Click here to see the Top 100 Tag Teams of All Time list so far.
Arn Anderson joined Jim Crockett Promotions in 1984, the year of my birth, and was recruited into the fake, and now resurgent, Anderson family. The Minnesota Wrecking Crew, which had originally, starting 18 years earlier, been Ole Anderson and Gene “My Name is Actually” Anderson, with occasional appearances by fake relative Lars Anderson. Gene was on his way out of active competition, so Arn took his place in the team. It is the Arn & Ole team that has a spot in the top 100 list, despite them being the least decorated iteration of the team. Is it recency bias if the team benefitting from it is 40 years old?
They were ranked number 75 on the 2022 list and then fell all the way to number 93 in 2023, which lands them in this spot. Part of the reason they fell is because of new teams popping up in the list this year. Catch 22 of Francesco Akira & TJP are one such team, who are ranked 74 if you’re going just by the 2023 list. But standing the test of time goes a long way with me, and Catch 22 formed just after I pulled the list in 2022. So rather than give them this spot on the list, it goes to the Andersons and I’m doing a pop up of Catch 22’s two matches rated over 8.0 on Cagematch.
In 1985, the Andersons joined the Four Horsemen, and all of the following matches happened.
July 19, 1986 – Columbia, South Carolina
Arn Anderson & Ole Anderson tld. Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson
From NWA World Championship Wrestling. The crowd, or at least the very loud and numerous women in the crowd, were insane for the RnR Express. The MWC started working over Gibson’s arm, and did so through a commercial break. When Morton tagged in, he cleaned house in a way I don’t recall seeing much but a way that I wish I saw more. As a much smaller wrestler, he gingerly attacked and then retreated, putting both opponents out of balance and never staying in their faces long enough to get caught. Makes total sense given the size difference. The RnR’s find thrilling ways to attack Ole’s leg. The match continued on like that for quite a while, but never got boring. The Andersons would abuse Gibson or Morton, but then they’d make a miracle tag and come back for a bit with something exciting. This could have gone on for an hour and not felt repetitive. Another little touch, which I actually think was an accident but quite liked, was Gibson getting up on the turnbuckle in anticipation of being tagged in, but it being for naught because Gibson was then flung into the opposite corner of the ring. Gibson threw on a sleeper hold that was little more than a momentum shift when the time limit expired at 23:19 (shown of 30:00). If every match had this kind of crowd heat then wrestlers wouldn’t have to work so hard in the ring. Mother of god. Despite tying, the RnRs left the MWC laying after the match. The draw set up a match between the teams at the Great American Bash a week later, which they went about in a very confusing way. More about that two paragraphs down. ****
November 28, 1985 – Atlanta, Georgia
Arn Anderson & Ole Anderson def. Billy Jack Haynes & Wahoo McDaniel {NWA National Tag Team Championship Match}
From NWA Starrcade. This was during the only title reign that this iteration of the team ever had. Ole had been one half of the champs with Thunderbolt Patterson, but he turned on Patterson and won the belts with Arn over Patterson and Manny Fernandez. It’s pretty clear this wound up on the list only because more people have seen it than most of the Andersons matches. There are probably a dozen matches from NWA World Championship Wrestling that top this easily. That’s not to say it’s bad; it’s hard fought and goes by in a flash. But Haynes plays practically no role in it whatsoever. McDaniel wrestled almost the entire match save for a 30-second breather near the end. This is the punchy-kickiest match you’ll ever see, and it ends suddenly when McDaniel gets tripped on the outside and pinned by Arn at 9:28. After a nearly year-long reign, the MWC lost the belts two months after this when Ole got injured by the Road Warriors and Dusty Rhodes. The belts were deactivated and replaced by the NWA United States Tag Team Championship at that time. **¾
July 26, 1986 – Greensboro, North Carolina
Arn Anderson & Ole Anderson tld. Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson.
From the NWA Great American Bash. Why does this have a shorter time limit than the time limit they couldn’t deal with a week earlier? Anyway, Morton was fresh off of a defeat in an NWA World Heavyweight Championship match against Ric Flair earlier in the tour. While this shared nuances that were in their TV match, it was structured quite differently. Here, the RnRs were in control and the Andersons were largely unable to figure out a return strategy. Like in the last match, the RnRs went after the MWC’s legs, but here it was much more effective; to the point that Ole was left flailing around, terrified that he’d be made to submit. A great moment saw Arn miss a kneedrop and Gibson immediately put on a Figure 4 Leglock, followed by Morton doing the same to Ole. But Brad, I hear you typing in a mean tweet, you get so annoyed when all four guys are in the ring for stereo submissions. That’s true, but here the referee immediately breaks up Morton’s hold and pushes him back to his corner, and Ole makes the best of a distracted referee by attacking Gibson. Never a wasted moment. The crowd got to go crazy for the double Figure 4, and the heels got an opportunity to make the heroes pay for their panache. In the TV match, I lauded Morton for his stick-and-move comeback style. Here, he went brute force on a comeback, hitting both guys with bodyslams. It bit him in the ass when he immediately got caught and shoved into the turnbuckle. Deviating from what worked bit him! Love it. What I loved less were the final five minutes of the match. The Andersons spent most of it in control, and they seemed content to beat Morton up without trying very often to pin or submit him. Even as the remaining time was announced to the crowd, the sense of urgency wasn’t there. Gibson got tag with 30 seconds to go and locked in that sleeper hold, but if that couldn’t win him the match in the closing seconds of their TV bout then why would it work here? The time limit expired at 20:00. Bit of a bummer, as the first 15 minutes were on their way to eclipsing what they accomplished on TV, and then they just didn’t. ***¾
February 25, 1990 – Greensboro, North Carolina
Rick Steiner & Scott Steiner def. Arn Anderson & Ole Anderson {NWA World Tag Team Championship Match}
From NWA WrestleWar. Arn was the Television Champion here. This didn’t work. The crowd didn’t care for a bit of it, and the action moved like molasses because of it. The most interesting thing about the match was Rick’s hairstyle tribute to Albert Brooks. After what felt like a lifetime of lifeless offense from the Andersons, things got a little focused with an attack to Scott’s arm on the floor. But that didn’t really go anywhere because moments later, Rick caught Ole with an inside cradle for the win at 16:05. That’s too bad, this could have been a gnarly, intense brawl. **½
November 27, 1986 – Greensboro, North Carolina
Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson def. Arn Anderson & Ole Anderson {NWA World Tag Team Championship Steel Cage Match}
From NWA Starrcade. The champion RnR Express asked for this match so that the other Horsemen wouldn’t be able to interfere. Despite being in a cage, they’re still utilizing tag rules. I wonder if disqualifications are in play, and if not, why bother tagging? For the first half of the match, it was looking like our heroes had made a huge mistake by asking for this stipulation, as the close quarters left them beaten and bloodied by their more vicious opponents. Morton would begin to pick up steam, making the crowd believe he’d retaliate, but at every turn his speed just got him slammed with more velocity. How the ladies in the crowd kept their enthusiasm up in the face of such merciless violence is beyond me. And then, out of absolutely nowhere, the champs won. The finish was terrific. Morton never got the miracle tag. Instead, he rolled up Ole for a two-count, which drew in Arn, which drew in Gibson. And during the chaos, Ole picked up Gibson for a slam, but Morton dropkicked his partner on top of Ole for the win at 20:20. You’ll never see a more one-sided tag team match with a more satisfying ending. I could watch the Andersons fight the Rock & Roll Express forever. ****¼
The Steiners match was the beginning of the end for the Andersons. The two teams feuded for two more months, and then Ole retired to manage the Four Horsemen. Arn continued to wrestle long past his expiration date. He now works in a non-wrestling capacity with AEW, sometimes promoting gun violence on national television.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
