Table of Contents
1. CHO-TEN (Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Masahiro Chono)
Cho-Ten has been one of the most successful Tag-Teams in the New Japan wrestling franchise.
The team of Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Mashiro Chono have written their names in Japanese professional wrestling.
Both men have been successful in singles competition, and like most wrestling Tag teams had quite the feud as singles wrestlers before finally becoming a team.
Cho-Ten went on to win the tag team championships five times, winning their first championship in June 1995 and also winning the Super Grade Tag League in the same year. Cho-Ten went on to be a team for about ten years and set records still yet to be broken.
2. GUERILLAS OF DESTINY (G.O.D)
Believed by so many to be the best tag team that Japanese professional wrestling has ever seen, the team of brothers Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa plied their trade in the New japan professional wrestling circuit.
The group started out professionally in 2008 under the name of “Sons of Haku” without much traction or success but at the tail end of 2016 after becoming bullet members of the NJPW did they begin to have tastes of success.
Tomoaki Honma and Togi Makabe the then tag team champions would square off against the brothers at the Great Bash heel barely weeks after Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa’s debut, and quite amazingly the brothers won their first tag team titles and have gone on to win the title six more times.
A very young tag team the G.O.D still has a ceiling high enough to stake their claim as the best tag team in Japan and the rest of the world.
3. BULLET CLUB (DOC GALLOWS AND KARL ANDERSON)
Names that have been so synonymous with a tag team gold, Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson have shown their crafts in various promotions across the globe, but as a team really rose into the limelight as members of the bullet club faction.
At this time there was a need for a team that could produce at the World Tag League, Anderson then decided to team up with Doc Gallows and the team went on to win the tournament by defeating Davey Boy Smith Jr and Lance Archer for their first taste of tag team success.
Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson might not be the flashiest team but what they lose in style is the makeup for with almost telepathic understanding.
Although their stint in Japanese professional wrestling didn’t last too long, they made their mark as one of the best in professional tag team history.
4. TENCOZY (HIROYOSHI TENZAN AND SATOSHI KOJIMA)
Hiroyoshi Tenzan appears on the list for the second time as he seems to possess an ability to combine with other wrestlers and make them better.
To back this claim his 12 reigns as one-half of tag team champions remains the most by any individual in Japanese professional wrestling to date.
Hiroyoshi and Satoshi first teamed up in 1988 after an injury to his Cho-Ten partner Masahiro Chono and from the moment they stepped out the chemistry was evident.
Tencozy won the IWGP tag team championships on the first try after defeating the then champions Genichiro Tenryu and Shiro Koshinika.
Tencozy went on to win the tag team championships 6 times in total and successfully defended 11 times and remains the only team to date that has won the G1 Tag League and All Japan’s world strongest determination League. Talk about a match etched in the stars.
5. KILLER ELITE SQUAD (DAVEY BOY SMITH JR & LANCE ARCHER)
The Japanese professional wrestling world deserves a lot of credit for creating some of the most iconic duos in the business. K.E.S is not a name that springs to mind immediately when the tag team giants are mentioned but they are n slouches either. Davey Boy Smith Jnr and Lance Archer are members of the heel faction Suzuki Gun and they made their first title challenge at the Power struggle in October. 2012 where they faced Tencozy and were victorious over them winning the IWGP heavyweight tag team championships. After this amazing win over Tencozy, the team reached the finals of the World Tag League but lost the finals.
K.E.S reign in New Japan professional wrestling showed how much they had grown as wrestlers and as a team, they remained a dominant force throughout the tag team division. Davey and Lance worked so well as a team due to their malicious intent to hurt and scar their opponents.
6. GORIN KONBI
Jumbo Tsuruta and Yoshiaki Yatsu are names etched into the starlight of Japanese professional wrestling. Both men made names for themselves as singles wrestlers before becoming the first-ever tag team in Japanese professional wrestling history.
As a duo, Tsuruta and Yatsu would be known as Gorin Konbi a name that would resonate throughout the independent wrestling circuit.
Gorin Konbi who were the PFW tag team champions would be involved in a unification match between the NWA international champions The Road warriors in 1988, where they successfully unified both titles and became the undisputed tag team champions.
Gorin Konbi’s reign remains one of the longest in the history of Japanese professional wrestling.
7. FUCHIN GYORAI
Fuchin Gyorai was a tag team with Stan Hansen and Terry Gordy. Stan Hansen was a vicious cowboy hat-wearing and bullnose bell rolling wrestler with a serious penchant for violence, he always seemed to want to pick a fight with every and anyone that he could while Terry Gordy also had a mean streak in him and was involved in some deathmatches in the IWA promotion.
Fuchin Gyorai has had some truly iconic matches, most notably the British Bulldogs at the AJPW superpower series in 1989, a match that Fuchin Gyorai took home the gold.
8. HOLY DEMON ARMY (H.D.A)
The Holy Demon Army sound like something out of a bad action movie, but the H.D.A is anything but that.
The H.D.A was formed in 1993 after the two members Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue had both left their respective tag team partners, they got their first shot as a team against the Miracle Violence Connection for the world tag team championships and they made sure to take it and became the World Tag Team champions for about 3 months and 15 days with two successful title defenses against the Miracle violence connection and mortal enemy Mitsuharu Misawa and Kenta Kobashi.
H.D.A would eventually lose the titles and would attempt regaining them at the World Strongest Tag Determination League with no success faltering to Mitsuharu Misawa and Kenta Kobashi twice.
H.D.A would go on to win the tag team titles a record-setting six times, the team was later disbanded when Taue was asked to leave All Japan pro wrestling and follow Misawa to the Pro wrestling NOAH.
9. THE MIRACLE VIOLENCE CONNECTION (STEVE WILLIAMS AND TERRY GORDY)
The duo was formed in the Jimmy Crockett promotions in the late 1980s where they wrestled six times winning five of those matches against Dick Murdoch and Eddie Gilbert and losing against the pair as well after the sixth match the duo was disbanded.
A few years later Steve Williams and Terry Gordy would rejoin at the All-Japan professional wrestling promotion and the Miracle violence connection would be born again, the duo became top-tier tag team performers in little to no time.
In March 1990 they defeated the team of Genichiro Tenryu and Steve Hansen to become World Tag team champions and defended the titles successfully against Steve Hansen and Dan Spivey but would later lose the titles to Jumbo Tsuruta and the Great Kabuki.
The Miracle Violence connection would hold the Tag Team Title five times through their time in All Japan Pro Wrestling, and on July 29th, 1993 the team would have one last match before Gordy would leave the promotion and the group would be disbanded.
10. NO FEAR (TAKAO OMORI AND YOSHIHIRO TAKAYAMA)
Created to be a branch of the “Triangle of Power” in 1998, the first showing of the team was at the 1998 Worlds Tag Team Determination League where they were underwhelming and finished in last place with two points, after that, they teamed up with Hiroshi Hase and finished four places better off.
No fear would go on to have quite the turbulent career but they produced some quite exceptional matches along the way. They remain one of the most underrated tag teams in Japanese professional history
