The New Age Outlaws
Coming out of the New Generation Era, the tag team division was a wreck. No one took the tag ranks seriously, and some serious work needed to be done to bring it back from the brink. To begin, WWE needed to develop the perfect heel tag champs for the rest of the division to chase, which is where Billy Gunn and The Road Dogg came in.
The New Age Outlaws held 5 Tag Team Championships during the Attitude Era. In that role, they provided the perfect heel team for the babyfaces to chase. They cheated their way to victory and gloated about it to the jeers of the audience. They established their greatness as tag team champions and were a fixture of the Attitude Era.
The Rock
The Rock’s character didn’t gain much traction when he first debuted. It wasn’t until he turned heel that the wrestling world realized the greatness of the third-generation wrestler. After that turn, he blossomed into one of the greatest champions of the Attitude Era. It began with an incredible run with the Intercontinental Championship, where he had great matches with the likes of Steve Austin, Triple H, and Ken Shamrock.
When the mid-card became too small, The Rock set his sights on the WWE Championship. A title that he won 6 times during the Attitude Era, while engaging in epic battles with Triple H, Steve Austin, and Mick Foley. Oh, and he added 5 tag team championship wins to his resume during the era, upping his total to 13 championships won. It was an incredible run for the future Hollywood superstar.
Edge & Christian
Edge and Christian were another perfect heel tag team for the Attitude Era. They were goofy, but also very dangerous, having no issue with stooping to any level to win the tag team championships. E & C were the team that was always being chased.
Throughout their 8 reigns with the tag straps, they had teams like The Hardy and Dudley Boyz, among others, vying to wrestle the championships away. They would succeed for a time, but eventually Edge and Christian would recover their championships.
The tag team division would have been nothing without Edge and Christian as its champions. They were the perfect team to hold the championship and give the world a cathartic moment when they were defeated. The matches that they were involved in have become a thing of legend in the wrestling world. The Attitude Era’s story cannot be told without Edge and Christian as the WWE Tag Team Champions.
