From PROWRESTLING.NET

Dot Net Awards: 2013 Best Tag Team

Posted in: 2013 Awards, MUST-READ LISTING
By
Feb 4, 2014 - 12:12 PM

Dot Net readers voted on a variety of 2013 awards throughout the month of January. The following are the results of our poll for Best Tag Team. Thanks to everyone who took part in the voting. You can check out the past winners in our Awards section.

(1) Goldust and Cody Rhodes: 41 percent
(2) Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns: 21 percent
(3) Kane and Daniel Bryan: 9 percent
(4) Christopher Daniels and Kazarian: 7 percent
(5) Jimmy and Jey Uso: 5 percent
Others: 17 percent


Jason Powell's Thoughts: Finally, a resurgence in tag team wrestling. The WWE tag team division is deeper than it has been in years. TNA's is depleted compared to what it once was. I can't say enough good things about Goldust since he returned to the ring, and I love the tag work that he did with his brother Cody this year. I'm with the readers in giving them the top spot, and also with Rollins and Reigns in the second spot. Daniels and Kazarian are a very good team who had some clever moments on the mic and it's a shame that TNA has never given them a lengthy title reign. I am happy to see The Uso Brothers crack the top five. I was all over the upside of that team when many people were willing to write them off as being a throwaway duo. It will be interesting to see how The Wolves do in next year's vote now that they are working in TNA. I believe they and Red Dragon (I still refuse to use their nerdy team name spelling like Zim will below) would have performed better this year if ROH had better exposure. Wait, wasn't Sinclair Broadcast Group supposed to take care of that?

Chris Shore's Thoughts: There's cases to be made for a number of different tag teams this year based upon personal entertainment. Some people really enjoyed the silliness from teams like Kane and Daniel Bryan, Austin Aries and Bobby Roode, or Bad Influence (which were my favorite of the silly teams). For me though, this award has to go to the team that had the biggest impact on their promotion, and that comes down to The Shield and The Brotherhood for WWE. When comparing those two teams, it's tough to decide who had a bigger splash. The Shield is very over with the crowd, and Rollins and Reigns had a good run with the tag titles, even if they suffered from WWE's milquetoast booking of the tag division. But as soon as I started writing this piece, all I could think of was the crowd coming unglued as Cody Rhodes hooked Rollins for the Cross Rhodes on the night he and his brother won the tag titles. That moment was probably as much about the Shield's reign as it was about the Rhodes's boys winning, so if your pick was the Shield I won’t argue against you, but I'm going with Cody and Goldust.

Will Pruett's Thoughts: The year Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns had was one of the best we've seen from any WWE tag team in the last ten years. While the readers went with the (very solid) choice of Cody Rhodes and Goldust, The Shield's lead tandem was spectacular for all 12 months of 2013. In the middle of the year, they had a long WWE Tag Team Championship run, putting on show-stealing matches with a tag division that was beneath them. Before, after, and during their run as champions, they also put on an amazing six man tags (joined by Dean Ambrose) that carried around 25 minutes of many episodes of Raw. Reigns and Rollins were awesome.

Jake Barnett’s Thoughts: This year has been a great year for tag team wrestling all over the place. For my money, Goldust and Cody Rhodes caught fire together and the right time and gave us several solid months of main event quality tag team matches, all over WWE Television and PPV events. I really enjoyed their match with The Shield and Battleground, and their television matches with teams the The Real Americans and The Usos have been a breath of fresh air for the tag division.

Zack Zimmerman's Thoughts: 2013 is the first year that the award for Best Tag Team feels relevant, meaningful, and deserved. It was a year that saw the resurgence and revitalization of tag team wrestling in WWE. The Shield, The Rhodes Brothers, The Usos, Team Hell No, and The Real Americans (along with several others) made up the first real tag team division WWE has featured in the last 5-10 years. More often than not, those matches were the best on the show. While I can understand an argument for the strong, unexpected work of The Rhodes, the entertainment value of Hell No, or the natural cohesiveness and exciting offense of The Usos, The Shield was the constant through the entire year against every team. Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns are my Tag Team of the Year. Honorable mentions to two teams who deserved significantly more votes for strong quality of work and character development: reDRagon (Bobby Fish & Kyle O'Reilly) and Forever Hooligans (Alex Koslov and Rocky Romero).

Darren Gutteridge's Thoughts: Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins: Of course, Ambrose could substitute for either guy here, because although 2013 will most likely be remembered for the unexpected rise of Daniel Bryan, The Shield were just as prominent in everything good put forward in the past 12 months. While the actual tag titles were ruled for the first few months by Team Hell No, and the last few months by the Rhodes brothers, both were at their best when in opposition to the Shield. The division's resurrection as a whole owes damn near everything to the trio, and it's hard to see right now how creative hopes to keep that momentum going when the Shield disbands.

Ryan Kester's Thoughts: While it's tempting to just say The Shield and move on, Cody Rhodes and Goldust delivered an impressive performance as a team towards the end of the year, with Goldust getting the nod as a breath of fresh air for the division. Still, Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins had the better body of tag work throughout the year, so I have to give the nod to them, but I can't fault anyone who would go the other way and pick the Rhodes Brothers for the impressiveness of their run.

Jeff Lutz's Thoughts: The common denominator in the improvement of WWE's tag division has been The Shield, and Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins spurred the uptick. The emergence of the Rhodes brothers prompted the work of Reigns and Ambrose to become more consistent and structured within the traditional confines of tag-team matches, but even before Cody and Goldust hit the scene together, Reigns and Rollins, along with Dean Ambrose, were putting forth some unique and exciting matches. The teamwork of The Shield put Ambrose's U.S. Championship run on the back burner, because it was more imperative for The Shield, especially Reigns and Rollins, to perform as a unit. Their matches also led to a star turn for Reigns and an apparent megapush upcoming.

© Copyright 2014 by PROWRESTLING.NET