Heavy Machinery will be fun, but they won’t save the tag team division

Despite being on the main roster for a few weeks, WWE has already established Heavy Machinery as yet another undercard tag team.

As the team of Otis Dozovic and Tucker Knight — also known as Heavy Machinery — strolled down to the ring for their number one contender’s fatal four-way tag team match the Feb. 4th episode of RAW, a picture-in-picture promo featuring the two slid onto the screen.

The dialogue the duo espoused featured the usual muscle-headed jock content that became a trademark for them during their time in NXT, but one line from Knight — or just Tucker now, I guess — stood out in particular, and not in a way that should make anyone optimistic about their potential at the top of the card.

Towards the end of the promo, Tucker declared that he and Dozo…sorry, OTIS were in WWE to “use [their] muscles and [their] smiles to lift [the fans’] spirits and drop all the tag teams on RAW and SmackDown.”

Well, at least they talked about beating some teams between all that smiling they plan on doing.

Why did Vince McMahon and the creative team feel the need to do this? Sure, you could make the argument that they merely sought to reaffirm Heavy Machinery’s status as babyfaces, but in the process, they pigeonholed the relatively new tandem as another lower-midcard act in a tag team division that has too many of them as it is.

On a show that already features the likes of The B-Team, Curt Hawkins and Zack (or Zach) Ryder, The Ascension (yes, they’re heels, but they’re basically enhancement wrestlers at this point), and Lucha House Party, did WWE really need to typecast Tucker and Otis in this lighthearted role so early?

The answer is a resounding no.

This isn’t to say that Heavy Machinery should be booked as a top tag team — or whatever WWE’s version of that would be. Even at the NXT level, most fans looked at these two as a fun second-tier duo that wasn’t at the level of teams like The Undisputed Era or The War Raiders.

They basically filled the old Enzo Amore and Big Cass role; they were a quirky but strangely charismatic tandem that could occasionally challenge for the tag team championships on the weekly NXT show, but were never a threat to win the titles.

There’s nothing stopping WWE from using Heavy Machinery in this role on the main roster based on how Vince and the writers have presented them so far. There’s also nothing keeping the bookers from eventually putting the titles on them at some point if they pick up some momentum.

But placing another team like this on the main shows maintains the status quo as far as the tag team division is concerned.

For a creative team that put Karl Andeson and Luke Gallows in lab coats and gave them lame doctor jokes to read, forced one of their best tag teams to constantly lose to three babyfaces using their version of the “Freebird Rule”, and not only putting the RAW Tag Team Titles on a duo literally named “The B-Team” for months but also putting it on a kid as a gag, adding another goofball team to the mix only reinforces what many fans already know about WWE: that the company doesn’t care about tag teams, at least on the main roster.

Even on the more top-heavy SmackDown side, WWE still decided to put that show’s tag straps on a makeshift team featuring the man with the worst punches in the business.

Right now, the title is basically a plot device that will probably lead to Miz and Shane trading bad punches and kicks at WrestleMania, because we all know that in Vince’s mind, the singles feud matters above all else. Otis and Tucker likely won’t do much to change that overarching mindset.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with presenting Heavy Machinery as an undercard tag team. WWE can’t push every single wrestler or team on their roster, so if they see these two as midcard filler, then that’s okay.

But if WWE is as serious about focusing on the tag team division as much as they say they are, they need to do more than stockpile a bunch of teams on RAW and SmackDown. They have to build some of them up as legitimate stars that fans can take seriously once the bell rings.

As it stands, Heavy Machinery represents more of the same old, same old.