Top 5: Makeshift Tag Teams That Worked (In WWE)

People have noticed that WWE is gobbling up all the wrestling talent in the world. If you’re a wrestler of any note, you’ve probably gotten some type of offer from them in the past year or so. Triple H wants everybody on his roster.

This has always been a thing for WWE. Their roster has always been outrageously large, to the point where it’s impossible for everybody to be used on a regular basis. One way is to put people in tag teams. Some make sense. Some don’t. Occasionally, a tag team you never would have thought of doing anything on paper, or simply be able to get along, makes an impact.

These are the Top 5 Makeshift Tag Teams That Worked.

5. BookDust

It was tough to find two more dissimilar partners in 2002 than Booker T & Goldust. They’d both been in WCW for years. Both had held the WCW Tag Team Championships on multiple occasions. They were both from Texas. That’s what they had in common. Their characters were on completely different pages, with Booker being a street-tough sucka while Goldust was…well, Goldust.

They were both on the Raw brand after the split with not much going on. Their personalities had little in common, but for whatever reason, Goldust really wanted to be Booker’s tag team partner. It started with movie reviews & led to matches.

They had a successful run together as Tag Team Champions and their strange friendship is still referenced on television whenever they’re both around.

4. Rock & Sock Connection

Earlier in 1999 at the Royal Rumble event, the Rock & Mankind had one of the most brutal matches I’ve ever seen. When Mankind wanted to team with Rock months later, one could only assume that the Rock’s repeated chairshots to Mankind’s skull had knocked out far too many brain cells. It was the apex of the “Tag Team Partners That Hated Each Other” trope.

The two men teaming made little sense, but nothing much in 1999 WWF made sense. It ended up working because the team involved two of the most charismatic men in wrestling history. Rock & Mankind were talented enough in the ring & on the microphone to make the mental gymnastics work.

3. Jeri-Show

Chris Jericho & Edge unified the tag team championships in June 2009 & seemed to be in line for a lengthy title run followed by a feud. Edge got injured & curtailed those ideas, so Jericho recruited Big Show to be his tag team partner. Jericho & Show hadn’t done a whole lot together during their decade in WWE, but their combination of size & intelligence was a deadly combination during the rest of the year. Their status as main event talent elevated the championships into something everybody wanted, even the likes of John Cena, Shawn Michaels & Triple H.

Jeri-Show even spawned two tag team successors in ShoMiz & Jeri-Miz.

2. Team Hell No

Most Daniel Bryan fans weren’t exactly fans of Kane’s wrestling ability or storylines. Most of Kane’s fans barely knew of Daniel Bryan & found him annoying. They both wound up in the WWE title picture during 2013 & on the wrong side of then-Raw General Manager AJ Lee, who sent them to anger management counseling together. This of course led to them forming a wacky mis-matched tag team of partners that couldn’t really stand each other. Nobody expected it to last past a few weeks, but they reigned as Tag Team Champions for 245 days.

Team Hell No ended up being a key aspect in getting Bryan over with the non-hardcore audience. Kane carries a lot of weight with WWE fans due to his decades with the company as a main event talent. He helped establish Bryan as being on his level as an opponent and as a tag team partner, and the team helped extend his career.

1. The New Age Outlaws

The Real Double J Jesse James was going nowhere. Nobody cared that he really sang “With My Baby Tonight”. The youngest son of Bullet Bob Arnstrong was hanging on by a thread. Billy Gunn’s career was going even worse. He had won the tag team championship on three occasions as a member of the Smoking Gunns, but things went downhill after the team split. He’d recently taken on the name of “Rockabilly” as the Honky Tonk Man’s protege. That gimmick was dead on arrival.

People would have thought it more likely they’d be both out of the WWF within a year of their tag team forming than becoming the backbone of the company’s most popular faction. They ended up meshing together perfectly & were one of the most over acts of the Attitude Era. Nobody would have predicted that on October 4, 1997, the first time they teamed up on a random episode of Shotgun Saturday Night.