Back in February of 2014, Hanson defeated Raymond Rowe in the Final of ROH’s third Top Prospect Tournament. The two teamed up shortly after and War Machine was born. Could they create a new chapter in WWE?
As a team, Raymond Rowe and Hanson have skyrocketed through the tag team ranks of the independent pro wrestling scene in a very short amount of time. As “War Machine”, the team uses a unique combination of power, speed, strength, agility, acrobatics, and toughness.
These attributes as well as their ability to consistently improve has led them to reportedly signing with WWE just four years after the team’s formation. In those four years, War Machine has built a very impressive resume which includes winning the ROH World Tag Team Championship as well as the IWGP Tag Team Championship twice.
We have recently seen a shift in the mindset of WWE management from the sense that they have been allowing outside talents to keep their “gimmicks” when entering the company. In the past, WWE liked to change pretty much everything about what made a talent a hot commodity on the independent circuit and remold them in their own image.
This new mindset is refreshing to fans like myself that were forced to have to reprogram our brains and try to forget the pasts of wrestlers that we had been watching outside of WWE for years. Because of this, I fully expect War Machine to continue to look, act, and perform the same way that got them signed to the company in the first place.
I hope that the WWE audience gets the same War Machine that I’ve grown to become such a fan of. But this also leads me to the question: Where do Rowe and Hanson fit in?