The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic is back, and WWE is finally treating the tournament like something larger than an internal NXT exercise.
On the September 15 episode of WWE NXT, general manager Robert Stone announced a 14-team field drawn from Raw, SmackDown, NXT, Evolve and AAA. Stone said the full bracket will be released later this week, while tournament action begins on the September 22 episode of NXT. The announcement immediately established the Creed Brothers as the first confirmed team, but Stone was not finished.
During Wednesday morning’s edition of Busted Open’s NXT Roundup, Stone confirmed two more teams: AAA World Tag Team Champions El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. and Galeno, and NXT Tag Team Champions The Vanity Project, represented by Brad Baylor and Ricky Smokes. Stone also announced that both championship teams will receive first-round byes.
That gives WWE three confirmed entries out of 14: one former Dusty Cup-winning team and the reigning tag team champions of two different brands. It is a small reveal, but a revealing one. WWE is not presenting this year’s field as 14 interchangeable NXT pairings. The early structure is built around history, current championships and genuine cross-brand representation.
Robert Stone Made Two Announcements, Not One
The rollout matters because the news came in two stages.
First, Stone used his NXT office interview to announce the return of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. He said the tournament would include 14 teams from NXT, Evolve, AAA, Raw and SmackDown, with the bracket coming later in the week. Julius and Brutus Creed then entered his office, congratulated him and asked who they would face. Stone told them to wait for the bracket. The brothers responded by declaring that they would become the first two-time winners in tournament history.
The second stage came on Busted Open’s NXT Roundup on September 16. After an unexpected appearance by Wren Sinclair, Stone used the show to add the AAA champions and NXT champions to the field and award each team a first-round bye.
The distinction is important. The Creed Brothers were confirmed during the NXT announcement. El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. and Galeno, along with The Vanity Project, were confirmed by Stone the next morning on Busted Open’s NXT Roundup. No other teams have been officially identified as of publication.
The First Three Confirmed Teams
The Creed Brothers
Julius and Brutus Creed enter as the only confirmed Raw team and the only former winners announced so far. They won the 2022 men’s Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic by defeating MSK in the final. They later became NXT Tag Team Champions, although their first championship opportunity after winning the tournament did not produce the immediate coronation that WWE originally appeared to be building toward.
Their inclusion is more than nostalgia. The Creed Brothers are a fully established team with a legitimate tournament identity, yet their main-roster run has rarely matched their obvious value. Sending them back into the Dusty Classic gives them a defined objective and exposes a broader problem on Raw: WWE has considerable tag-team depth, but many of those teams spend long stretches without a meaningful direction.
No first-round bye has been announced for the Creeds.
El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. and Galeno
The AAA representatives arrive with the freshest championship momentum in the field. El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. and Galeno defeated Erik and Ivar of The War Raiders at Triplemanía 34 on September 13, answering an open challenge and winning the AAA World Tag Team Championship after a Wagner Driver and Galeno’s splash.
Their entry only three days later makes the AAA component feel current rather than decorative. They are not being imported as anonymous guest luchadores or included on reputation alone; they are the champions of the promotion WWE explicitly named as one of the tournament’s five talent pools.
The first-round bye recognizes that status. It also protects a newly crowned championship team from being eliminated immediately, while placing them directly into a later round against an opponent that will already have wrestled once.
The Vanity Project
Brad Baylor and Ricky Smokes are the reigning two-time NXT Tag Team Champions. They lost the titles to Myles Borne and Tavion Heights on August 4, then recaptured them at Heatwave on August 30. On the September 15 NXT, they defeated Cruz Montana and EK Prosper in a non-title match after Baylor held Prosper’s legs during the deciding pin.
Their bye is logical because they are NXT’s champions, but their participation creates the tournament’s most important unanswered question: what exactly does the winning team receive?
In several recent editions, winning the Dusty Classic carried an NXT Tag Team Championship opportunity. WWE has not announced that prize for 2026. With the current champions already in the field, the company needs to define the stakes before the tournament gets deep. A trophy and prestige can matter, but only if the booking treats them as more than decoration.
What the 14-Team Format Appears to Mean
WWE has confirmed two first-round byes but has not released the bracket. If those are the only byes, the cleanest format is straightforward: 12 teams compete in six opening-round matches, the six winners join the two champions with byes, and eight teams remain.
That is bracket math, not an announced format. WWE could structure the tournament differently, and nothing beyond the two confirmed byes should be presented as official until the graphic is released.
What can be said safely is that 14 teams make this the largest men’s Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic field since the 16-team tournament in 2021. It also forces WWE to do more than book three weeks of familiar NXT combinations. A field this broad should produce contrasts in style, experience and brand identity. If it becomes a parade of one-night cameos with no consequences, the scale will mean very little.
The History of the Men’s Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic
WWE created the tournament in 2015 after Dusty Rhodes’ death. William Regal formally announced it at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn as a tribute to the WWE Hall of Famer, whose work as a coach, producer and mentor at the Performance Center helped shape the identity of early NXT. The inaugural 16-team tournament ended at TakeOver: Respect, where Cody and Dustin Rhodes helped present the trophy.
The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic has never been strictly annual. WWE did not hold a men’s tournament in 2017, 2023 or 2025. The 2026 competition is the ninth men’s edition and the first since 2024. Women’s tournaments were also held in 2021 and 2022, but WWE has not announced a women’s Dusty Classic for 2026.
| Year | Winners | Final opponents | What followed |
| 2015 | Finn Bálor and Samoa Joe | Baron Corbin and Rhyno | The first winners established the tournament as a major NXT attraction, even though they were singles stars rather than a permanent team. |
| 2016 | The Authors of Pain (Akam and Rezar) | TM-61 | Their dominant run accelerated a push that led to the NXT Tag Team Championship. |
| 2018 | The Undisputed ERA (Adam Cole and Kyle O’Reilly) | Authors of Pain and Pete Dunne/Roderick Strong | The original final ended without a winner after Undisputed ERA interfered. A winner-take-all Triple Threat was set for TakeOver: New Orleans, where Strong betrayed Dunne and joined the group. |
| 2019 | Aleister Black and Ricochet | The Forgotten Sons | They earned an NXT Tag Team Title match against The War Raiders at TakeOver: New York but did not win the championship. |
| 2020 | The BroserWeights (Matt Riddle and Pete Dunne) | Grizzled Young Veterans | They defeated Undisputed ERA for the NXT Tag Team Championship at TakeOver: Portland. |
| 2021 | MSK (Wes Lee and Nash Carter) | Grizzled Young Veterans | They later won the vacant NXT Tag Team Championship at Stand & Deliver. |
| 2022 | The Creed Brothers | MSK | They received a title opportunity, then eventually won the NXT Tag Team Championship at In Your House later that year. |
| 2024 | Bron Breakker and Baron Corbin | Carmelo Hayes and Trick Williams | The team later known as the Wolf Dogs won the NXT Tag Team Championship nine days after lifting the Dusty Cup. |
The history shows why the tournament works when WWE commits to it. It can establish a new team, rehabilitate an existing one or give two singles wrestlers a story strong enough to change both careers. The BroserWeights, MSK and the Wolf Dogs all left with more than a trophy. Even the strange 2018 finish changed NXT by bringing Roderick Strong into Undisputed ERA.
It also exposes a recurring contradiction. A tournament created to celebrate tag team wrestling has often been won by newly assembled singles wrestlers. Sometimes that produces a memorable act. Sometimes it tells the established division that two higher-priority names can enter late and pass everyone. The 2026 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic field needs both star power and respect for teams that work as teams every week.
Where the Current Tag Divisions Stand
The announced brand mix gives WWE enough depth to build an excellent field without manufacturing 11 random pairings. The problem is not a shortage of teams. It is the uneven attention those teams receive.
Raw: Deep on Paper, Inconsistent in Practice
Raw’s World Tag Team Champions are The Vision’s Bron Breakker and Austin Theory, who reclaimed the titles from The Street Profits on July 6. The brand’s recognized teams also include the Creed Brothers, The Usos, The Street Profits, New Catch Republic, the Latino World Order, Judgment Day, OTM, Alpha Academy and Los Americanos.
That is substantial depth. It is also a division in which several capable teams can disappear from the weekly story for long periods while the champions’ larger faction angle takes priority. The Creed Brothers entering the Dusty Classic is useful, but it is also an admission that Raw has not consistently given them enough to do. The tournament can correct that for one team; it cannot substitute for a functioning division every Monday.
SmackDown: A Smaller Field With Immediate Possibilities
Tama Tonga and Talla Tonga of The MFTs have held the WWE Tag Team Championship since August 14. Around them, SmackDown has Fraxiom, The War Raiders, Los Garza, Bakusai and Pretty Deadly, although Elton Prince is currently listed as injured.
Fraxiom are an obvious stylistic fit for any tournament, while The War Raiders enter the week having just lost the AAA titles to one of the confirmed Dusty Classic teams. That history would give a rematch actual context instead of relying on a brand-versus-brand label. SmackDown’s division is not as deep as Raw’s, but it may have more to gain from a tournament that gives its teams sustained matches and a clear destination.
NXT: Active, Crowded and Too Dependent on Interference
The Vanity Project sit on top of a division that includes DarkState, Hank & Tank, BirthRight and The Culling, along with active television pairings such as Sean Legacy and Dorian Van Dux, and Cruz Montana and EK Prosper.
NXT devoted two matches to the division on September 15, but both ended through outside involvement: Dion Lennox helped DarkState beat Legacy and Van Dux, while Baylor’s illegal assist secured The Vanity Project’s win over Montana and Prosper. Interference can advance faction stories, but when it becomes the division’s default finish, the teams stop proving which one is better.
The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic gives NXT a clean reason to emphasize match quality and progression. It should not become another sequence of faction run-ins disguised as tournament wrestling.
Evolve: Talent Without a Defined Tag-Team Infrastructure
Evolve currently has men’s and women’s singles championships but no tag team title. Its recent team-based focus has centered on the WWE ID 1.0 rivalry with The Mog Squad, including a team gauntlet on September 9. Those groups contain several prospects who could be paired for the tournament, but Stone has not confirmed an Evolve entry.
That makes Evolve the most intriguing and least formed part of the field. A strong run could create an actual team rather than simply supply two developmental wrestlers for an opening-round loss. If Evolve is included only to fill the bracket, its involvement will feel cosmetic. If one of its teams is allowed to upset an established act, the brand immediately gains definition.
AAA: Champions at the Center of a Volatile Division
AAA’s tag title picture has changed rapidly. The War Raiders took the championship from Pagano and Psycho Clown, then lost it to El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. and Galeno at Triplemanía 34. Recent contender activity has also involved Los Americanos, Money Machine, the LWO and Psycho Circus, while Pagano’s betrayal of Psycho Clown at Triplemanía has fractured another established alliance.
That volatility makes the new champions valuable entrants. They bring current gold, a recognizable family legacy and a ready-made issue with The War Raiders. More importantly, their participation gives AAA a place in the tournament that is competitive rather than ceremonial.
What WWE Must Get Right
The return of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic is the correct decision. The tournament gives WWE a ready-made structure, a respected name and a reason for five divisions to interact. None of that guarantees a strong event.
WWE still needs to answer four questions. What does the winning team receive? How will the two byes shape the bracket? Will representatives from Raw, SmackDown, Evolve and AAA be treated as serious contenders or short-term attractions? And will the tournament create stories that continue after the cup is raised?
The first three teams are a strong start. The Creed Brothers supply tournament history. El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. and Galeno bring newly won AAA gold. The Vanity Project enter as the reigning NXT champions and the team the rest of the field may eventually have to confront regardless of who wins.
Now the full bracket has to justify the ambition of the announcement. Fourteen teams sound impressive. The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic will matter only if WWE makes every round feel consequential—and if the winners leave with a future that lasts longer than the photograph beside the trophy.
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