10 Thrown-Together Tag Teams that Really Worked

#3 The New Day

For as much as they are mentioned in this list with their involvement in the WWE Tag Team Championship scene, The New Day was put together in late 2014 as a last-ditch effort to find a meaningful storyline for Kofi Kingston, Big E Langston, and NXT alumnus Xavier Woods.

Each man was a solid worker and a decent promo, but hadn't gotten the spark to truly shine in WWE prime time; the New Day grouping was one that seemed doomed from the very start.

Fans lambasted it for being an apparent knockoff of the Nation of Domination (the three men being African American and their use of African American cultural imagery in their early vignettes seemed like a rehash of the late-1990s Black Power storyline), for maybe being just a touch racist (with their gospel entrance music, choir promos, and preacher voices, not to mention the fact that WWE had very few Black performers at the time, and teamed up three of them), and for being just plain cheesy (WrestleMania 31's live crowd was vicious and merciless in their booing and chanting against The New Day and their over-the-top playing to the crowd).

Little did we know that Vince McMahon was traveling a road he'd once traveled by accident, but this time making his way down it purposefully: like the way he'd attempted to make Rocky Maivia the defining babyface of the 1990s by forcing him to smile and clap at all times, McMahon let The New Day alienate crowds nationwide with their cheesy smiles and silly claps, leading to a post-Mania heel turn that, coupled with a tag title win, elevated New Day into the stratosphere.

Like many of the other teams on this list, New Day benefitted most from two things: freedom to experiment and onscreen time with which to do it. Simply letting the three men improvise jabs (at opponents and each other), embrace internet memes, and play around with their look has led to classic merchandising opportunities like Booty-O's Cereal and any number of brightly-colored unicorn shirts, as well as one of the most enjoyable crowd participation introductions since the Attitude Era.