In case you didn’t know…

Individual wrestlers aren’t the only ones to get praise from fans for their work. Tag teams and multi-person acts are also recognized for their efforts as well. In fact, some of the best matches you’re likely to see these days are tag team matches due to the more complex stories told inside the ring and because tag team matches tend to be more unpredictable.

Many famous tag teams have won this award over the years due to how influential and successful they were in the realm of tag team wrestling. Previous winners include: The Road Warriors (Hawk & Animal), two different versions of the Midnight Express, Edge & Christian, John Morrison and The Miz, and The Shield.

However, sometimes a randomly-thrown together tag team without a name can also succeed, as seen with Mitsuharu Misawa, who won the award four times with three different partners.

However, no single tag team has won this award more times than the Young Bucks, who have now won it for their fourth consecutive year.

The heart of the matter

The 2017 vote total for Tag Team of the Year showed a runaway win for the Young Bucks, as they received well over double the number of votes that the second place team, the Usos, got.

Last year, however, there was much more competition between the top three tag teams (The Bucks, The Revival & #DIY), which tells you that tag team wrestling appears to have taken something of a fall this year.

The only other WWE tag team to break into the top ten was The Bar (Cesaro & Sheamus), but they were a distant fourth, far behind the third-place team, War Machine.

What’s next?

The Young Bucks are one of the most popular and successful tag teams in the world right now. They get frequent bookings on high-profile wrestling shows all over the place, and shows on which they appear tend to sell out very quickly.

In the near future, the award-winning Young Bucks will be featured on several important shows, including a highly-anticipated dream tag team match between the Young Bucks (now wrestling in the heavyweight division for the first time) and the reunited team of the Golden☆Lovers (Kenny Omega & Kota Ibushi).

Author’s take

Of all the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards that are voted on each year, this one should probably be taken with a grain of salt. The Young Bucks are known fans of Dave Meltzer and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter itself, going so far as to name one of their tag team finishers after him.

In terms of the actual award, though, I personally think that the Usos earned the top spot in 2017 more than the Bucks did. While one cannot deny that the Young Bucks are a tremendous tag team and are a massive draw wherever they go, they haven’t changed that much in 2017 when compared to 2016.

They had some of their absolute best matches in 2016, including a spectacular performance at the Battle of Los Angeles in 2016 that earned a 5-star rating.

The Usos, however, were on fire throughout 2017 and were arguably the only characters that didn’t experience any negative booking or suffer from any creative setbacks during that calendar year.

Their feud with the New Day was one of the highlights of SmackDown, and the matches they had with other teams were more often than not the best matches on any card (especially WWE Battleground 2017).

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the Usos are the best natural tag team in WWE right now, and could easily give the Young Bucks and other world-class tag teams a run for their money should said teams ever cross paths.

Send us news tips at [email protected]

0 votes