My favourite tag team is breaking up.
Again.
It’s practically a bi-annual event at this point. You’d think I’d have learned not to get emotionally invested by now, but no. No, I just keep handing over my soft squishy little heart, ready to be crushed all over again.
The thing is, when it’s good, tag team wrestling is the best kind of wrestling. You get all the violence, spectacle, and drama of singles wrestling, but with an added layer of emotion and storytelling potential. It’s not just about a single person’s endurance and skill any more—it’s about that, plus it’s about how well they can work with their teammate.
When you get a seasoned tag team, the way they work together approaches the sublime. They can anticipate one another’s movements, be ready to jump in when they’re needed, and pull off combo moves seamlessly. Their strengths compliment one another; they compensate for one another’s weaknesses. Watching two people working in absolute synchronisation can be hypnotic.
It’s also fun to watch new tag teams figuring one another out. Maybe they haven’t quite managed to anticipate one another’s moves. Maybe they don’t fully trust one another, or they compete for ring time instead of sharing it willingly, only slowly discovering that they’re stronger together than they are apart.
Am I making it sound like a romance? Maybe it is. (Would it surprise you, at this point, if I told you that my favourite movie is Pacific Rim?) Unfortunately, like romantic couples, tag teams also sometimes run into compatibility issues, fight, and even break up.
I’ve only been watching wrestling for a couple of years, and I fully lost my heart to Best Friends in AEW. Chuck Taylor and Trent Beretta were goofy little guys in tie-dye tracksuits who lost more often than they won, but that never stopped them declaring that next time, they’d win the big one. Their love for one another was always their greatest strength: they entered the ring holding hands and their most iconic move was a hug—usually, in the middle of a match, in the centre of the ring, with the camera rapidly zooming out and Excalibur on commentary yelling that “You’ve got to give the people what they want!”
They’d been a tag team, on and off, since 2013, and so when I fell for them at the end of 2022, I didn’t know I was putting myself in danger. There was, to me, no reason to suspect that they wouldn’t be together forever.
And then, in April 2024, Trent turned heel and asked Chuck to abandon their mutual bestie Orange Cassidy to turn heel with him, and Chuck refused. Instead, the two of them had a hardcore match in the car park, which led to Trent injuring Chuck so severely that he’ll never wrestle again. It was a betrayal more devastating than any other I can think of in fiction—Angel post-coitally losing his soul maybe comes close?—and yes, I know there are real life reasons why it had to happen, but it broke my heart.
You know who else broke my heart? Adam Cole. Better Than You BayBay was a tag team that was never built to last, but I fell for it anyway.
Paired together at random (in kayfabe, anyway) for a blind eliminator tag tournament, Adam Cole and MJF were a pair of scorpions forced to cooperate in pursuit of glory. But they worked so well together that their tag team brought out something special in each of them. They let down their guards and allowed themselves to be soft, to be silly, and to be trusting. AEW gave us a bunch of extremely daft vignettes in which the boys hung out together, playing videogames or visiting a trampoline park, and the joy they found in one another’s company was contagious.
Their storyline seemed destined to end at AEW’s biggest ever show, as Adam Cole challenged Max for his AEW Men’s World Championship at All In 2023. Over the course of 27 and a half minutes, the two of them battled not just for the title but for their friendship. Cole ripped off MJF’s Better Than You BayBay team shirt. MJF resisted the temptation to hit Cole with his Dynamite Diamond ring; Cole couldn’t bring himself to brain Max with the title belt. Their signature team move, a double clothesline, became a punchline when they simultaneously hit clotheslines on one another. Somehow, the match managed to combine the goofy humour of the storyline with real, raw emotion, as two men who’d struggled to trust one another pushed that trust to its limits—but not beyond.
At the end of the match, when MJF had successfully defended his title, Cole slumped miserably into the corner of the ring, inconsolable, even rejecting Max’s attempts to cheer him up with their Ring of Honor tag titles. Hurt, Max turned his back on Cole and invited him to blindside him, to prove that their friendship had been a sham all along… but he didn’t. After considering it for a long moment, he instead threw himself into Max’s arms for a hug. It was a proper feelgood moment, a testament to the power of friendship against all odds, and honestly I’m tearing up a little just remembering it.
And yet, at the end of 2023, at Worlds End, all of that good feeling went away when the Devil—the leader of a faction of masked men who’d been menacing AEW, focusing on Max, don’t worry about it—unmasked himself and turned out to be Adam Cole. According to him? His friendship with Max had always only been for show, getting close to him so that he could get a shot at the world title. God, maybe that was a betrayal more upsetting than Trent’s.
Anyway, all of that is to say: I am a sucker for representations of love and friendship—agape rather than eros—whether it’s a long-term thing or just a quickie. Show me a tag team who love one another and I’ll go all in.
Which is how I find myself once again on the brink of having my heart broken, this time by Sunshine Machine in Revolution Pro Wrestling (or RevPro). A team since 2019, Chuck Mambo and TK Cooper stole my heart with their glitter, their high-flying, and their teamwork—they even have a move that’s supercharged by the power of friendship. Who could resist?
Together, TK and Mambo currently hold the Progress tag team titles, the Kamikaze tag team titles, and the Riot Cabaret tag team titles (plus the Riot Cabaret Slamball cup, which we don’t have time to talk about here). But since April, TK has been on a quest for singles glory in RevPro, working his way through a number one contendership tournament until the only thing standing between him and singles gold was the RevPro Undisputed British Men’s Heavyweight champion, Michael Oku.
That match happened last week, at the Revolution Rumble, and, heartbreakingly, TK lost. A loss that was compounded, though, by the lack of anyone waiting ringside to console him. In fact, Mambo hasn’t been at any of TK’s singles matches this year. Until the Rumble, he hadn’t been at a single RevPro show since March. But he did show up at the Rumble… just at the worst possible time.
Following his match with Oku, TK had retreated backstage, but he re-emerged partway through the Rumble, attacking little Leland Bryant and stealing the 23rd spot in the match. He was quickly eliminated by Trent Seven, though, at which point something seemed to snap. TK started attacking members of the ring crew, delivering headbutts to anyone within headbutting range, only stopping when entry number 25, Chuck Mambo, pulled him away. For one devastating moment, TK and Mambo looked into one another’s eyes… and then Mambo decided it was more important to get into the match than address whatever was going on with his partner.
Which turned out to be a pretty bad decision, as Mambo was almost immediately eliminated by Ricky Knight Jr. RKJ threw him over the top rope, letting him fall at TK’s feet. And TK… TK just turned and walked away.
This story isn’t over, of course. The Rumble was last Sunday. There’s more to come. But it doesn’t look good, does it?
If you’ve been a wrestling fan for years, you’re probably rolling your eyes at me right now. “Tag teams split up,” I imagine you saying. “It’s what they do!” But for whatever reason, I can’t fully bring myself to accept it. Sunshine Machine haven’t split up yet and maybe they won’t! Maybe the power of friendship will win, this time. Maybe true love and headbutts will triumph. And if not?
I’ll find another tag team to love. Maybe they’ll be the ones to win the big one.
It could happen.
Thanks for reading!
Hi! This is the first “issue” — heavy on the scare quotes — of my newsletter. I’ve had the beginning of a draft of this essay sitting on my desktop for weeks, waiting for me to decide to do something with it. So this is what I did.
I’m not sure why you’d be reading this if you don’t already know me, but I’m Sarah, aka @awfullywaffly. I’m a new-ish wrestling fan, and I have a podcast with my (metaphorical) tag team partner MJ (we’re never going to split up). It’s called Waffly Bollox and we put out new episodes weekly, discussing the latest goings on in AEW, Ring of Honor, RevPro, and anything else we’ve been watching. It’s fun! You should give it a listen.
I quite fancy getting back into writing, after a few years of not really writing anything longer than an Instagram caption, so maybe this’ll become a regular thing. Subscribe if you wanna be pals! xox