Every Wednesday, WWE Classics and Greatest Matches team up with your favorite Superstars to bring you the Five-Star Match of the Week. We ask a Superstar in the WWE locker room to select one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time, and WWE.com brings you that full-length match, uncut.
Today, WWE is experiencing a tag team renaissance. With champions like Team Hell No and young, exciting tandems including The Usos and The Prime Time Players, tag team competition is once again a highlight of WWE programming. But sports-entertainment has a rich history of tag teams that includes duos like The Road Warriors, The New Age Outlaws and The Hart Foundation.
SmackDown General Manager Booker T is one man who cannot forget the glory days of tag team wrestling. For his Five-Star Match of the Week selection, the five-time (five-time, five-time ...) WCW Champion picked The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express vs. The Midnight Express from WCW WrestleWar 1990. ( MORE WCW)
“The reason I picked that match, is because those are the two tag teams that I grew up watching,” Booker explained. “Those are the guys who inspired me and my brother back in the day to become a tag team.”
In WCW, Booker and his brother, Stevie Ray, won the WCW Tag Team Championships a record 10 times. Known as Harlem Heat, the duo defeated Sting & Lex Luger, The Nasty Boys and The Steiner Brothers, among others. ( MORE BOOKER T)
Harlem Heat was good, but in the 1980s, tag team dominance was owned by The Midnight Express. Though the team went through several incarnations, they always had tennis racket-wielding loudmouth Jim Cornette by their side. It didn’t matter if they were wrestling in the AWA, Mid-South Wrestling, WCCW or for Jim Crockett. The Midnights won titles.
“That was a team that if you saw them, you’d never forget them,” Booker said. “They were two guys, ‘Sweet’ Stan and ‘Beautiful’ Bobby, who went out there and performed at the highest level each and every night. They were two guys who could wrestle with anybody. And then came along The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express.”
The duo of Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson took the Southern wrestling scene by storm in the 1980s as they introduced high-flying attacks and rock ‘n’ roll cool to sports-entertainment long before such things were the norm.
“Oh, man,” Booker remembered with a smile. “These were two guys who personified greatness as far as tag teams go. They weren’t the biggest guys, but they did something that no other team could make the fans do, and that was feel their pain, feel their happiness, feel every expression that they were giving out in the middle of the ring.”
Fans loved to cheer Morton and Gibson and loved to boo “Sweet” Stan and “Beautiful” Bobby. And when the teams clashed in the ring, it was pure magic.
“When those tag teams were brought together, they performed at the highest level,” Booker explained. “I don’t think there will ever be two tag teams that will perform at the level that these guys did on a yearly, weekly, nightly occasion. Everybody talks about The Road Warriors being the greatest tag team of all time. But if it was my pick, it would be a tie between The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express and The Midnight Express.”
( WWE CLASSICS | WWE GREATEST MATCHES)
PREVIOUS FIVE-STAR MATCHES:
Oct. 3, 2012: Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels, WrestleMania XII
Oct. 10, 2012: Rey Mysterio vs. Eddie Guerrero, Halloween Havoc 1997
Oct. 17, 2012: Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk, Clash of the Champions IX: New York Knockout
Oct. 24, 2012: CM Punk vs. John Cena, Money in the Bank 2011
Oct. 31, 2012: Randy Savage vs. Ted DiBiase, WrestleMania IV
Nov. 7, 2012: Bret Hart vs. The British Bulldog, SummerSlam 1992
Nov. 14, 2012: Razor Ramon vs. Shawn Michaels, WrestleMania X
Nov. 21, 2012: The Hart Foundation vs. The British Bulldogs, Madison Square Garden
Nov. 28, 2012: Eddie Guerrero vs. Brock Lesnar, No Way Out 2004
Dec. 5, 2012: Ric Flair vs. Big Van Vader, Starrcade 1993
Dec. 12, 2012: Bret Hart vs. Mr. Perfect, SummerSlam 1991
Dec. 19, 2012: Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage, WrestleMania III
Dec. 26, 2012: Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean Malenko, ECW, Aug. 26, 1995
Jan. 2, 2013: Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho, WrestleMania XIX
Jan. 9, 2013: Kerry Von Erich vs. Ric Flair, David Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions