{"id":45917,"date":"2018-06-03T16:47:26","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T20:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45917"},"modified":"2020-08-07T16:47:36","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T20:47:36","slug":"i-feel-bad-for-the-b-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45917","title":{"rendered":"I feel bad for the B-Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If there\u2019s ever one thing I\u2019ve observed about the WWE throughout the decades, is that every now and then, you can tell when there\u2019s a character or character(s) where it\u2019s extraordinarily obvious that the Creative department has absolutely no ideas for.\u00a0 However, the performers themselves are either competent in the ring and\/or are personalities that are genuinely decent, therefore they are desired to be kept on television and therefore employed, as opposed to being completely taken off of TV in general and allowed to rot in obscurity.<\/span><\/p>\n

More notable and recent examples of this would be early incarnations of The New Day, Damien Sandow and Rusev, whom were all given pretty lame duck seeds for characters, but were all pretty decent performers or supposed good locker room guys, hence the desire to keep them at all, even if their personas were lacking in effort.<\/span><\/p>\n

The thing is, the wrestling smark culture is smarter than ever with the advent of the internet and the ability to know what\u2019s going on the vast majority of the time, or at least be able to talk it out with other wrestling fans and come to conclusions that differed from the days when communication wasn\u2019t quite so simple.\u00a0 Subsequently, whenever the smarks have been able to identify when a wrestler or wrestlers were getting the shaft by Creative, these are precisely the wrestlers that they begin to get behind, in a defiant, contrarian manner to kind of play a chicken and egg game with the industry to put the test towards the claim that the fans make the stars and not the other way around where stars make fans.<\/span><\/p>\n

That said, all three of my examples are cases where almost by sheer will and a relentless refusal to give up with seeds they\u2019re sowing, got over with the fans, and to gargantuan amounts.\u00a0 The New Day singlehandedly resurrected tag team wrestling in the WWE in an age where countless names in the industry have stated the company\u2019s secondary opinion of it, and have become probably the most lucrative merchandising property in the company.\u00a0 Damien Sandow became Damien Mizdow, the super-over stunt-double for The Miz, and probably spun more gold out of shit than anyone else before him, and Rusev took a dead-end partnership with Aiden English, and through forced-meme determination, gotten the Rusev Day gimmick over like crazy.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Unfortunately, contrary to the WWE\u2019s claims that the fans dictate everything, getting over with the crowd doesn\u2019t really matter if you\u2019re not really a part of the long-term, preordained storylines. \u00a0It\u2019s no secret that the WWE has very much a molded template of what they\u2019re looking for when it comes to the upper echelon of the company, as made evident by the staunch insistence by the company that only guys like John Cena and Roman Reigns are the only ones remotely qualified to contend for the WWE Championship, and that big names from external fame like Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey matter more than the products that they cultivated themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fans aren\u2019t (always) stupid, regardless of what the WWE insists knowing what\u2019s best for business.\u00a0 It\u2019s obvious when the fans have banded together pretty well throughout the last few years for completely refusing to support or cheer for anyone that is being force-fed down their throats, no matter how competent or improved Roman Reigns has become in that span.\u00a0 Forcing the issue is never a good idea in almost any facet of life, and professional wrestling is no exception; the fans don\u2019t like being told who they\u2019re supposed to get behind.<\/span><\/p>\n

So when wrestlers who get over with the fans but are not a part of the long-term storylines become big deals, the status quo rarely changes, and those who rise end up getting stuck into a hold pattern to where they eventually DJ Tanner wrestle (AKA jump the shark), or they\u2019re metaphorically punished for getting over by being immediately put into a storyline that completely derails everything worked for.\u00a0 Or, in the case of Damien Sandow, regardless of just how much the fans wanted to see a blow-off feud between he and The Miz, just outright release the guy and bid him well on his future endeavors.<\/span><\/p>\n

The New Day, as much as I got behind their rise, have gotten to a point where they\u2019re so big that they don\u2019t really need the tag team championship belts to validate their success, and the WWE is all too happy to accommodate that by keeping them out of any meaningful feuds or storylines, completely content to use them as glorified mascots of the company, as long as they\u2019re selling shirts and merchandise no matter how many boxes of Bisquick they have to use every single show to make the hundreds of pancakes they fling every night.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nobody wants to admit it, but they\u2019ve long past jumped the shark, but because the WWE doesn\u2019t care about tag team wrestling, regardless of how good The New Day is as a unit, they\u2019re never going to rise any further, because they\u2019re simply existing at the company\u2019s ceiling for tag teams.\u00a0 The breakup is the only thing that\u2019s really left, where Big E will probably get the nod to actually ascend, a little bit, but that\u2019s not going to happen until the merchandise train finally starts to slow down.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rusev, is an extraordinary worker whom I love to watch work, but it\u2019s killed me over the last two years to see him go from this unstoppable juggernaut of a character that had the hottest feud with John Cena over the United States championship just a few years ago to where he\u2019s a guy that jobbed to Randy Orton in like 7 seconds earlier in the year.\u00a0 The Rusev Day gimmick has gotten over, but the seeds have already been planted for its exit strategy, with the re-insertion of Lana into the fold, so the countdown is on before Rusev goes ballistic on Aiden English and locks him in a two minute Accolade.\u00a0 But the bigger question is if Creative will actually do anything with the equity that Rusev has built over the last year, or if it\u2019s even possible without the presence of Aiden English who was as much of Rusev Day as Rusev himself is.<\/span><\/p>\n

I feel like the best that can come out of getting over with the fans is that you become a convenient get-out-of-jail-free card replacement part for Creative to plug into an existing story as almost an experimental replacement for anyone who ever gets hurt, or is taken out as result of real-life punishment.\u00a0 But even then, it\u2019s a hold pattern at best, and nothing short of a revelation in the writing team would change things from eventually getting back onto the original storylines, eventually.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which brings me to the impetus of this particular post, eleven paragraphs in, about the introduction of The B-Team tag team of Curtis Axel and Bo Dallas.\u00a0 Everything about this pairing screams a sheer lack of direction, concern or care by Creative.\u00a0 But the thing is that both Axel and Dallas are, in spite of what the WWE has allowed them to actually do on screen, decent workers, and whether they\u2019re good locker room guys or protected by Vince McMahon\u2019s staunch loyalty to older greats by always keeping their offspring employed, are kept on television, even if it means being put into a denigrating pairing aptly named The B-Team<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I have this feeling, this hunch, that The B-Team is going to get over.\u00a0 Not because they\u2019re decent workers, but they have the scent of a pairing that the contrarian smark culture of wrestling fans tend to gravitate towards, and I think they\u2019ll eventually get support, because they\u2019re supposed to be guys that aren\u2019t supposed to be getting any support.\u00a0 Whether or not this happens has yet to be seen, but in a theoretical world where such does occur, I can\u2019t help but preemptively feel bad for The B-Team, because they also are prime candidates to fall into the mold of superstars that don\u2019t fit the McMahon model of top stars, and much like The New Day, have an inevitable fate to go no further than a very shallow ceiling of the tag team division at the very best.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really know what\u2019s worse for The B-Team – getting knocked down from a tier that nobody had any intention of them ever ascending to, or never even being given the chance to rise in the ranks at all.\u00a0 I guess it would have to be the former, because when the day is over, if they can sell some merch, Axel and Dallas can at least make some coin before they\u2019re eventually jobbed out.\u00a0 But I\u2019d really love to see if and when the WWE licenses The B-Team shirts that are meant to look like they were made on the fly in the backstage with nothing but white t-shirts and Sharpies; but they\u2019ll have the WWE Authentic tag sewn onto the hem, and charge $24.99 for them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, I can\u2019t help but feel bad for the inevitable tanking of The B-Team.\u00a0 Both Axel and Dallas deserve better, and considering the latter was one of the greatest champions in NXT\u2019s history, it\u2019s a real shame that Bo-Lieve never got an opportunity to even start an ascension on the main roster.\u00a0 But the meme isn\u2019t \u201cdemoted to the main roster\u201d without just cause.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there\u2019s ever one thing I\u2019ve observed about the WWE throughout the decades, is that every now and then, you can tell when there\u2019s a character or character(s) where it\u2019s extraordinarily obvious that the Creative department has absolutely no ideas for.\u00a0 However, the performers themselves are either competent in the ring and\/or are personalities that … Continue reading I feel bad for the B-Team<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,54,55],"class_list":["post-45917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-observations","tag-wrestling","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45919,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45917\/revisions\/45919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}