Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The Tag Rope Repaired

Just when you think you have a trend down cold, it has to go and reverse itself. In some cases, this is a bad thing, like growth on the stock market that suddenly makes a u-turn and crashes. In other cases, you're left pleasantly surprised. The apparent resurgence of tag wrestling in eW is one of these cases.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I bemoaned the dwindlage of tag team divisions. (To show how dated that post is, WFW still had pretensions of being an active fed then :p) Up until even a few months ago, that post rang true. The only fed that I knew of that had anything resembling a healthy, thriving tag team division was NAPW. Mind you, NAPW's division could stack up with any great tag division in the history of eW, but the truth was that even feds that did have a tag division ran it on life-support.

Then, something happened. People started giving a shit about tag teams again and made efforts to handle them as one handler or, the best part, palled together with other handlers to form tag teams. As a result, you had a great turnout for the MCW Tag Team Tournament, a concerted effort from Jarret and A1E to re-establish the tag division and the overflow in PRIME's newest roster expansion to enthusiastically enter the division and make it viable once more.

Does this mean there's been a sea change in the way people feel about tag teams? I would say no, because I feel that deep down inside, everyone wants to have a tag division. I would say that there's a sea change in the effort put forth to have a tag division, at least initially. It's very, very important to note that with PRIME and A1E, this re-expansion of the tag divisions is still in the infant stages. Who knows if and when people will get bored of it and go back to their selfish singles division exploits. For now though, things are looking up, and I feel that's a good thing.

When you have an active tag team division, you have a battleground for people to enter and do battle with other characters regardless of standing on the card. It's the only true place on the card where position really doesn't matter all that much. It's also the best avenue to show the collaborative side of eW, which is what I feel makes eW so great and sets it apart from other forms of writing.

Hopefully, the interest in tag teams stays up. I have a good feeling that it will though.

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