Click here to see the Top 100 Tag Teams of All Time list so far.
The team currently known as the Viking Raiders, ranked number 106 and coming in at number 91 on this list, have already appeared a couple of times in this series. Formerly known as War Machine (meh), the War Raiders (that’s the ticket), and the Viking Experience (mother of god) formed in 2014 in Ring of Honor after fighting each other in the finals of the ROH Top Prospects Tournament that year. They became a red-hot tag team in top indie companies and in New Japan in the latter half of the ‘10s, which of course meant they got signed to Triple H’s NXT. Because of that trajectory, we’re (thankfully) not getting any schlocky indie matches on this list.
June 11, 2017 – Osaka, Osaka
Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa def. Hanson & Raymond Rowe {IWGP Tag Team Championship Match}
From NJPW Dominion. War Machine came into this as champions, having won the titles two months earlier from TenKoji. More on TenKoji coming up soon in this series, including that match. When the commentators call him Ray Rowe instead of Raymond, it sounds like they’re making fun of the English accent saying lay low. That or a bad Scooby Doo impression. Either way, I wish Don Callous would just call him Rowe. Instead, he says it a ton. The match was perfectly fine, but didn’t blow me away. Tonga got to look tough by kicking out of a couple of War Machine’s big tandem moves. Hanson got to do his flying thing, which I like a lot. Tonga’s counter to the pop-up powerslam was neat too. The ref got bumped and then chairs got introduced to the ring. Rowe avoided a chairshot and then refused to use the chair on his opponents, so Loa smacked him in the face with one. That set up the Guerrilla Warfare for the win at 10:43. ***
July 23, 2017 – Manchester, Greater Manchester
Tyler Bate & Trent Seven def. Hanson & Ray Rowe {PROGRESS Tag Team Championship Tornado Match}
From PROGRESS Chapter 52: Vote Pies. War Machine was coming off of a win in
a great tornado tag match
on the previous PROGRESS show, so the stipulation was a punishment against the heel British Strong Style team. Also, this was only a month and a half since their loss at Dominion, but War Machine had already won back the IWGP titles. Those belts are not on the line. This had more meaningless brawling on the floor than I’d like, with the exception of one cool bit on the ramp. Bate was handing both opponents their asses with back heel kick after back heel kick, but he slipped a bit and immediately got bodyslammed. That was either choreographed very well or it was an amazing use of an unexpected moment. Mustache Mountain doesn’t really work as a heel team, as evidenced by Bate showing little personality for the first half of the match. And then later, when he does his usual strongman stuff, the crowd cheers him anyway because it’s a babyface repertoire. There were a ton of silly spots that were too cute by half. These were exchanges that we’ve now seen pared down and made to look less ridiculous on NXT Takeovers. But if you’re curious to see the rough draft of the 2018/2019 NXT tag team division style, look no further. It doesn’t look great, and contains things like the teams trading and no-selling stereo Pedigrees. From there, Bate clocks both opponents with title belts and Seven hits another Pedigree on Hanson on top of the belt for the win at 23:06. The crowd liked it, but this didn’t work for me. **¾
February 26, 2017 – Tokyo, Japan
Hanson & Raymond Rowe def. Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson
From ROH/NJPW Honor Rising. The Bucks were in peak emulating the Klique mode here. The fact that they got over with this shtick is a major indictment of our nostalgia-fiending culture. They were the ROH tag champs here but the titles weren’t on the line. You know, so War Machine could win without incident. On commentary, Kevin Kelly points out (in kayfabe, thankfully) that the Jacksons make themselves look terribly weak by hitting dozens of superkicks in a match without ever winning with the move. But he loses a million points for calling Hanson’s butt splash the Whoopie Cushion. That’s an awful name for that move. Op, the Young Bucks also rip off Speed Muscle in this match. They also couldn’t get the win with successive 450 Splashes. They’re so weak! How was anyone supposed to believe that anything they did could get the pin? I frankly have no idea why this was received as well as it was, I got very little out of it. War Machine puts away Matt with the Fallout at 12:05, and then never received a shot at the Bucks titles. **½
January 26, 2019 – Phoenix, Arizona
Hanson & Rowe def. Kyle O’Reilly & Roderick Strong {NXT Tag Team Championship Match}
From NXT Takeover: Phoenix. The War Raiders had a WrestleMania-style entrance featuring soldiers flanking them, so their win was more or less telegraphed out of the gate. Strong & O’Reilly did a lot here to get the Raiders’ strength over. Beyond that, this had the same vibe as an early ’90s WCW Steiners match; it was filled with big power moves that felt chaotically thrown together. The whole thing was wild as hell, slightly more slow-paced than a typical Takeover tag team opener, but as hard-hitting as usual and probably more intense. The Raiders won in 16:57 after hitting O’Reilly with the Fallout. At the time, I thought this was a good sign for the Raiders’ title reign and the future of tag team wrestling in NXT without the Undisputed Era in it. Little did I know that the Undisputed Era was going nowhere for a couple years and that the tag division had one good year left in it before COVID put an end to that. ****¼
April 6, 2019 – Brooklyn, New York
Hanson & Rowe def. Amsterdam Black & Ricochet {NXT Tag Team Championship Match}
Black & Ricochet had been on a farewell tour for months, saying goodbye to NXT fans at house shows and getting a major celebration after winning the Dusty Classic on NXT TV. Here, (a show I was at live!) they got a tearful standing ovation after taking the L in what would be their final NXT matches before moving on to main roster hell. Well, Ricochet came back for one match against Matt Riddle that should have been awesome, but for reasons I can’t remember lasted fewer than four minutes. This match however, was awesome. Even though I didn’t have a great sense for who the War Raiders were at the time because they were kept off of TV a lot, and they only cut backstage promos, and almost never had any vocal interactions with their opponents before matches. But that hardly took away from this match. The only time things really slowed down was when the crowd became distracted with a section that was complaining about a spotlight in their eyes, and the rest of the match was what we’d come to expect. It was filled with non-stop spots and slams, making for a great opener to what I still think is the best wrestling show ever. I loved this Takeover opener tradition, and at the time I worried a bit that it would start to get repetitive. Little did I know the world would end and the shows would get so much worse for a host of other reasons. ****¼
I like the War Raiders’ (or whatever you want to call them) quite a bit, though I think they’ve suffered from a lack of talent in their opponents. With the exception of their somewhat brief NXT run, all of their top opponents were more interested in getting over with indie fans who liked wackiness more than fans of good tag team wrestling. Here’s hoping one day they’ll be able to have a marquee match against RK-Bro or Alpha Academy. But I won’t be holding my breath.