This event may go down in history as a turning point for WWE, as it serves up…
Nevermind, that’s not going to be the case.
WWE took the name of a song from over 50 years ago and turned it into a “pay per view” name. They chose GREAT BALLS OF FIRE to serve up as one of their banner events, when they easily could have gone with GREAT AMERICAN BASH like they had done from 2004 to 2009, the July pay per view for the defeated once-rival WCW. But I won’t dwell on what they could have done with a name that otherwise ends up head-shakingly bad. I’ll move on to what they’ve built up in terms of a card they want people to tune-in to watch.
Starting from the bottom of the list as presented on Wikipedia (because WWE’s site often leaves matches off the list or makes things so poorly navigable that I miss something), there are plenty of things to which to look forward.
WWE RAW Tag Team Championships
A 30-minute Iron Man Match, for the tag titles? That MORE than has my attention. Throw Cesaro into the mix, and I’m looking forward to it.
The feud between The Hardys and The Bar (Cesaro & Sheamus) has been a good boost in the arm for the tag division, which I felt took a hit back when The Hardys showed up at WrestleMania.
No, as a fan of tag team wrestling, I didn’t enjoy seeing The Hardys show up at WrestleMania to ruin the payoff to the build-up that those three tag teams deserved. It should have been The Club or Enzo & Cass or The Bar who walked away with the straps, not the returning Team Extreme. That’s not to say that Matt and Jeff Hardy didn’t deserve another run, but given Jeff’s history of drug use (and having come to the ring under the influence) and the wacky gimmick Matt had been using at the time, it wasn’t a great decision to put the belts on them the first night they had returned to the company after having been gone for 7 years.
But I digress, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE.
For The Bar to be a higher profile tag team (to raise the bar, as it were), they need to defend the belts at big events (formerly known as pay per views) against more than just one team (not “at a time”, but different teams at different events). Especially when that team is the team they defeated for the belts, a team they lost to at a previous big event.
The Bar deserves better. Cesaro deserves better.
I’d say that Sheamus deserves better, but he had his time to shine in the main event a few years back, held the big belt, and proved to be multi-dimensional. Sheamus isn’t the one who “deserves” something, but I like him, so I’m happy he’s the other half of this Cesaro tag team.
WWE needs to let The Bar keep the tag titles, for the sake of the division. Just about anything that The Hardys do will get eyes glued to the television. Merch will sell. A win here will give The Bar a chance to take a step towards being a more profitable asset for the company, as a more credible team. A loss makes them seem like they’re perhaps a fluke, and that the belts are back with the more deserving team.
In fact, if WWE decides they want The Hardys to be their shining star in the division, have The Bar win, have them refuse a rematch, have them taunt The Hardys all the way up through Survivor Series. Let the two teams be on opposite teams. Then let The Hardys win the belts back from The Bar at Royal Rumble.
Moving on to The Intercontinental Championship… (view PAGE 2 of this article!!)
