Epico and Primo have seen their second week as Tag Team Champions. They will see a little action on Smackdown this week, but no sign of any real feud developing in the division for them. Nevertheless, think back to what was happening with Kofi Kingston and Evan Bourne in the few weeks prior to dropping the titles due to Evan Bourne violating the drug policy again. They were not doing anything on either Raw or Smackdown. The current Champions, despite the lack of a real storyline or feud for them, have been featured two weeks in a row, and booked to win both weeks. This is not the excellent tag division you had about a decade ago, but having your Champions featured on the main brands is at least better than how things were less than two months ago. Is this a little better? It depends on how long it will last. Don't forget that Bourne and Kingston started out even better than Primo and Epico did. They still got phased out. I am expecting nothing too much better for those two guys standing around Rosa in that picture up there.There is one other reason I want to talk about these two guys again. There is something that I don't think I talked about well enough when the titles changed hands last week, and I want to relate that back to the diva division. Why Epico and Primo? Obviously, it was a convenient option. These guys already had a little feud going with Bourne and Kingston prior to the title change. Nevertheless, they are not the top heel tag team in the WWE right now. That team, the way I see it, would be Jack Swagger and Dolph Ziggler. They have been a stable with Vickie for months, both have held multiple titles, including the World's Heavyweight Championship, and both are frequently featured more and better than the two guys who ended up with the titles. So why not hand the titles to the top heel team? That team is already involved in matters, individually. Jack Swagger had a U.S. title push coming when the WWE had the tag titles change hands. Dolph Ziggler is feuding for the WWE Championship. Do they really need the tag titles for anything right now? Aside from them, the WWE could have put together two random heels and handed them the titles. How about Miz and Otunga? How about two guys who are even bigger jobbers than Epico and Primo? At the end of the day, just because the WWE has handed the titles to these two guys, that does not mean they care about developing them to be major stars. They handed them the titles at a time when they needed to take it off the previous Champions. Now that they have the titles, the WWE still must book them and use them now, which is why they are getting used like they currently are.
Does something like that ever happen in the diva division? Do you ever have women getting pushed and even winning titles because something happened to the previous diva the WWE was interested in pushing? All the time! Obviously, Kofi Kingston and Evan Bourne were not centerpieces of the tag division in the same way Trish Stratus was centerpiece of the diva division. I can't even remember the last time I would say the tag division had a team I would truly consider a centerpiece. Evan Bourne getting suspended is not the same as Trish Stratus retiring from the company. Nevertheless, in both instances, it creates a need for someone else to get a push. Primo and Epico benefited in the former instance, while Mickie James got the push to replace the face centerpiece the WWE lost in 2006. I don't think it is hard to imagine that the WWE is not interested in pushing these two guys as real successes. As I said before, there does not seem to be a good storyline or feud developing for them against a real tag team. Even if it does, in time, the team will still get phased out, like so many others. Go back to Mickie James. Just because she got the push to replace Trish in 2006, does that mean she was meant to be the permanent replacement or a temporary (interim) replacement? You don't really need to spend hours and days and weeks and months and centuries debating it. History provides the answer. Look at how things turned out. Mickie James was given a sharp depush in 2007 when the WWE pushed Candice Michelle, who matches the profile of what the WWE likes in a diva centerpiece more than Mickie James did. After that, Mickie James would only get pushed again after Candice's two injuries and when the WWE needed her to put over other centerpieces. But let me go back a step. I made it sound like the WWE only put the title on Epico and Primo because they were a convenient option, one that was previously feuding with the former Champions and was not tied into anything else. Go back to Mickie James in 2006. She definitely was a convenient option to push. She was the one who dropped the title to Lita, who then gave it to Trish. I also made it sound like the WWE can easily depush Epico and Primo, without bothering to get them over. Is it hard to believe the WWE was not thinking the same thing when they pushed Mickie James back then? The idea is the same. It is just a filler push. It is a reaction to just losing whoever you planned to be pushing.
A lot of people act like there are always infinite possibilities to what the WWE might do. You can never tell who they will give titles to. Overall, you can argue that. In circumstances of a title change due to things like suspension, injury, or retirement, however, and especially when you are working with a limited number of workers from your overall roster, there really are not that many possibilities in some circumstances. I already talked about why the choice of Epico and Primo was not too surprising and not a sign of a great push coming for them. Go back to the diva division after Trish left. Your faces are Candice, Torrie, and Maria. None of these have serious wrestling training prior to the WWE. These are all eye-candy divas. The WWE had to turn either Melina, Victoria, or Mickie face to be a face credible jobber, who would then work with Lita for the title. My point for saying all this? I just want to remind people, just because the WWE gave Mickie James that push, it does not mean they wanted her to be over. They were just looking for filler until they could develop who they did want to be following in Trish's footsteps. Even if they had gone with Melina or Victoria, the purpose would have been the same. The WWE could have handed the tag titles to Swagger and Ziggler, deciding to load them up with gold for their individual pushes, or to JTG and Heath Slater, deciding to just no longer give a damn about anything anymore, but at the end of the day, the title change would still be coming off due to a need to get it off the former Champions, no team that wins it will most likely stay together over time, and the WWE still would not invest too much into the tag division to really improve it. Filler is filler. That is my point. Takes me a long time to get to a point, doesn't it?
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