Currently on Raw, the tandem of Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel – collectively known as The B-Team – are in the midst of a small push. The mostly comedic duo are the new #1 contenders for the Raw Tag Team Championship, currently being held by The Deleters of Worlds (“Woken” Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt). Dallas and Axel have been working together for sometime now, as members of the Miztourage for most of the past year, as well as a run together in The Social Outcasts a while back. This past Monday saw the two further their feud with the Raw Tag Team Champions, as they mimicked the outlandish promos from Hardy and Wyatt’s feud from earlier this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eAZyXdOavU
As many fans know, both Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel are third generation wrestlers. Bo Dallas is the son of WWE Legend Mike Rotunda (aka Irwin R. “IRS” Shyster) and grandson of WWE Hall of Famer Blackjack Mulligan, while Axel is the son of WWE Hall of Famer “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig and the grandson of AWA Legend Larry “The Ax” Hennig.
Back in 1986, Curt Hennig was an emerging star in the AWA, a Minnesota born and bred athlete and one of the few younger stars to get a big push in the AWA – he won the AWA World Heavyweight Championship in May of 1987 and held it for 373 days. But in ’86, he was still being groomed and working the tag team division (he won the AWA Tag Team titles with Scott Hall that year). But in April of 1986, he briefly teamed with a former WWF tag team champion – Mike Rotunda. Rotunda and his usual tag team partner, Barry Windham (Bo’s uncle), had recently left the WWF and had taken to All Japan. They returned to North America, where they worked for various NWA territories, as well as the AWA. During those months, Rotunda decided to return to the WWF but Windham was against it. Rotunda returned and paired with Danny Spivey in a new incarnation of the US Express (this time renamed The American Express), while Windham returned to the NWA territories and joined The Four Horsemen. But on April 3, 1986, on an episode of AWA television on ESPN, Mike Rotunda was paired with a young Curt Hennig in a match against one of AWA’s top stars, Larry Zbyszko, and his tag partner Mr. Go (a brief ninja character in AWA portrayed by NJPW’s Hiroshi Yagi). Hennig would move on to championship gold with Scott Hall and Rotunda returned to the WWF, but for a brief moment in time, there was a B-Team in the AWA, nearly 32 years to the day of The B-Team’s creation.
