10 Tag Teams You Forgot Held The NWA Tag Team Championships

In the National Wrestling Alliance, the NWA World Tag Team Championship has a shorter and more complicated history than most fans would expect. After the organization was founded in 1948, a number of territories had their own NWA World Tag Title with little input from the Alliance itself as far as champions and booking. That all changed in the early 1980s, as Jim Crockett Promotions’ Mid-Atlantic territory basically ended up becoming the NWA territory, with its version of the tag belts becoming the main ones.

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While there were notable champions including The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express and The Road Warriors, the NWA World Tag Team Title has also been held by a number of duos that fans may have forgotten about. Let’s take a look at 10 of these champions from the 1980s all the way to the 2020s.

10 Greg Valentine & Ric Flair

Over the course of a 50-year career, Ric Flair held so many world titles and other singles championships that many fans don’t even know he’s also a three-time NWA World Tag Team Champion, two of which were alongside Greg “The Hammer” Valentine. In late 1976, Flair and Valentine defeated Gene and Ole Anderson to capture the belts, dropping them back to the Andersons five months later. The duo won them back from Gene and Ole in October of 1977, but were forced to vacate the belts after 157 days due to too many of their matches ending in disqualification.

9 D’Lo Brown & Gran Apolo

From 2002 to 2007, the National Wrestling Alliance was affiliated with Impact Wrestling — back then known as TNA — and as a result the NWA World Tag Team Championship was Impact’s devoted tag title. In addition to expected champions like Team 3D and America’s Most Wanted, one of the more surprising duos was the team of Gran Apolo and the terminally underrated D’Lo Brown. Together, Apollo and Brown beat Dallas and Kid Kash for the belts, holding them for a week before losing them back to the former champions.

8 Eli Drake & James Storm

The fall of 2019 brought a new phase for the National Wrestling Alliance with the premiere of the weekly YouTube NWA Powerrr, which established the NWA as its own wrestling promotion. The roster at the time had a number of great talents from past and present, including former Impact star “Cowboy” James Storm and Eli Drake, better known as WWE’s LA Knight.

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At the January 2020 pay-per-view, Hard Times, Storm and Drake defeated The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express to become new champions, holding them for 291 days before losing the belts to the team of JR Kratos and Aron Stevens (formerly known as Damien Sandow).

7 Mr. Gannosuke & Tarzan Goto

The year 1994 saw the formation of the International Wrestling Association of Japan, the result of a schism in the deathmatch-flavored Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling. IWA Japan forged a relationship with the National Wrestling Alliance, resulting in NWA titles being defended at IWA shows. In late 1995, former FMW wrestlers Mr. Gannosuke and Tarzan Goto beat Cactus Jack and Tiger Jeet Singh to capture the vacant NWA World Tag Team Championship, but would end up departing IWA Japan, leaving the title vacant once again.

6 Johnny Swinger & Simon Diamond

These days, Johnny Swinger is Impact Wrestling’s resident throwback goofball, so it may surprise fans to find out he once held the NWA World Tag Team Championship for nearly three months nearly 20 years ago. Teaming with Simon Diamond, Swinger captured the belts when his team dethroned America’s Most Wanted in late August of 2003. However, their reign came to an end in mid-November in a match against BG James and Ron Killing of 3 Live Kru when a double pin finish led to the belts being vacated.

5 TenCozy

In the early to mid 2010s, the National Wrestling Alliance forged a working relationship with New Japan-Pro Wrestling, leading to a lot of crossover between the two organizations. At the April 2014 NJPW show Invasion Attack, TenCozy — the veteran duo of Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima — beat Rob Conway and Jax Dane to become the new NWA World Tag Team Champions. Former IWGP Tag Team Champions themselves, TenCozy held the belts for nearly 200 days before dropping them to fellow NJPW tag team Killer Elite Squad, Lance Archer and Davey Boy Smith Jr.

4 The Public Enemy

Fans remember Public Enemy best for their run in ECW, where they did their most fun work and captured the tag title four times in the process. Following a disastrous run in WWE in 1998, Public Enemy moved on to the indie scene, where they ended up capturing the NWA World Tag Team Championship.

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It was at a June 1999 NWA New England show in Massachusetts that Public Enemy beat a tag team called The Brotherhood for the belts, though they lost them back to the team two days later.

3 The Shane Twins

Fans might not know the names Mike and Todd Shane, but they might be slightly aware of their Ruthless Aggression tag team gimmick of The Gymini. In 2002, however, The Shane Twins ended up becoming NWA World Tag Team Champions when they beat Vito DeNucci and Chris Nelson at a wrestling show in Lima, Peru. However, their title reign was cut short with the establishment of Impact Wrestling, which became the devoted home of the main NWA titles. The Shane twins vacated the belts, but ended up showing up in the Impact Zone as the infamous Johnsons.

2 Dino Bravo & Mr. Wrestling

Fans who only know Dino Bravo from his time in late 1980s and early 1990s WWE likely have no idea that he even wrestled for the NWA, much less held the NWA World Tag Team Championship. Wrestling for Jim Crockett Promotions in May of 1976, Bravo teamed with the original Mr. Wrestling, Tim Woods, to defeat the aforementioned Gene and Ole Anderson to capture the belts. The team ended up holding the belts for 54 days before The Andersons won them back at a house show in Greenville, South Carolina in late June.

1 The Head Bangers

During the Attitude Era, WWE ran an invasion angle where wrestlers affiliated with the ever-declining National Wrestling Alliance entered WWE, bringing several of the champions with them. As a result, the NWA World Tag Team Championship changed hands on several occasions in a WWE ring. On an early February 1998 Raw, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express — six-time champions by this point — lost the belts to The Head Bangers. After 41 days, Headbanger and Mosh in turn lost them to the new Midnight Express, Bart Gunn and Bob Holly.