Team RAW vs. Team Smackdown Live Tag Team Elimination Match
Isenberg: Let’s get the random tag teams out of the way. The Shining Stars, Breezango and Hype Bros should be eliminated pretty quickly. This is where I will start to get interested in, when teams like the fresh heels in Jimmy and Jey, Enzo and Cass, The Club, Sheamus and Cesaro, Slater and Rhyno, The New Day and American Alpha are all left. How in the world will it be booked? If I am WWE, I eliminate The New Day relatively quick. Yes, they are the champions, but they have been the champions for over 400 days and do not need a Survivor Series elimination match. I would then eliminate The Uso’s, who can be cowardly heels on Smackdown the following week.
Enzo and Cass are so entertaining, but have not won lately. The Club SHOULD win, but look at how they have been booked the past six months. If I am WWE, I give the win to either Sheamus/Cesaro or American Alpha. Heath and Rhyno, albeit entertaining, just don’t have that feel of champions right now and they might need to face some adversity to salvage what was so hot for a good point on Smackdown. My final pick has to be Gable and Jordan. They need a big push heading into 2017 instead of this nonsense the past few months. Do not waste these guys any longer.
Killam: My gut says this will build towards a handicap scenario for Heath Slater and Rhyno to mount a massive comeback against two, if not three or more of the Team Raw tag teams (ala Dolph Ziggler in 2014). Any other option is just throwing a match out there for the sake of having a match. Because of the nature of this type of thing, normal babyface and heel roles don’t matter as much as they would in a standard match, if the story is told well enough. I actually disagree with Josh that the New Day should go early; I get where he’s coming from, as there’s a tendency to want to keep certain people “safe”, but the comeback story means more when the odds are the most stacked.
If I’m booking, this comes down to American Alpha and the Smackdown champs on one side of the ring, against the Raw champs, the Club, and the strange duo of Cesaro and Sheamus. Yeah, it’d be nice to see Enzo and Cass look good here, but they’re the kind of stars that’ll bounce back right away the next night with a good promo – they don’t need to win to stay protected. So why Cesaro and Sheamus? He may be the “Swiss Superman”, but WWE has done everything they can to align Cesaro and Tyson Kidd in people’s minds, and they’re going to want to get one big Sharpshooter pop out of that Toronto crowd by the end. America Alpha goes down first, or second if you want to get Sheasaro out of there. I think a win over the New Day, especially in a non-title environment that doesn’t really matter as far as the win/loss count goes, would be a great statement and much-needed boost for the Blue Brand. It also puts the mindset in the position of Team Raw needing a big win in the 5-on-5 main event. I’m saying Rhyno and Heath Slater for the comeback story over the New Day to end this match.
The secondary goal is to also make the Club look as strong as you can before they take a pin (or get thrown out some other way). But honestly I wouldn’t mind if they just gave up trying altogether and sent them back to Japan. Vince McMahon clearly has no idea what he has in them, or the Bullet Club as a worldwide brand, and frankly as a wrestling fan that cares more about NJPW than WWE as a whole, I want them back home.
Another Intercontinental Champion?
