Ranking Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn, FTR and the Best Tag Teams in WWE and AEW Today
Tag team wrestling is an art that, over the decades, has seen its relevance and popularity come in waves.
Most of that can be attributed to its portrayal in wrestling's top promotion, WWE, but the recent rise of AEW has brought it back to the forefront and, in some ways, motivated the most prominent company in the industry to reinvest energy in its own division.
In a business brimming with talented tandems, though, where does your favorite rank and what is the current state of the tag divisions in each company?
Find out with these rankings of the 10 best teams across WWE and AEW.
The Rankings
The 10 best tag teams in WWE and AEW are:
- FTR
- The Young Bucks
- Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn
- The Lucha Bros
- Aussie Open
- Imperium
- The Acclaimed
- Finn Balor and Damian Priest
- The Gunns
- Best Friends
The Current State of Tag Team Wrestling in WWE
WWE has a long history of utilizing its tag division as a plot device rather than a showcase of tag team wrestling. It has long taken two established, over singles wrestlers and thrown them together in an attempt to further storytelling, often at the expense of the actual teams.
It is a pattern that gained popularity within its creative team during the Attitude Era and has persisted since and today is no different.
Yes, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn have a long history as a team, dating back to their time on the indies but in the eyes of the WWE Universe, they are another instance of guys who have long been established as singles stars coming together to succeed in the tag team wrestling.
Ditto Judgment Day's Finn Balor and Damian Priest.
Meanwhile, there are talented tandems such as Alpha Academy's Chad Gable and Otis, Imperium's Ludwig Kaiser and Giovanni Vinci, Pretty Deadly's Elton Prince and Kit Wilson, and the surprisingly undervalued Viking Raiders' Erik and Ivar, all of whom are capable of tearing it up and adding credibility to the division.
The closest thing we have gotten was the prime run of The New Day and The Usos when they were battling every week for tag team supremacy. Even then, WWE failed to build legitimate teams around them and if it did, it was typically one or two others, leading to repetitive matches rather than a roster of duos that could all convincingly win the gold.
Unfortunately, that does not appear to be changing any time soon.
Owens and Zayn and The Judgment Day are great for elevating the stature of the tag titles and gives them a realistic opportunity to headline Raw and SmackDown, but without any real teams to work with that can genuinely beat them, it ultimately is another instance of tag team wrestling taking a backseat to the individual stars.
That is reflected in the lack of WWE representation in the rankings.
FTR vs. The Young Bucks
The top spot on this countdown was always going to come down to FTR and The Young Bucks.
There is no denying that Nick and Matt Jackson revolutionized tag team wrestling in the 2010s, bringing it back to the forefront of the industry and making it cool. They popularized tag team wrestling for the first time since Edge and Christian, the Hardy Boyz, and the Dudley Boyz elevated it at the turn of the century.
Regardless of your taste for their particular style, they popped crowds, drew attention to the art, and made tag team wrestling relevant again.
They are still popular, still relevant, and influential. They are also still capable of wowing fans with a show-stealer.
With all that said, though, FTR is the best tag team in wrestling and it is not particularly close at this moment.
Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler are throwbacks to the golden era of tag team wrestling. They are part Midnight Express, part Andersons, and part Hart Foundation. They are an old-fashioned team that has molded their skill set to mesh with the high-flying and lightning speed of today's young teams.
They are expert storytellers and have produced a number of instant classics, including a trilogy with the Bucks and two superb series against Bullet Club Gold's Jay White and Juice Robinson and The Briscoes.
A team whose entire foundation is based in tag team wrestling, and whose only motivation is being the best in that realm, they have exploded past any and all other duos to establish themselves as the tops in the industry.