Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin) are two of the most decorated wrestlers in TNA history, with both men winning the TNA World Title and TNA X-Division Title.
As a team, they won the TNA Tag Team Titles on three occasions. They are credited as one of the most influential tag teams in wrestling history, and Corey Graves called them "Your favorite tag teams favorite tag team" during the WWE debut on WWE SmackDown.
Before MCMG officially signed with WWE, they spoke to Donnie DaSilva and Jimmy Korderas on Huge Pop and was asked about their influence on tag team wrestling.
Shelley said, "Fanatically, it's the difference of utilizing a perspective versus physically mimicking a set of choreographed moves. For us, we were fortunate, when we first started teaming to have Jim Cornette available to us. He offered to coach us and did in TNA. We were teaming for a while, but TNA was reluctant to put us together as a team for about a year. This would have been early 2008."
Asked if they were liked so much as a singles and that's why they weren't put together, Shelley said, "No, it was because, in their words..."
Sabin chimed in, "I don't see it, bro."
Shelley continued, "Honest to God, that it what we were told, word for word. We're not going to say who that was. With all due respect, the booker has their opinion. Whoever is writing the show has their opinion and that is pro wrestling, it's subjective. They didn't see it. It took a long time and it was by happenstance that we got the opportunity to show what we could do as a team because we weren't supposed to be teaming in the match that we showed off all these tag team moves. It was supposed to be a five-way and we decided, because we were the only heels in the match, it makes sense for us to do these super awesome tag moves that no two guys would randomly do together, but whatever. By hook or by crook. Nonetheless, Jim Cornette gave us this study packet with notes and Midnight Express DVDs. It was probably, there were six DVDs, over 100 Midnight Express matches. With both (Dennis) Condrey and (Bobby) Eaton and (Stan) Lane. We started from match one and watched it go. We started to figure out the ebb and flow of how they were doing things. What we had available to us though, that was very special, was Jim, who was part of Midnight Express. We could literally ask him how they were doing things and he would watch us and say, 'No, you have to do it like this for this reason.' That sort of assistance was very valuable."
MCMG will face DIY (Johnny Gargano & Tommaso Ciampa on Friday's WWE SmackDown. The winning team will be the number one contenders for the WWE Tag Team Titles.
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