The last time that two mega-pedigreed amateur wrestlers came into WWE as an elite tag team (or at least, the last, most notable time), we got Team Angle, AKA “The World’s Greatest Tag Team” of Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas. Kurt Angle’s cronies at the time developed a massive cult following, and helped secure Angle’s place as a top-tier heel, bridging the gap between the goofy, full-of-himself era of Angle and the badass no-nonsense wrestling machine he became in his ECW days and in Impact Wrestling after he departed from WWE.
Ever since Jason Jordan and Chad Gable were first paired up in NXT, the comparisons to Benjamin and Haas began (especially given the inclusion of the word “American” in their team name, and their penchant for star-spangled attire). The two amateur wrestling champions (and, in the case of Gable, Olympian) have stated in the past that they are dying to work with Angle, who is the current Raw general manager, and fans have echoed those sentiments wholeheartedly.
Although that pairing is unlikely to happen any time soon (Alpha and Angle are on different brands, for starters), the team recently clarified that although they’d love to work with Angle, they want to be more than the second incarnation of TWGTT. Jordan spoke with NBC Elmira and elaborated on this. (Transcript via Wrestling Inc.)
“We realized everybody was going to make the correlation between World’s Greatest Tag Team or Team Kurt Angle, and us. We still want to be our own individuals. We still want to be American Alpha and not Team Angle 2.0. But if the opportunity came and Kurt would put his stamp on us, then we could essentially be Team Angle, but we would like to be Team Alpha with the tutelage of Team Angle. We want the separation between the two, we’re our own tag team.”
The sad part is that, ever since losing the Smackdown Tag Team Championship to the Usos, American Alpha has barely even been on television. Now that The New Day is on Smackdown Live, we’re probably not likely to see them get a spotlight again in the near future. But the dream is alive, and there’s plenty of time for Alpha to make their own legacy.
