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Tag team of the year


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With tag wrestling kinda dead in the U.S., the only real candidates I see stateside are PG-13. And they worked a breakup angle and spent a great deal of the year apart, so I don't want to pick them.

 

Misawa and Akiyama won the award. Kawada and Taue are right there too. I think you could pick either team and do just fine, so I have no qualms with the WON pick.

 

I do wish at some point that the best tag team of all time (Kawada and Taue) would have won tag team of the year at least once though.

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Who won it for '97? '98? I don't remember them doing much of anything in '99, Kawada only worked three tours? I like the Kobashi/Akiyama January match but Burning them have the Misawa/Ogawa matches.

 

Really, Misawa and Kobashi were a better tag team between 1993 and 1995. Misawa and Akiyama had a stronger year in 1996 with the June tag vs. Doc/Ace; I recall the RWTL vs. Kobashi/Patriot being an awesome TV match, too, and of course the feud with Kawada/Taue themselves.

 

So, yeah, I'd have Misawa/Akiyama for 1996.

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Who won it for '97? '98?

Misawa & Jun then Otani & Takaiwa.

 

Kawada's prime as a tag worker with three really good teams was 1987-2000, though obviously 2000 was a half year due to the split and 1999 had the major injury. Anyway, the winners and runner-ups in that period:

 

Year Winner								Runner Up
1987 The Midnight Express (2)			  Akira Maeda & Nobuhiko Takada
1988 The Midnight Express (3)			  The Fantastics
1989 The Rockers						   Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard
1990 Rick & Scott Steiner				  The Midnight Express
1991 Mitsuharu Misawa & Toshiaki Kawada	Rick & Scott Steiner
1992 Terry Gordy & Steve Williams		  The Can-Am Express
1993 The Hollywood Blonds				  The Heavenly Bodies
1994 Love Machine & Eddy Guerrero		  Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi
1995 Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi	  Public Enemy
1996 Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama		The Eliminators
1997 Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama (2)	Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue
1998 Shinjiro Otani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa	Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue
1999 Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama		   Matt and Jeff Hardy
2000 Edge & Christian					  Matt and Jeff Hardy

It might not hold up, but I think at the time that Kawada was the best tag worker of the 90s, and rather good in those last three years of the 80s. There's something ironic about the list of winners not really reflecting that, and that someone like Jun looks like the dominant tag worker of the last few years of the decade.

 

That said, I think if we looked at the voting that we'd find Kawada & Taue (and Kawada's teams in general) did "well" in those years. They weren't as loved as various teams with either Misawa or Kobashi. They also fell behind a number of the hot-at-the-moment teams (Blonds, Locos) and the ECW Ballot Stuffing Brigade (PE and Eliminators). But overall... Footloose, Misawa & Kawada and Kawada & Taue drew votes year after year.

 

John

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