NXT has quietly revolutionized tag team wrestling

For a long, long time, tag team wrestling has been unexciting. Even more formulaic and predictable than other matches, often with uninteresting storylines — and usually with second-rate wrestlers — tag matches were generally the ones fans would choose to make a bathroom break during, or use to go get a fresh snack.

In NXT, though, that’s far from the case: in NXT, the tag division has picked up a habit of upstaging the rest of the show.

For those who watch NXT on a regular basis, seeing little revolutions pop up is hardly news. The Women’s Revolution that re-made women’s wrestling started there, and now a tag team revolution has begun as well. It started, to some extent, with American Alpha, the current tag team champions of Smackdown, but it was the tag team that de-throned them as NXT tag champs who really kicked it into a new gear.

That team is The Revival, the pairing of Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder, two wrestlers who mostly look unremarkable on their own, but together form a duo who perform at a level that few tag teams ever reach. They play their roles to absolute perfection, and to such an extent that they elevate any match, any feud that they’re involved in.

Just look at their feud with the current NXT tag champions, #DIY. Both teams established themselves as a presence in the NXT tag division during the inaugural Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. In the months that followed, Dash and Dawson went from one-time jobbers with a bad attitude to a dominant and dangerous pairing, eventually adopting their current “Revival” moniker and, while developing a feud with American Alpha, picked up the tag line “No Flips, Just Fists.” There was nothing fancy about their style — Dash and Dawson just punched people straight in the mouth and did whatever it took to win matches, even if it wasn’t ... legal, strictly speaking.

Then there’s #DIY, the pair of ex-indy darlings Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa. They awed and excited a lot of people when they showed up in NXT, eventually forcing their way into the tag team title picture by beating the Revival while they were working on taking their tag titles back from American Alpha. That kicked off a long and hellacious feud with the Revival, and one that produced some of the best matches of the year.

The way those four wrestlers went into that feud and threw themselves into every aspect of it made it one of the most enjoyable tag team feuds in any promotion in a long time. Gargano and Ciampa were every bit the ascending heroes, wrestling a high-excitement style that popped crowds left and right. Contrasting them utterly was the grinding, almost abusive style of the Revival — they cut every corner, took every opportunity, and exploited every advantage en route to win after win, including an incredible win over #DIY at TakeOver: Brooklyn in the summer.

It was, frankly, beautiful how the Revival operated as some of the best heels in tag team wrestling that we’ve seen in a very long time. They would isolate and dominate whichever of their opponents were in the ring, focusing their efforts on a single body part while doing whatever it took to make sure that they couldn’t tag their partner into the match. And the way they taunted their opponents or used referee distractions to get the job done only made it all the more fun to watch, especially as their feud with #DIY developed and the two teams learned each others’ habits and methods better, inside and outside the ring.

So when the two teams met in a two out of three falls match at TakeOver: Toronto, they had a match that was, arguably, the best match of the year in WWE, and perhaps the best match of the year in any promotion in 2016. In a year that gave us John Cena vs. AJ Styles at SummerSlam, Shinsuke Nakamura vs. AJ Styles at Wrestlekingdom 10, Will Ospreay vs. Ricochet during the Best Of Super Juniors tournament, and numerous other fantastic matches, that’s saying something.

The fact that it’s a tag team match that did that opened a lot of eyes, and how they did it is what really matters. The psychology of the match, the story that Gargano and Ciampa and Dash and Dawson told in Toronto, was so far beyond your average match, far beyond the storytelling even most great singles matches have. The Revival had used so many dirty tricks to take down #DIY in the past, and did it again to win the first fall — but after that, Gargano and Ciampa started showing that they had learned from their mistakes.

The same devastating spot that had ended their match in Brooklyn — with The Revival attacking the knee of Gargano and Ciampa too far away to help — happened in Toronto, but this time Gargano was able to fight out of it. From there, they showed every bit of the ability that won them respect, winning the second fall and forcing the Revival into desperation mode.

That last fall in Toronto was almost a match of the year candidate in and of itself — they had so many fantastic moments of both tag teams fighting through what the other threw at them, with false finishes and jaw-dropping spots galore. Finally Gargano and Ciampa emerged the victors, but Dash and Dawson still looked fantastic even in defeat.

That match in Toronto may have been just one match, but it was a microcosm of everything being done in the tag division in NXT right now. The tag teams in WWE’s developmental territory are doing so much more with the opportunities given to them right now that it’s astounding — even teams who were outside the title picture until recently like the Authors of Pain and TM-61, or the fledgling stable Sanity, are taking the thin starts of stories and running with them full force and doing fantastic work with them, far beyond anything that’s happened in the tag divisions of bigger brands since the days of constant six-man tags and The Shield.

Sure, other tag teams are doing great work. The New Day have been carrying tag team wrestling in the WWE for the last two years. The Young Bucks are entertaining in New Japan and Ring of Honor. One half of Moustache Mountain, arguably the best tag team in England, is the first-ever WWE UK Champion in Tyler Bate, and his partner Trent Seven was fantastic in that championship tournament, as well.

But the work being done in NXT exceeds all of that. The sheer overwhelming quality in the tag division down there, and the inspiring depth of that quality, is incredible, and it offers a bright future for tag team wrestling world wide. They’re setting the standard for just how good tag team wrestling can be, and now it’s up to everyone else to take the challenge they’ve laid down and run with it. This can be the start of a tectonic shift in tag team wrestling, and as we’re getting used to, it all started in NXT.