Hawk and Animal. Bobby and Stan. Ax and Smash. Tully and Arn. Wrestling history is filled with great tag teams that were meant to be together. The greatest tag teams enhance each other’s strengths, can overcome any challenge together, and just look right standing next to each other. Sometimes the skill sets are nearly identical, like Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels in the Rockers. Other times the team members are polar opposites, like Adrian Adonis and Jesse Ventura in the East-West Connection. And sometimes, there have been teams that seemingly had no reason tagging together to begin with. Here is a list of some of wrestling’s oddest tag-teams.
CM Punk and Kofi Kingston
Kofi Kingston is the modern-day equivalent of a great tag team wrestler. Of course, he is currently a member of the New Day, but he has also won WWE gold with Evan Bourne as Air Boom and with R-Truth. By far though, Kingston’s oddest pairing was with CM Punk. Punk was primarily a singles wrestler his entire career and the Tag Team Championship won with Kingston is the only tag title Punk ever held in WWE. (Unlike John Cena, who has also been a singles wrestler his entire career but has multiple tag title runs to his name.)
Big Show and Billy Gunn
In 2001, Big Show and "The One Mr. Badd Ass" Billy Gunn briefly teamed together to form a team known as The Show Gunns. Both were supposed to be can’t-miss Superstars that never quite lived up to their pushes. As a team, they somehow did less. The team disbanded within weeks.
The Minnesota Stretching Crew
On paper, Brock Lesnar and Shelton Benjamin sound like a great team: Both are accomplished amateur wrestlers who could go toe to toe with anyone on the roster. Basically, they were a 21st century version of the Varsity Club. The two even won tag team gold in OVW. The problem? Quite simply, the team does not pass the eye test. They looked like two random singles wrestlers that were thrown together and when on the rare occasions they did use tandem moves, it looked forced and awkward. Most importantly, even at this young stage in his career, Brock stood out and obviously did not belong in a tag team. WWE loves throwing together feuding partners and having them win the Tag Team Championships, but Brock has never held a tag title.
Sting and Kevin Nash
Strange tag teams are not exclusive to WWE — WCW had its fair share of odd combos during its final years. Scott Hall and The Giant, Bret Hart and Goldberg, and Rick Steiner and Kenny Kaos are all former WCW Tag Team Champions. Arguably, the most mismatched WCW Tag Team Champions of all were Sting and Kevin Nash. Sting is known for his loyalty to WCW while Nash famously took the money and left the WWF for WCW. Sting has been lauded for his continued improvement his entire career while Nash himself will tell you how his entire moveset consists of five moves. The team is so odd that a Google search does not come up with a picture of them as a team.
Kane and X-Pac
As mentioned earlier, WWE loves to throw together random pairings. One of the strangest of all is Kane and X-Pac. Kane was an intimidating giant who had not spoken for years and was still in the fans’ good graces. X-Pac was mouthy little punk with an extremely punchable face. Kane was able to believably play Kevin Nash while X-Pac is incredibly talented. This may be the textbook example of two random dudes thrown together with no in ring chemistry. Still, the pairing had two Tag Title runs and delivered some memorable moments (including Kane’s first words) until X-Pac turned on his partner.
Watching a great tag team in action is like watching a well-oiled machine. Unfortunately, the number of truly great tag teams has dwindled over the years. Instead, there have been a number of odd couple pairings. While these teams may not make a list of the greatest teams of all time, they left a mark in their own way.
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