By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Dot Net readers were allowed a single vote per day for each of the 2019 awards categories. The following are the results of our poll for Best Tag Team along with our staff comments. Thanks to everyone who took part in the voting.
1. Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly (31 percent)
2. Pentagon Jr. and Rey Fenix (14 percent)
3. “New Day” Big E, Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston (10 percent)
4. Santana and Ortiz and “The Revival” Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder (Tied – 7 percent)
5. “The Young Bucks” Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson (5 percent)
Others (26 percent)
Nick Perkins’ Thoughts: A case could be made that The Undisputed Era, specifically Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reily, were the best tag team in professional wrestling. But, for me, this year belonged to The Young Bucks, both in front of and behind the camera. When they started a little YouTube show called ‘Being the Elite,’ nobody thought that it would eventually turn into the number two wrestling promotion in the world. Nobody, that is, but The Bucks themselves. After years of being told they weren’t good enough or they weren’t big enough or they were spot monkeys or they “didn’t respect the business,” The Young Bucks proved that they did belong at the top of this business, and that’s exactly where they are sitting. Inside the ropes, The Bucks put on classics with Santana and Ortiz, The Lucha Bros. and more. Their ladder match at All Out was, arguably, the greatest tag team ladder match of all time. Their resume speaks for themselves when it comes to match quality and business acumen. And at the top of that resume, they can confidently list themselves as the Best Tag Team in the World.
Jeff Lutz’s Thoughts: I didn’t follow Santana and Ortiz in Impact Wrestling, but I can see why AEW wanted them on the roster from Day 1. In a loaded AEW tag division, Proud and Powerful have stood out with believable characters, solid microphone work, and strong matches.
Anish V’s Thoughts: While a lot of the Undisputed Era’s great work has come when they have all been working as a whole, I can’t undercut the great work that Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish did as a tag team as well, especially their involvement in the ladder match at NXT Takeover XXV and their matches against The Street Profits and overall on weekly NXT TV in general.
John Moore’s Thoughts: So far, LAX’s run in AEW has been a disappointment. They are the Drew McIntyre of AEW in that whoever booking the show doesn’t know that these two guys are some of the best mic workers in the business. That said, they still have good matches. Santana and Ortiz are still my favorite tag team to watch on TV (right behind The Revival). These guys have a fun brawling and high flying hybrid style. They can work heel or babyface. They’re amazing talkers. Look up the cold openings they did for Impact PPVs where they go into their character motivations. Ortiz is a great talker who can shift between goofball and serious on a dime. Santana is amazing in the ring. These guys can carry anyone to a great match and produce match of the year candidates when against a top tier tag team. Here’s hoping AEW gives them a microphone in 2020 because if that happens then I will give them my 2020 Tag Team of the Year.
Powell’s Thoughts: It was a good year for tag team wrestling and yet Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly ran away with the reader voting and deservedly so. They’ve proven time and time again that they can work to the strengths of their opponents regardless of style. If Lutz thinks Santana and Ortiz have been good in AEW where I feel they’ve been cast as henchmen, then I can’t even imagine what he’d say if he saw their far superior work as LAX in Impact Wrestling. The Lucha Brothers are third on my list, and their matches with LAX in Impact always felt like they were guaranteed to be instant classics. The Young Bucks had a good year in the ring by most standards, but it was actually a down year by their standards. It’s not that they didn’t have some strong in-ring performances, it’s that they were inactive for a good portion of the year while waiting for the official launch of AEW Dynamite. I am very excited to see what the future holds for The Revival tag team. While I’ll never begrudge anyone for taking the financial security that WWE affords, I can’t help but hope they opt for a change of scenery, simply because there’s just not the same level of appreciation of tag team wrestling on Raw or Smackdown that there seems to be nearly everywhere else.
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