Why Are The Shining Stars in WWE?
By Josh.0
Continuing what we hope will one day become a hit television or podcast series, we ask why are Primo and Epico still in WWE?
WWE employs several men and women who seem to be little more than time fillers for the weekly RAW and SmackDown marathons. If the company wants to improve their ratings and tighten up their programming, perhaps it should look into sending some of these wrestlers out to pasture. This week, we take a look at Diego and Fernando Colon, AKA Primo and Epico, AKA Los Matadores, AKA The Shining Stars.
Primo and Epico have been in WWE for so long that one of their earliest feuds was against Air Boom. Does anyone remember Air Boom? Yes, Air Boom is fun to say, which was really the only good thing about them. For Primo and Epico, a tag title victory over Air Boom in 2012 represents their one and only reign as champions and it only lasted only three months. Their run as champs meant so little to the WWE that they didn’t even defend their titles on the main card at WrestleMania 28. Not only was their reign brief, but it came at the expense of a forgettable tag team. Most fans can’t even remember who Air Boom was much less that they were actually champions at one point. It’s easy to see why, because we can all forget the team of Evan Bourne and Kofi Kingston who were together for roughly five months before Bourne’s second suspension for continued violations of the company’s wellness policy.
Competing against mediocre tag teams is basically the entire resume for real-life cousins Diego and Fernando Colon. When the WWE haphazardly decided to put two superstars together, the Colons were usually called upon to take the L. Kofi Kingston and R-Truth are a tag team now, so who should they beat? Diego and Fernando. Hey everyone, Team Co-Bro needs a win. No worries, Diego and Fernando are ready to lay down for them. Their penchant for jobbing was so rampant that between August and December 2012, Diego and Fernando lost all of their televised matches. Every. Single. One.
They returned in August 2013 with a new gimmick as masked bullfighters referred to as Los Matadores. This time, WWE employed the shameless gimmick of pairing them with a little person dressed as a bull known as El Torito (Spanish for The Little Bull, obviously). This time around, they went on a winning streak against 3MB and The Real Americans thanks to the comedy stylistics and interferences of El Torito. Although they never captured tag team gold during this time, the gimmick was popular enough to keep them relevant for two years until they turned heel and attacked El Torito who was released by WWE a short time later.
In quite possibly one of the worst career turns I’ve ever seen, the duo was repackaged yet again in 2016 as The Shining Stars, timeshare con artists whose entire schtick revolves around trying to convince other wrestlers to purchase property in Puerto Rico. The two frequently refer to the island as “the Shining Star of the Caribbean”, which was an actual tagline used by the United States during the Cold War in an effort to promote Puerto Rico as an exotic alternative vacation destination to the communist-controlled island of Cuba. The gimmick is somewhat tongue-in-cheek due to the real life social and political issues plaguing Puerto Rico which have turned the once prosperous paradise into an economic disaster.
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Diego and Fernando seem to benefit more from their family name than anything else. Both men are related to Carlos Colon, Sr. (Diego is his son and Fernando is his nephew). Colon, Sr. is a 2014 WWE Hall of Fame inductee and the official WWE representative in Puerto Rico where he promotes and oversees local house shows. It’s hard to fathom any other reason why the two are still on the main roster since they aren’t particularly good in the ring and can only generate a moderate amount of heel heat. If WWE wanted to make them serious tag team contenders, they would have done so by now. The company has made it clear that The Shining Stars are little more than house show talent and the two have given us no reason to think otherwise.