Tag Team Turmoil

This is a topic that's been brought up in the blog world at least a couple times. I know that Beast covered it in his back in January, but it's still an issue that's on my mind.

In A1E, we have an extraordinarily limited number of regular tag teams. Right now, the Best Friends (Chip Friendly and Slambo the Clown) are the tag team champions. They took the belts from Anarchy Inc. (Torment and Haven) who had held the belts for nearly a year. The only other tag team that's close to regular is BigDog and Dan Ryan (an interim title shot for Elim and Sarge notwithstanding).

Why is this?

I realize that, for the most part, A1E is made up of a group of singles stars. Everybody has their own goals within this hobby, and everybody wants to be world champion. But, obviously the list of contenders can get quite long, and we only have 6 pay-per-view cycles a year. Why not take a run through the tag division between title shots?

Working as a tag team can be either an extraordinarily fun, or painfully disappointing, experience. I've had the great fortune to have worked with some really great partners. I still maintain that the BigDog/Gladiator partnership was the best tag team A1E has ever seen. Jarret and I had a blast working together. We were constantly talking on IM, plotting out who would reply to each opponent and when. And the chemistry we had together was amazing. Those two characters played off each other very well.

BigDog has had a number of partners off and on since then, but none of them have quite felt the same. BigDog and Duchess was never really intended to be a long-term thing. We were just thrown together for a couple of random tag matches, and we decided to just run with it. It was a nice little run, but we never really hit it off as well as we could have. Her heel turn was a fun little angle, and I do think it lit a spark under her that she's having fun with.

Anybody that knows me very well at all knows how much I like Lindsay. I have a ton of respect for her talent in this hobby as well. But, even the two of us didn't quite have the same chemistry that Beast and I had. We had several miscommunications as to when we were going to promo, and we ended up not having the kind of success we could have. It's possible we could have gotten there, but our partnership was cut short when she had to pull out of A1E when her real life got really hectic.

Currently, the team with Dan Ryan I think has a ton of potential. We're working an interesting angle as we started teaming on the tried and true "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic. BigDog and Dan Ryan have had some of the toughest matches against each other in either man's career. There's a level of respect there, but they are definitely not friends.

I think it's too early in the game to make a call as to how far we can go with it, but I'm definitely looking forward to see where things can go.

The closest I've ever come to the kind of fun of BigDog/Gladiator is the current combo of Richard Farnswirth and Chip Friendly over in EPW. Dan West and I have been working together in the Highland Park Social Club for a very long time now. We've gotten to know each other's characters very well. We also talk enough on IM that we have a good feel of what kind of stories we like to tell. When we started teaming in EPW and went up against Ken Cloverleaf and Steven Shane, I didn't even confer with Dan as to how we wanted to play it. I just "knew". I set the stage with the opening promo, and all three of them followed along with it.

We have a title shot coming up at the next EPW pay-per-view. Hopefully we can build on our momentum and turn it into a championship. If not this time, we certainly will keep at it.

Now, the point of this entire entry was to show how much fun a really good tag team can be. I don't want to speak for either Dan or Jarret, but promoing for matches with BigDog/Gladiator or Farnsy/Chip has been some of the most fun I've had in this hobby. It's given me a chance to work with some of my favorite handlers.

Why not give it a shot yourself? You may either find a new friend, or get to know a current friend a little better, along the way.