and 1970s, it definitely played second fiddle to singles bouts. Virtually every promotion had its own tag team titles — some of them had multiples — and the effect was to water down the prestige of any one territorial title. Jerry Oates, who formed a solid team with brother Ted, said he once pushed National Wrestling Alliance official Bob Geigel to create a single, unified, world tag team championship. But his pleas feel on deaf ears. To this day, I don’t understand why that was not done. You could have had the singles champion working on one coast and the tag champions working on the others. You would have had the local champions going against the world champions. It would have created a whole lot of excitement and drawn good money with the right team, I think, Oates said.

Additionally, tag team wrestling slipped from its top-of-the-card niche in the Northeast when the WWWF started using Bruno Sammartino and Pedro Morales as its ethnic babyface champions throughout the 1960s and 1970s. With the exception of Jimmy and Johnny Valiant, no tag team during the Sammartino-Morales era reached the top rank in the most important wrestling media market in the country. The importance of that absence cannot be overstated. In the pre-cable TV, pre-Internet world, monthly wrestling magazines were the typical fan’s chief source of information about his favorite sport. No single national TV program brought a single team into the public consciousness. With singles wrestlers dominating the covers of many of the industry magazines, important teams such as the Andersons, who primarily worked in one territory, did not get as much recognition or exposure.

In the 1980s, however, tag team wrestling experienced a renaissance as several factors combined to reinvigorate the attraction. First, the nationalization of wrestling brought the days of regional headliners to a close. As Vincent K. McMahon took his WWF from the Northeast across the country in the early 1980s, smaller regional promotions fell by the wayside. While wrestling buffs still debate the merits of that development, McMahon’s corporate juggernaut and innovative TV production brought a new level of national exposure to a number of tag teams. Georgia Championship Wrestling, which had been airing on superstation WTBS in Atlanta, started running shows in areas outside its home region, giving more teams a chance to work in front of a national audience. When Jim Crockett Promotions consolidated the Southeast under the National Wrestling Alliance banner in the late 1980s, it pushed even more teams to the top of its popular weekly programs. The rise of cable television factored into wrestling in another manner — MTV provided the inspiration for a flock of successful rock-style tag teams in the early 1980s. At the same time, a group of smaller and undeniably talented wrestlers were telling fast-paced stories with moves never before seen in tag team wrestling. The British Bulldogs, the Midnight Express, the Hart Foundation and several others made tag team wrestling more exciting and enjoyable to watch than at any point since the late 1950s.

Most importantly, wrestler and booker Ole Anderson invented the Road Warriors. Perhaps the most successful tag team gimmick in history, Hawk and Animal came into being in 1983 as postapocalyptic biker toughs. They rewrote the book on power and size, thrashing all comers. Virtually invincible in the ring, they paved the way for teams such as Demolition, the Colossal Connection, and the Powers of Pain. If you look back at that time period, there was a lot of top quality tag teams, Eadie said. You had individual stars, but the top teams for a period of time were carrying the weight.

Over time, tag team wrestling definitely was more important in the south than it was in the north. Much of that is attributable to booker and promoter preferences. In some parts of the country, the promoter liked tag team wrestling — he was fascinated by it — so guess what was the preeminent thing that fans liked, said WWE trainer and wrestler Al Snow. In the Northeast, it’s infamous that it’s more of an attraction, it’s a sideshow thing. Vince McMahon thinks of it that way. And that’s why, in the WWE, it’s now treated more as a sideshow attraction and the fans accept it as such because we have taught them so. It’s also likely that southern fans, known for their rabid and excitable ways, responded more quickly to the heat associated with tag team matches. Dennis Condrey, one of the best tag team wrestlers of the 1970s and 1980s, speculated that the Midnight Express might not have received the same hostile reaction in the Northeast it did in Louisiana, for example. A lot of it is right time, right place, he said.

Types of Teams

There’s no right or wrong way to put together a successful team. Masked teams like the Assassins appeared, at least on the surface, nearly identical and interchangeable to many fans. Yet teams with wildly contrasting shapes, sizes and styles can do well. For example, the lanky giant Tex McKenzie and the smaller, technically skilled Nelson Royal did a solid job attracting fans in the Carolinas in the 1960s. Still, there have always been some common themes in the creation of tag teams, and these affect the success and longevity of any given team.

Many wrestlers first look at tag team wrestling as a way to accommodate their own physical shortcomings. The head table in the business has long been reserved for larger, more powerful mat workers. I was competing against a lot of great guys and I was a little smaller. It was easier for me to go into a tag team than to go on my own, said Red Bastien. In fact, the revival of tag team wrestling in the 1980s included a healthy dose of smaller wrestlers like Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson of the Rock ’n’ Roll Express.

Probably the most familiar type of team involves two brothers, who might or might not be related. One of the inherent advantages of brother tag teams is the ability to break up the team into a kin-versus-kin fight, such as Bret and Owen Hart, or, more recently, Matt and Jeff Hardy. Another common type of team combines a seasoned pro with a wrestler who needs to bask in a little bit of the veteran’s glory to make it in the business. In the Carolinas, Paul Jones was a well-established name when booker George Scott decided to pair him with Wahoo McDaniel. Wahoo wasn’t getting over. I’d been gone two years, so I picked up where I left off a few years earlier, Jones said. George had the idea that the only way I can get him over is to make him Paul’s partner. So I got him over. Such a tag team has a more limited lifespan, though — as soon as the newcomer has gained fan acceptance, he’s usually off to a singles career. When Ricky Steamboat entered the Mid-Atlantic, promoters again used Jones to make a star out of the neophyte. In Tennessee, local hero Len Rossi regularly partnered with Bearcat Brown in the early 1970s, helping Southern fans overcome their prejudice about the color of Brown’s skin by aligning him with one of the most popular wrestlers in the territory.

Some of the most memorable teams have been gimmick teams, with masks, shaved heads or outfits that capitalize on the fad of the day, such as the gun-toting Dalton Gang of the 1960s. And, while they are not as common in the post-Cold War world, teams of evil Japanese, Germans, Russians or other foreigners were a guaranteed irritant to fans through the mid-1980s.

In the end, tag team wrestling is a partnership and that’s the downfall of most teams. With few exceptions, even successful teams tend to dissolve after a few years. Eddie and Jerry Graham ruled the heel’s roost in the Northeast in the late 1950s, but Jerry’s out-of-ring antics sent Eddie packing to Florida as a successful wrestler and promoter. To me, the personalities are more what kills a tag team that the booking or the workload or whatever, said Terry Taylor. People have to get along 24 hours a day and it’s hard. It’s hard to be with somebody that much.

In the Ring

After nearly 70 years of tag team wrestling, it’s hard to come up with new moves or innovations. But tag team specialists agree, certain principles help to separate the very best from the rest. First, a team needs to be a team. You’ve got to act like you’re a tag team. Look the same, wear something similar. Come out to the ring together, said Eaton of the Midnight Express. That’s pretty basic. But you’d be surprised at the number of teams that don’t do that. Additionally, the relationship between teammates has to be utterly unselfish. The teammates can’t be concerned about who is pinned, or who gets the pin. The biggest thing today is to find two guys who won’t try to show each other up. All I hear is, ‘I gotta get my move in, I gotta get my move in,’ said George South, a long-time wrestler who trains in the Carolinas. Who cares about your stinking move? You look at the great teams . . . they never showed each other up. The same principle of working together applies not just to one team but to a match as a whole. They say it takes two people to tango. Well, in tag teams, it takes four guys to tango. If you put two good guys with two ugly guys, you’re going to have, as we used to say in the wrestling business, a stinkeroo, said Rene Goulet.

Tag team wrestlers who now train aspiring grapplers also believe the best teams tell a simple, understandable story in the ring — one fans can easily grasp and comprehend. It’s heat and a few high spots. It’s a finish, and that’s wrestling, said Ed Wiskoski, a former star who now trains in the Pacific Northwest. If you put too many high spots in the match, to the point where the fans didn’t understand it, what have you accomplished? If you paint a little picture, give them a high spot, and give them a finish, they can go home and say, ‘I had a good time,’ instead of saying, ‘What the hell happened there?’

Ramon Torres lays a boot into Mike Sharpe (Chuck Thornton Collection)

As a result, trainers believe the familiar story of the hero in dire peril is still the best. Every wrestling fan has seen an overanxious good guy rush into the ring to come to the aid of his partner, only to be returned to his corner by the referee. Meanwhile, the bad guys double-team the beaten wrestler behind the ref’s back. It’s all designed to build to the climax of a tag team match — the so-called hot tag, which WWE star Snow believes has always been the focus of the very best teams. Once I gain a dominance over you, what am I going to do? asked Snow, a one-time trainee of Al Costello of the Fabulous Kangaroos. "Well, I’m going to tag my partner