WWE Raw’s Tag Team Division Needs The Authors of Pain
The Authors of Pain inexplicably went absent on WWE Raw for two months. Now that they are back, they may be the spark Raw’s tag division needs.
SmackDown Live hit the tag team jackpot in April’s Superstar Shakeup, adding Gallows & Anderson and The Bar from WWE Raw as well as SAnitY from NXT. While noteworthy for being atypical to the status quo of Raw bleeding SmackDown dry, the former’s tag division has been suffering tremendously since.
In return for losing two championship-winning teams, Raw received Breezango and The Ascension from SmackDown, two tandems more talented than their current utilization reflects.
Breezango—despite never claiming the SmackDown Tag Team Championship—contributed quality segments every Tuesday night through “The Fashion Files.” Since defeating The Bar in their WWE Raw debut, they’ve won zero matches.
The Ascension dominated NXT as its longest reigning tag team champions. Their formula of running through opponents in record time was simple but effective. Sadly, the last few years have seen the opposite occur and it can be argued that The Ascension may never recover from previous years of misuse.
Heath Slater & Rhyno are far removed from their captivating Cinderella story run as the first-ever SmackDown Tag Team Champions.
Dolph Ziggler and Drew McIntyre—the originally predicted shot-in-the-arm for Raw‘s stagnant tag team division—have shifted focus from taking over the tag team division to Dolph’s Intercontinental Championship.
The Revival have only recently started getting featured more as benefactors of the brewing hostility between Roman Reigns and Bobby Lashley. Injuries have played a part in delaying the Top Guys’ rise. But even with both healthy, not much has been done with them.
The rivalry between The B-Team and The Deleters of Worlds will likely reach a conclusion at Extreme Rules considering it has been ongoing since before Money in the Bank.
Enter The Authors of Pain.
The Authors of Pain took the reigns over from The Ascension as NXT’s resident brute tag team. The same technique—squash matches galore—that made The Ascension popular also helped The Authors of Pain. The standout difference is that AoP had a much deeper pool of talent which enabled them to produce solid bouts against DIY, The Revival, Sanity and The Undisputed Era.
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There have been some missteps since The Authors of Pain were brought to Raw in the Superstar Shakeup, namely splitting them from Paul Ellering and randomly removing them from TV not too long after they had just debuted.
However, with AoP back, they can take over Dolph and Drew’s goal of waking up the tag team division. Taking into account how poorly most of the teams on WWE Raw have been made to look in recent months, it would be impossible for Akam and Rezar marching through the majority of the division to do much more harm.
The B-Team and The Deleters of Worlds’ feud has been largely reliant on comedy. Pitting the indomitable Authors of Pain against Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt would force them to get serious in order to avoid getting demolished for their Raw Tag Team Titles.
As tag team champions, The Authors of Pain can continue to run through the tag team division while the next big threat to the Raw Tag Team Titles are built up.
The WWE Raw tag team division has been in shambles for a while. The Authors of Pain as tag team champions could very well be the boost the division needs to recover.