10 Worst WWE Tag Team Break-Ups

Because friendship is a disease in the eyes of Vince McMahon, WWE has seen plenty of tag teams split up over the years.

Whilst some partings have gone down in history, such as Marty Jannetty flying through a barbershop window following a Sweet Chin Music from Shawn Michaels,  some have been far less impressive.

These are the 10 worst WWE tag team break-ups ever.

10. The Smoking Gunns

Before Billy was Daddy Ass and before Bart was cannon fodder for Butterbean, this pair of kayfabe brothers were a tag team by the name of The Smoking Gunns.

The pair debuted together in 1993 and would go on to win three sets of World Tag Team Championships.

Cracks started to appear in the siblings’ relationship when manager Sunny abandoned them in 1996. This led to Billy walking out on Bart during a match, only for Bart to win the match anyway without his partner.

The two men continued to butt heads throughout the rest of the year. They were on opposite sides of a match at Survivor Series and then squared off in a singles match on Raw, which ended after five minutes when Bart dropped Billy on the top rope and gave him a neck injury.

By the time they finally had a conclusive blow-off match, the tiny amount of momentum from their underwhelming split had fizzled out and died.

Billy was even calling himself “Rockabilly” by this point, which should tell you all you need to know.

9. Y2AJ

When AJ Styles first debuted for WWE at the 2016 Royal Rumble, the minds of fans ran amok with ideas of dream matches and feuds for the Phenomenal One.

He soon settled into a programme with Chris Jericho, whom he beat on the Raw after his debut and then again at Fastlane. Jericho extended the olive branch to his adversary, saying that they should form a tag team together after the February pay-per-view, giving birth to Y2AJ.

Y2AJ quickly picked up a pair of wins over tag champs The New Day, leading to a title match between the two duos on Raw. The champions retained, which led to Jericho turning on his partner after all of three weeks together.

Styles and Jericho went through about half a year’s worth of storyline beats in less than a month. They feuded, they got together, they split up, and then they had a match at WrestleMania.

Putting these two in a team in the first place was a really weird idea, and their breakup shortly thereafter was even stranger.

8. The Prime Time Players

The Prime Time Players of Titus O’Neil and Darren Young have the notable exception of being part of not one, but two failed break-up storylines!

First appearing as a unit in 2012, PTP went on a decent little run in the tag division, coming close to winning the straps on several occasions. Unfortunately, even with their “million-dollar moves”, O’Neil and Young didn’t stay on the same page for long.

Titus attacked Darren in early 2014, turning the big man heel and leading to a major grudge match at Elimination Chamber. That battle was so intense, so violent, so emotional, that their rematch ended up being on an episode of… Main Event!

A year later, the two former friends reunited once again and even ended up winning the WWE Tag Team Championships. After that reign ended, they fell into obscurity, and then Titus turned on Young again!

The feud didn’t feature a pay-per-view blowoff this time around, instead entering with a lacklustre match on Raw involving Bob Backlund of all people.

7. The Bella Twins

Nikki and Brie Garcia (as they’re now known), turned on each other so many times in WWE that it would be impossible to recount every single story beat in one entry.

At SummerSlam 2014, they actually provided fans with quite a bit of excitement. Brie was wrestling Stephanie McMahon after the former came to her husband Daniel Bryan’s aid against The Authority.

Just when it looked like she had the boss’ daughter beat, Brie was viciously assaulted by her own sister and Steph picked up the win!

What followed was months and months of unbearable television. The twins had a pair of failed interventions on Raw, including the infamous “died in the womb” segment, before Nikki beat Brie in a match that made the loser the servant of the winner.

And what happened after that? Brie sided with her sister again by kissing AJ Lee at Survivor Series to help Nikki win the Divas Championship!

By this point the feud was so far removed from that great SummerSlam moment, that it is but a mere dot on the horizon.

6. Heavy Machinery

Many an eyebrow was raised when Otis won the 2020 Men’s Money in the Bank, and not in a cool Dwayne Johnson way.

Otis was popular, but was he really ready to be the next world champion? The answer - no!

WWE seemingly realised that they had made a mistake and booked the big man to lose his briefcase to The Miz at Hell in a Cell. Just to make Otis look like even more of a loser, they had his long-term partner Tucker turn on him too.

Starting in NXT as Heavy Machinery, Tucker and Otis were called up to the main roster in 2019.

They never won tag team gold, but were solidly over thanks to their obvious chemistry.

This all came to an end when Tucky betrayed his ham-loving friend, because of… reasons. Did the two men ever get a chance to fight each other in the ring? Like hell they did!

Tucker essentially vanished from our screens, made an appearance in the  Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal on SmackDown, then got released a week later.

5. Rusev Day

What began as a silly little joke quickly turned into a wildly popular tag team and stable featuring Rusev, Aiden English, and Lana.

The reaction Rusev and English got at Clash of Champions 2017 was insane and the company should have just put the tag belts on them then and there. They didn’t, but WWE did decide to clunkily break the group up about a year later.

Things got a bit weird when English turned on the future Miro and began proclaiming to have slept with his wife. After debunking the affair, Rusev beat English on a random episode of SmackDown and that was that. He’d turn heel and join forces with Shinsuke Nakamura shortly thereafter.

How WWE didn’t make a bigger deal out of Rusev Day is still baffling. It was a bonafide phenomenon that elevated everyone person involved, and yet it led to nothing.

4. Enzo & Cass

Wasted potential. Those two words perfectly sum up Enzo Amore and Big Cass, who were easily one of the most popular tandems around at the time.

From their rise to the top of NXT to their transfer to the main roster, Enzo and Cass wowed crowds with their charisma, solid tag team wrestling, and a never-ending conveyor belt of catchphrases.

Over the Summer of 2017, both men were mysteriously attacked backstage. After Corey Graves decided to lead an investigation into the assaults, it was revealed that the man behind it all was… Big Cass! It turned out he’d attacked Enzo and then faked his own attack to cover it up.

They had a pay-per-view match at Great Balls of Fire, which Cass won. Then came SummerSlam, where Cass fought Big Show whilst Enzo was suspended above the ring in a shark cage.

The feud ended unexpectedly when Cass legitimately hurt himself during a street fight on Raw.

The worst part of all of this was that the breakup never needed to happen in the first place! The act was fine as it was!

3. The Legion of Doom

Sometimes, weaving a wrestler’s personal life into the gimmick can be a highly effective way to add realism to a story. However, when their personal life includes a very real addiction to drugs and alcohol, maybe it’s best left alone.

Because WWE used to have all the tact of an elephant being dropped from a plane, they decided to incorporate Road Warrior Hawk’s substance abuse issues into the breakup of beloved tag team the Legion of Doom.

In storyline, Road Warrior Animal was sick of Hawk’s unreliability, and so replaced him with Darren Drozdov, whose nickname was Puke.

Things were already bad when the promotion decided to really push the boundaries of good taste by having Hawk climb up the TitanTron on Raw and claim he was going to jump. Droz went up to save him, but ended up pushing the Road Warrior off instead.

The whole thing got over like cholera, so the angle was dropped and both men left the company shortly afterwards.

2. The Miz & Damien Mizdow

When it comes to creating chicken salad from chicken sh*t, there are few better examples in wrestling history than Damien Sandow and his stunt double gimmick.

In 2014, the newly branded “Damien Mizdow” was brought in as a second to The Miz during his Hollywood A-Lister gimmick. As his stunt double, Mizdow would take all the same bumps as his employer during his matches, despite the fact that he himself wasn’t wrestling anyone.

This duo got massively over and even landed the pair the WWE Tag Team Titles at Survivor Series.

After months of being belittled by the wannabe megastar, Mizdow finally snapped and threw Miz out of the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal to a huge ovation at WrestleMania 31.

That’s when it all started to go downhill. Sandow, who reverted back to his real name, got the better of Miz a few times but would eventually lose a match on Raw to determine the owner of the “Miz” name.

He then went back to his old impersonator gimmick, vanished for an age, and got cut in 2016.

They had one of the hottest storylines in the company and they didn’t even get a pay-per-view match out of it.

1. The Dudley Boyz

We tried to avoid tag teams being split up by drafts on this list, as they happen all the time. However, one example stands out above the rest in terms of just how stupid an idea it was.

Bubba Ray and D-Von had always been presented as a cohesive unit following their WWE debut in 1999. Then, during the inaugural 2002 brand split, Bubba was drafted to Raw and D-Von to SmackDown.

If you were Vince McMahon or Ric Flair, why would you not just draft both men over as a team?

Bubba fought in the hardcore division for a bit, whilst D-Von became a reverend and introduced the world to Deacon Batista. They achieved very little on their own and were back together again on Raw before the year was out.

If WWE were going to split them up, then they should have had better plans for them, but at least they were put back together before too much damage had been done.