One of the most newsworthy items from WWE programming this past week was the announcement that the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic is returning. This Tuesday on NXT, the 16-team tournament, originally created in 2015, will kick off its 11th iteration. Earlier this week, NXT GM Robert Stone went on Busted Open Radio and announced the first entrants: the NXT Tag Team Champions, Vanity Project, and the AAA Tag Team Champions, the Wagner Brothers. NXT announced six more teams, including multiple former
champions, on their X account yesterday, and went right back and announced the complete field this morning.
With the action set to kick off in less than 48 hours, let’s look at the Dusty Cup’s history and what it suggests about who might win the 2026 edition.
Dusty Classic’s origins date back to the late 80s
In the late 1980s, one of the National Wrestling Alliance’s (NWA) marquee events was the Crockett Cup, a tag team tournament established in honor of Jim Crockett Sr., founder of Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP). The man credited with creating the tournament (who also competed in and won the 1987 version) was the American Dream Dusty Rhodes. For its initial three-year run, the Crockett Cup saw some legendary winners.
The Road Warriors won the inaugural cup in 1986, knocking off Magnum T.A. and Ronnie Garvin in the finals. The following year, the unlikely duo of Dusty Rhodes and Nikita Koloff, billed as The Super Powers, made a run to the Cup finals, knocking off Four Horsemen members Lex Luger and Tully Blanchard. Luger and Blanchard both returned to the finals in 1988, only on opposite teams. Luger would team with Sting to defeat Blanchard and Arn Anderson in the final Crockett Cup before the promotion was sold to Ted Turner less than a year later.
Shortly after Dusty Rhodes’ death in 2015, NXT announced the first-ever Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic as a tribute to the Dream, who had become an integral part of WWE’s developmental brand both on-screen and off throughout most of the 2010s. Since the first tournament in 2015, won by Finn Balor and Samoa Joe, 10 Dusty Cup winners have been crowned, including 2 women’s versions held in 2022 and 2024. Since 2019, the tournament winner has received a tag team title match. With both NXT and AAA’s current champions in this year’s field, it’s unclear whether anything beyond a trophy is on the line, but whoever wins will join an illustrious group of teams that have won the Cup in the past.
Success of makeshift teams
Among the previous 10 Dusty Classic winners are several duos who initially entered the tournament as established tag teams. But before the Authors of Pain and Undisputed Era would win the 2nd and 3rd Dusty Cups respectively, it was a NXT Black & Gold dream team that won the first one.
On the same night that Bayley and Sasha Banks put on one of the greatest women’s matches in WWE history, Finn Balor and Samoa Joe won the 2015 Classic by knocking off another makeshift team, Baron Corbin (with long hair!) and ECW legend Rhyno. To reach the finals, both duos put together an impressive run, beating several established tag teams in the lead-up to NXT Takeover: Respect.
Finn and Joe beat the Lucha Dragons (Kalisto & Sin Cara), Enzo Amore & Big Cass, and The Mechanics (better known as The Revival or AEW’s FTR), while Corbin and Rhyno pulled off wins over the Hype Bros (Zack Ryder & Mojo Rawley), #DIY, and American Alpha on their way to the finals.
Ironically, Baron Corbin would find himself competing in a Dusty Cup in a different makeshift tag team 9 years later. In a partnership that several Cagesiders have been clamoring for since Corbin returned earlier this year, Baron won the 2024 Dusty Classic with his Wolf Dogs’ partner, Bron Breakker. That team also went on an impressive run, defeating Gallus & Fraxiom before winning the finals at Vengeance Day over Trick Williams and Carmelo Hayes. The Wolf Dogs would also become the third team to parlay their Dusty Cup victory into the NXT Tag Team Championships, beating Tony D’Angelo and Stacks for the gold just over a week later.
On the women’s side, in their second Dusty Cup, Alba Fyre Kay Lee Ray and Iyo Sky Io Shirai won the tournament in 2022 by defeating Wendy Choo and Dakota Kai in the finals, but instead of challenging for tag team gold, KLR and Io chose to cash in for an NXT Women’s Title match at Stand & Deliver about two months later. They were added to the title match, a Fatal 4-Way also featuring Cora Jade and Mandy Rose, and both came up short, with Rose ultimately retaining.
Then, of course, who could forget the exciting team that won the 2019 Dusty Classic at TakeOver: New York?
Aleister Black and Ricochet had been setting the NXT world on fire and were low-key favorites to win the 2019 Cup. They went on a run, beating Imperium, #DIY, and finally the Forgotten Sons (Steve Cutler & Wesley Blake). This was the first year the team that won the Dusty Cup would receive an NXT Tag Team Title shot, which Black and Ricochet notably lost at Stand & Deliver less than a month later. What’s notable about their tournament win is that Aleister and Rick O’Shea competed for both sets of main roster titles while the tournament was ongoing, even competing for the SmackDown tag titles at WrestleMania 35.
Could the duo of Mini Vikingo and Chazz “Starboy” Hall shock the world and become the latest makeshift team to win the Dusty Classic?
Returning competitors in this year’s field
After their recent reemergence on Tuesday nights, the Creed Brothers look to become the first team to repeat as Dusty Classic winners. The former Diamond Mine and American Made duo won the 2022 version, knocking off MSK in the finals. The Creed would cash in their title match just under two months later and come up short in a triple threat match against the same MSK team they beat in the finals and the Imperium team of Marcel Barthel (Ludwig Kaiser) and Fabian Aichner.
Another team worth considering as a favorite is Fraxiom. Nathan Frazer and Axiom went on a memorable run on the NXT brand a few years back, establishing themselves as one of the most exciting tag teams on the planet and en route to two reigns with the NXT Tag Team Titles. Since their call-up to the main roster last year, Fraxiom has been criminally underused on SmackDown, but they’ve stayed pretty busy in recent months with excursions down to AAA. While a main roster team coming back down and winning the Dusty Classic doesn’t seem likely here, getting to watch this dynamic duo compete on NXT will be a treat.
In their previous attempt to win the Dusty Cup, Fraxiom fell to the eventual winners, the Wolf Dogs, in the 2024 semifinals. The team Fraxiom beat in the first round that same year will also look to win the Cup for the first time this year, as Hank Walker and Tank Ledger return to the field. It’s now been over a year since Hank & Tank’s lone tag title reign ended, and winning the Dusty Classic would be a great way for them to build up some momentum again.
On a completely unrelated note, Los Americanos will be making their first Dusty Cup appearance as a team, but their in-ring styles closely resemble those of Tyler Bate, who competed in the 2019 Classic as a member of Mustache Mountain, and Pete Dunne, who actually won the 2020 tournament with Matt Riddle as the Broserweights.
Predicting a winner
One thing is for sure about this year’s tournament: the in-ring action should be electric. As for who ends up hoisting the Dusty Cup in a few weeks, the field suggests at least five or six teams which could legitimately be potential winners.
- The Creed Brothers could make NXT history and become the first team to win multiple Dusty Cups. They’ve made a pretty big splash since returning to Tuesday nights, and outlasting the other 13 teams would do wonders in establishing them as a top-tier tag team under the WWE umbrella.
- Fraxiom remains one of the most exciting tag teams on the planet, though going back to NXT and winning this year’s tournament seems unlikely. Frazer and Axiom don’t really need the rub right now, but I would keep an eye on whoever can eliminate them from the tournament. Coming up with a win over one of the best NXT tag teams this decade would be a surefire way to boost a team’s standing, even if they don’t end up winning the whole thing.
- Hank & Tank could be dark horses here if NXT wants to heat them back up. I’ve mentioned in a few NXT columns this year that Hank & Tank almost feel like they’ve reached super-senior status on Tuesday nights and should get a sink-or-swim chance on Raw or SmackDown. That hasn’t happened yet, and they’ve spent the last few months appearing more in backstage segments than they have actually wrestling.
- Vanity Project and the Wagner Brothers entering the tournament already holding championship gold is unique, but it makes it unlikely they’ll outlast the other teams all the way through. More likely, the teams that beat them will challenge them for their respective titles in the coming weeks.
The teams from Evolve or AAA seem like long shots.
- DarkState probably ain’t it.
- Birth Right could really use something to boost their stock, but they feel more like they fit the ‘made-a-good-run-but-came-up-short’ category right now.
- Los Americanos could be considered dark horses as well, but they may have more business in AAA soon, so winning the Dusty Cup might not be in the cards.
- Noam Dar and Romeo Moreno would win the tournament for ‘coolest-and-most-underrated-theme-music’, but outlasting the rest of the field here would be a pretty big leap.
- Mini Vikingo does things in a wrestling ring that I’ve never seen before, but his partnership with Starboy is kinda coming out of nowhere.
That leaves me with one team…
Sean Legacy & Dorian Van Dux
Since joining up as a team earlier this year, Legacy and Van Dux have put on some electrifying performances on Tuesday nights and winning the Dusty Classic would be a great way to elevate them. They seem to be featured in backstage segments pretty regularly, and that could be NXT laying the foundation for their rise up the ranks.
Of course, with NXT’s unpredictable and frankly chaotic booking nature recently, who really knows?
What do you think, Cagesiders? Like my pick of Legacy and DVD? Think there’s another team in the field that’s a better choice? Let us know in the comments or fantasy-book your own Classic in The Feed!
