It’s very difficult to find tag teams that work and become one of the best in history, as the WWE has found out in recent years.
Since Vince McMahon took over the WWE from his father, the tag team division as been handled as a building ground for future singles stars such as Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart.
The unfortunate thing is the other part of those teams were often left to fend for themselves and often left forgotten by the WWE.
In the late 1990s during the Attitude Era, “The Road Dogg” Jesse James and “Bad A$$” Billy Gunn exploded on the scene as the New Age Outlaws.
As part of DX, they ran roughshod over the WWE winning tag titles and proving themselves to be one of the best teams in history.
But all good things come to an end, and Road Dogg didn’t take it too well.
End of the line
On a recent episode of “Oh! You Didn’t Know” podcast with Road Dogg he talked about how he didn’t want to be split away from Gunn after they lost the tag titles to Ken Shamrock and the Big Boss Man and how he didn’t have confidence in himself.
Special thanks to Wrestlingnews.co for the transcript.
“This is the time where I literally went in and asked Vince to please not split us up because I don’t think I can do it without Billy. That’s just me being honest. There might have been tears shed to be quite honest with you and when I say might have been, I mean, I cried. I want to be the first out of the curtain with the microphone, but hey, be right behind me. Be close. That’s how I felt. I felt like I needed him and when I was told I wasn’t going to have him, it’s as simple as that. I was like, no. I need him. It scared the crap out of me. That’s where I was at. It scared me to death that I was gonna have to do this on my own.”
Vince’s response was about what can be expected from someone selling their idea.
“He tells me, ‘You’re gonna be great. This is gonna be good for you and it’s gonna be good for Billy.’ I knew it was gonna be good for Billy because I knew what they had in mind and I knew what he looked like. I knew Billy was gonna do great, I knew Billy was gonna go on to do great things, and I didn’t have the same confidence in myself.
“I think it turned out okay. I just didn’t see that happening. I’m a big future tripper. That means that you forecast fear onto future events, stuff that ain’t happened yet. I didn’t know if I would succeed, if I would stand or fall as an individual talent, but I projected fear onto the future and said, ‘Oh my God, I can’t do it alone.'”
While things worked out for both of them to various extents, there’s no denying the influence the New Age Outlaws had on the Monday Night Wars and we’re curious how much more they could’ve done had they been kept together long term.
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