Arn Anderson on WWE souring on tag team wrestling
Arn Anderson has discussed his thoughts on WWE's declined focus on tag team wrestling in recent years.
The current head coach of The Nightmare Family in All Elite Wrestling discussed WWE's approach to tag team wrestling during his ARN podcast. According to Arn Anderson, WWE's decline in focus on tag team wrestling began during the Attitude Era:
“They went through a time up in the WWF, I can’t specifically tell you when it was when they went through all these factions, Taker had the APA and all those guys with him, you had the guys from Puerto Rico, you had all these different factions, you had D-X, all those guys. Just guessing, when you start paying all those groups when you have the big shows and you had a lot of those factions on there, you had a lot of sets of trans (payment for transportation).”
Arn Anderson on the costs associated with tag team wrestling
WWE Hall of Famer Arn Anderson famously teamed with fellow Hall of Famer Tully Blanchard as two members of the Four Horsemen in WCW and as The Brainbusters in WWE. Therefore, The Enforcer is well aware of the costs associated with tag team wrestling that promotions must be willing to pay.
When discussing the additional costs that promotions must pay for tag teams and factions in professional wrestling, Arn Anderson suggested that this may have been a factor in the decline of tag team wrestling in WWE throughout the years:
“If you add all those transportation costs to pay and all that, I imagine it did get expensive and it was probably overwhelming so when he decided to peel back from factions and all that, he probably just included tag matches in the equation and that was a mistake.”
After working for WWE has a producer and road agent for 18 years, Arn Anderson was let go by the promotion in 2019. However, Arn Anderson would quickly sign with All Elite Wrestling, making his AEW debut at All Out in August of 2019.
Since then, Arn Anderson has become the Head Coach for Cody and The Nighmare Family. The Enforcer has also been seen as a mentor to FTR in recent weeks on AEW Dynamite.
When asked if AEW would have a greater focus on tag team wrestling than the likes of WWE, Anderson confirmed that this would likely be the case:
“I certainly think it can, they have some tremendous tag-teams.”
Do you agree with Arn Anderson's comments about tag team wrestling in WWE? Has WWE soured on tag teams and factions?