5 times tag teams broke up and a singles star was born
The Charismatic Enigma It is very precarious to split up a successful tag team with the perennial question arising – can the superstars involved replicate their tag team success in their singles career?Many have fallen surprisingly short. This list takes a look at those superstars who went on to have a highly successful singles career after splitting up from their tag team partners.
#5 JBL
This was a career renaissance that nobody had expected. Justin Hawk Bradshaw had never caught on as a singles superstar. Whether it be as a part of the Undertaker’s minions or as the APA, JBL always had a partner by his side – mostly Farooq.
So when Farooq decided to take up a backstage role in 2004 and Paul Heyman decided to reinvent Bradshaw from a beer drinking Texas cowboy to a smooth talking wall street millionaire, the experiment seemed certain to fail. However, it didn’t.
JBL captured his only WWE Championship within months of adopting this new persona by beating crowd favourite Eddie Guerrero and never looked back.
He carried SmackDown on his back as the heel champion during that 10-month reign in 2004-05 which included successful title defences against the likes of Guerrero, Booker T, The Undertaker, The Big show and Kurt Angle before finally dropping the title to an emerging baby face named John Cena at Wrestle mania 21.
JBL would continue to be in the main event over the years, feuding with Batista, Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho and he would capture the Intercontinental and the United States titles as well.
For a man who had was never considered a major singles star during his initial nine years with the company, it was indeed gratifying to become a grand slam champion (winning the World, IC and US titles) in less than 5 years’ time.
JBL retired from the ring in 2009 and is now the colour commentator of Raw besides occasionally gracing the ring to deliver his pundit Clothesline from Hell to unsuspecting superstars.