The American Males
| The American Males | |
|---|---|
| Tag team | |
| Members |
Marcus Bagwell Scotty Riggs |
| Heights | Bagwell: 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) Riggs: 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) |
| Combined weight |
460 lb (210 kg) |
| Debut | August 1995 |
| Disbanded | November 1996 |
| Promotions | WCW |
The American Males were a professional wrestling tag team in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) composed of Marcus Bagwell and Scotty Riggs. Their gimmick was of two "pretty boys" who were fond of their own bodies and popular with women. Riggs was Bagwell's third partner with whom he won the WCW World Tag Team Championship, the previous two being 2 Cold Scorpio and The Patriot. The American Males won the tag team title soon after they began teaming together but soon dropped the belts back to Harlem Heat, the previous champions. Bagwell and Riggs did not return to main-event status, and they eventually split up and feuded with each other.
Marcus Bagwell had competed in the tag team division in WCW since 1993, during which time he held the WCW World Tag Team Championship with two different partners. Teaming with 2 Cold Scorpio, he held the title belts for three weeks. He later won the title twice more while teaming with The Patriot, a team that was dubbed Stars and Stripes due to the patriotic theme both wrestlers were using at the time. After being left behind by both partners, he expressed a desire to form a new tag team to challenge for the title again. According to WCW's storylines, his former partners believed that he was too demanding, and he was unable to find anyone interested in teaming with him due to his reputation as being "difficult to work with".
The team was formed in August 1995 when Scott Antol signed a WCW contract and was placed with "tag team specialist" Marcus Alexander Bagwell. In the process, both men changed their ring names, Antol changing his last name to "Riggs" and Bagwell shortening his name to simply Marcus Bagwell. Once together, they both wore short shorts and leather vests (later wrestling tights and suspenders) to the ring and began clapping their hands over their head in time with their entrance music, which sang their praises between choruses of the team name being repeated over and over. They wrestled on the first episode of Nitro, defeating World Tag Team Champions Dick Slater and Bunkhouse Buck in a non-title match. Their first major appearance together came at the Fall Brawl pay-per-view, where they defeated The Nasty Boys in a match that aired on Main Event.Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazine stated that the team "work[ed] well as a unit and could soon challenge for the belts". Bagwell commented on the team in a scripted interview, saying that he believed that his previous tag teams had failed because they were in a rush to win the title belts and that he planned to work slowly toward a title victory with Riggs.
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