10 Random Tag Team Champions From The 2010s You You Forgot About

In pro wrestling, tag team divisions often take a back seat to singles divisions, with tag titles rarely headlining pay-per-views (if ever) and duos seemingly built so they can break up and fans can debate who “the Jannetty is.” Sometimes a promotion may book two singles stars together with varying results, some of which seem like a Mega Powers-esque partnership while others seem randomly thrown together.

RELATED: 10 Random Tag Teams That Deserved Longer Runs

Now that the 2010s are over, let’s take a look at the most recently completed decade and talk about some of those random duos who actually held titles that fans may have forgotten about. These tag teams weren’t necessarily bad, but they do seem like totally left-field pairings.

10 WWE Raw Tag Team Championship: Jason Jordan & Seth Rollins

Seth Rollins is a multi-time tag team champion in WWE, most memorably alongside Shield buddies Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose, so it’s easy to forget his month-long reign with the Raw tag straps with Jason Jordan. At the time, Jordan was receiving opportunity after opportunity from his illegitimate (kayfabe) father and WWE authority figure Kurt Angle, and the duo beat The Bar for the belts on the Christmas 2017 episode of Raw. Their rematch at Royal Rumble 2018 would result in Jason Jordan’s unfortunate career-ending injury, after which he’d transition into a backstage role

9 Impact Knockouts Tag Team Championship: Hamada & Taylor Wilde

Impact Wrestling certainly deserves some kudos for introducing women’s tag titles in the early 2009, even if the booking didn’t make them seem all that great. While the Knockouts Tag Team Championship was expectedly held by Impact heel faction The Beautiful People on multiple occasions, there was no organized babyface opposition, so any challengers were random assortments of heroes. In February of 2010, Lacey Von Erich and Velvet Sky were dethroned by underrated Knockouts Taylor Wilde and Hamada, who held the belts for 132 days before Hamada got released from the company and the title was vacated.

8 WWE Tag Team Championship: David Otunga & John Cena

At SummerSlam 2010, John Cena overcame the odds to defeat The Nexus faction in a controversial main event, but the storyline wasn’t over. After losing to leader Wade Barrett at Hell in a Cell, Cena was forced to join the group and ended up teaming with David Otunga to take the tag belts from Cody Rhodes and Drew McIntyre at Bragging Rights.

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The next night on Raw, however, Cena and Otunga took on their own stablemates, Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater, but Otunga laid down to give his Nexus buds an easy title win.

7 KO-D Tag Team Championship: Danshoku Dino & Yoshihiro Takayama

Yoshihiro Takayama is a legitimate icon in combat sports — an mixed martial artist who took on Don Frye in a classic bout and who, in pro wrestling, held world titles in Japan’s top three promotions: NJPW, AJPW, and NOAH. In DDT Pro-Wrestling, Takayama captured the KO-D Tag Team Title alongside an unlikely partner: Danshoku Dino, a comedy wrestler with a penchant for perverted antics. Making the win even stranger is the fact that this strange duo dethroned Yukio Sakaguchi and Masakatsu Funaki, the latter of whom is the co-founder of the landmark MMA promotion Pancrase.

6 Impact World Tag Team Championship: Brian Myers & Trevor Lee

“The Most Professional Wrestler” Brian Myers has been doing solid work as a midcard heel in Impact Wrestling as of late, so it’s easy to forget that, in between WWE runs as Curt Hawkins, Myers not only had a run in the Impact Zone in the mid-2010s, but also held the tag belts. Representing Jeff Jarrett’s Global Force Wrestling promotion that would briefly merge with Impact, Myers and Trevor Lee (now known as NXT star Cameron Grimes) ended up defeating The Wolves to capture the Impact World Tag Team Title. One week later — or one day later if one looks at the taping schedules — the duo dropped the belts right back to the former champions.

5 AJPW World Tag Team Championship: Joe Doering & Seiya Sanada

These days, Seiya Sanada is simply SANADA, singles star in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, while Joe Doering is the powerhouse of the Impact Wrestling faction Violent By Design. But in the early 2010s, both were in All Japan Pro Wrestling, where they held the World Tag Team Championship for a 28-day run, having defeated the team of Manabu Soya & Takao Omori only to drop them back. In the few years following this match, Sanada would move on to WRESTLE-ONE and later Impact, while Doering would reach the top of AJPW, becoming a two-time Triple Crown Champion.

4 NXT Tag Team Championship: Adrian Neville & Corey Graves

In 2013, British wrestlers Adrian Neville (now known as PAC) and Oliver Grey became the inaugural NXT Tag Team Champions, but Grey ended up getting injured and later released from the company. Bo Dallas would fill in for Grey and drop the belts to The Wyatt Family, but Neville would win them back with an even more random partner: Corey Graves.

RELATED: 10 NXT Tag Teams We Totally Forgot About

The two seemed oddly paired, especially given their different personas, with Neville as a vanilla high flyer and Graves as a tattooed rockabilly dirtbag. It thus came as no surprise when Graves betrayed Neville and turned heel. The duo’s 91-day reign with the belts would become even more forgotten because Corey Graves soon transitioned into a commentary role.

3 IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship: Ricochet & Ryusuke Taguchi

Over the course of the 2010s, Ricochet enjoyed several title wins in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, including two Junior Heavyweight Tag Title runs with fellow innovative high flyer and frequent tag team partner Matt Sydal. But he also had a title run with Ryusuke Taguchi, former Junior Heavyweight Champion who’d become the elder statesman of the division. While they were technically stablemates, that stable was Taguchi Japan, Taguchi’s loosely connected grouping of whatever babyfaces were willing to hang out with him. Their reign lasted 57 days and ended at the hands of Roppongi 3K.

2 Impact World Tag Team Championship: Eli Drake & Scott Steiner

Given that Scott Steiner’s heyday in Impact Wrestling was in the late 2000s as part of the Main Event Mafia, it’s easy to forget that he had another run in the Impact Zone in 2018. There, he teamed with Eli Drake — later known as LA Knight and Max Duprei in WWE — at the April 2018 pay-per-view Redemption, defeating Santana and Ortiz for the Tag Team Championship. It was a surprise win, but Steiner and Drake dropped the belt two days later, or about a month later in broadcast time. A rivalry between the partners ensued, with Drake winning their singles encounter.

1 GHC Tag Team Championship & Impact World Tag Team Championship: Magnus & Samoa Joe

In late 2011, Impact Wrestling staged the Wild Card Tag Team Tournament, consisting of randomly paired teams. Magnus (a.k.a. Nick Aldis) and Samoa Joe were one such team, and ended up not only winning the tournament, but also capturing the tag straps. Joe and Magnus lost the belts after 91 days, but found success overseas when they ventured to Pro Wrestling NOAH and beat Akitoshi Saito & Jun Akiyama for the GHC Tag Team Championship. However, on their first defense they lost the title after 78 days to No Mercy, the team of Maybach Taniguchi and KENTA.