At the recent Clash of Champions PPV, the still new tag team of Robert Roode and Dolph Ziggler beat Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman to become the new WWE Raw Tag Team Champions.
It capped what was a whirlwind couple of weeks for the pairing, having last been seen running around backstage chasing the WWE 24/7 Champion with the rest of the jobbers (Roode), and sulking that literally every opportunity anyone else ever earned ever, should have been him instead (Ziggler).
In truth, so far it’s been a little more than difficult to take WWE’s latest Odd Couple to be given the Raw tag titles particularly seriously. The entire premise behind tag team wrestling is that a successful tag team is meant to know each other inside out; they’re meant to have at least some storied history together, they’re meant to be able to predict their own partners actions, they’re meant to have cool double team moves and a proper Tag Team Name (I absolutely will not accept fans christening them as The Glorious Showoffs, stop it at once).
What they’re not meant to do is barely know each other, and win their brand’s tag team titles in their literal third full match as a team. Even if you count the separate parts of the “Tag Team Turmoil” (gauntlet) match as individual matches, they won the titles after six matches as a team.
Either way, it’s ridiculous.
Alas, here we are. WWE’s next task is to book the right opponents to give Roode and Ziggler some credibility as champions, at least until they decide it’s time up. Any of the following tag teams would be perfect…
5. The O.C (Gallows & Anderson)
An obvious choice, maybe, but since the heel turn alongside their glorious leader A.J. Styles, Gallows and Anderson have generally been booked pretty strongly on Monday nights.
They were made to look like mugs the other week by Stone Cold and his merry band of massively overshadowed babyfaces, but of course they were, it was Steve Austin. Outside of that episode of Raw, which in parts was silly enough that they could have announced it as entirely non-canon and I doubt many people would have complained, they’ve been put over teams like the New Day, the Revival and the Usos, which is pretty good going.
The heel turn has done Gallows and Anderson the world of good; their own run as the Raw Tag Champions was cut criminally short so WWE could use the tag titles as props in the Universal Championship scene, and they should definitely get another run with the straps soon.
The main issue here is that booking this feud would necessitate booking heels vs heels, which it most definitely would be; neither team is turning babyface any time soon.
As good as the matches would have potential to be, and as much as a clean feud win over the O.C would lend Roode and Ziggler some much-needed credibility, the hurdle of both teams being heel lands this booking decision at the less likely end of the scale.
4. The Viking Raiders
Otherwise known as War Machine (to everyone outside WWE), the War Raiders (to everyone at Full Sail University) or The Viking Experience (to absolutely nobody at all ever I’m sorry we agreed not to talk about this), the Viking Raiders, which is still a phenomenally rubbish name, have been booked fairly dominantly since their call-up to Monday Night Raw.
This sounds impressive, but at least 75% of the matches they’ve been given have been against “local competitors“, which makes said victories mean the precise square root of absolute zilch.
In recent weeks, however, business appears to have begun to slowly pick up for Erik and Ivar (ugh). Being put over teams such as the B Team and Hawkins & Ryder might still not be impressive at all, but they’re at least teams that are fully employed by WWE.
On top of that, their recent-ish babyface turn saw them receive the apparent rub of sharing a ring with Stone Cold Steve Austin, and being on his side to boot. That might have meant they were overshadowed at the time, but it also means someone high up in WWE thinks a decent amount of the team.
The next logical step for the Viking Raiders is to put them in a feud against a “top” tag team. Who, theoretically, is more “top” than the brand Tag champions?
A victory against the Viking duo for Robert Roode & Dolph Ziggler would be massive for their credibility as champions; knocking off a team who has (so far) gone without themselves being pinned or submitted on the main roster is no mean feat.
Much more likely, though, this feud would spell an early and no doubt highly painful end to Roode & Ziggler’s reign as champions. Does that mean it shouldn’t be booked? Not at all. Does that make it less likely to be booked? Potentially in the short term, which is why it clocks in at number 4 ,not higher up.
3. The Street Profits
The Street Profits are recent ex-NXT Tag Team Champions, one of the most entertaining and high-octane teams to grace WWE programming in years, and one of the most over tandems in recent company memory.
Obviously, then, obviously WWE have decided their immediate future lies as hype men for Monday Night Raw, rather than actually… you know, wrestling. Because Vince McMahon.
Confusing and frankly sad booking decisions aside, Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford are a locked-in certainty to make huge waves when they eventually hit the ring on Monday nights. Why not hot-shot them into the Tag title picture?
Their situation is different to the one the Viking Raiders found themselves in on their main roster arrival; Street Profits are already known to Raw fans because of their position as pseudo hype men, and they’re very clearly babyfaces in the role. They can’t realistically be thrown into the same sort of squash match after squash match holding pattern the Raiders were; that sort of booking is for heel monster teams to show off their unstoppability (it’s a word), not babyface teams.
The energy and ability the Street Profits would bring to a feud against Robert Roode and Dolph Ziggler would more than make up for the fact they were hot-shotted into the title picture, and more importantly, said hot-shotting writes a simple way for the current Tag Champions to go over in the feud, should a rather annoyed and grumpy team backstage (I’m looking at you, scary Vikings) turn heel and rampage over the Street Profits for taking a title shot they (the scary Vikings) feel should have been theirs.
2. Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins
I know, I know. Hear me out.
Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins have, since defeating the Revival to win the Raw Tag Team Championships at WrestleMania 35 (still a ludicrous thing to be able to type as fact), actually been booked… fairly competently as a tag team.
Not in the sense that they’ve won that many matches, that would be silly; as a tag team, they’ve not been booked horribly, they’ve not really fallen victims to the dreaded Freak Miscommunication, there’s been no real indication of one turning on the other, etc.
More to the point, since losing their Raw Tag Team Championship (still silly) back to the Revival in June, they’ve still not had any sniff of a rematch which, whilst not “contractually obligated” any more, still seems to get given to absolutely any act whatsoever that WWE Creative seem to give a hoot about.
They don’t appear to give a hoot about Hawkins and Ryder, but they shouldn’t be hootless; the unlikely duo still have some fan goodwill left, partly from Zack Ryder’s ever endearing internet presence and partly from the Curt Hawkins Pre-Show Cinderella Story back in April.
A quick program against Ryder and Hawkins, while not doing absolute bits for Roode and Ziggler’s credibility as champions, would still give them a clean feud win over a team that has been brand Tag Champions as recently as this spring.
On top of that, it would also give WWE an excuse to turn either Hawkins or Long Island Iced Z on the other, should they feel the need to yet again inevitably botch a minor heel push for either of them.
1. The Authors of Pain
Akam and Rezar, collectively known as AOP (or the Authors of Pain; WWE can’t seem to decide if it’s the full name or the acronym only), have been missing from proper WWE programming for the best part of a year, with injury to Akam leaving Rezar on his own to run roughshod over… Main Event… for a few weeks before disappearing from there, too.
It’s a shame; although still fairly green, the duo have shown massive promise as a monster tag team, especially during their time in NXT, where they were arguably called up far too soon.
However, this past week on both Raw and SmackDown, the same vignette was aired, re-introducing AOP to the WWE Universe. The vignette itself, which you can watch above, is great, establishing them once again as heels whilst allowing both men to talk in foreign languages (all people who speak foreign languages are automatically Evil, apparently), and completely changing their visual gimmick; gone are the camouflage tactical vests that kind of made them both look like they were badly cosplaying as Roman Reigns, and in their place are two very nice, “we are all business” style suits.
If this was just because they were shooting from backstage or if this is part of a total rebranding, we don’t yet know, but I absolutely want AOP to be rebranded as mercenary bodyguards-for-hire, sort of like a modern day APA.
Regardless of the gimmick, AOP need a big time feud to properly announce their return to action. As much as this spells the surefire end of Roode and Ziggler’s time as Tag Champions, there’s no better way to announce AOP back to the big time than with a dominant, merciless victory to become Raw Tag Team Champions.
From there, the potential feud with the Viking Raiders already has the potential to see whichever poor unfortunate cities host matches between the two teams to be levelled in what could prove to be Big Boy Fights to end all Big Boy Fights.
Book it.