Los Matadores Are Coming

It looks like Primo and Epico are going to be gaining some relevance once more very soon. They are being repackaged and hyped as Los Matadores. The WWE seems to be going high on gimmicks lately. And what does this all mean for the tag division?

First, this isn't the first time this year that someone has been repackaged and re-debuted with a new  gimmick. Fandango? Bray Wyatt? Go back last year to Brodus Clay. You have The Shield debuting with their gimmick as a faction. The buzz off of which of these has motivated the WWE to continue to push new gimmicks? I like gimmicks. I used to feel the WWE lacked interesting gimmicks for some time. And now? I think they are doing too much. Yes, this is creating hype to draw interest, but how about doing better with the people you currently have on the roster? Just focusing on the guys on the roster with some unique gimmicks that debuted with a lot of buzz, where are they now? The WWE has not done a good job of keeping the ball rolling with these guys. They kill their momentum. A lot of fans say that guys like Brodus Clay deserve the depush because they got stale. Well, would they still have gotten stale if the WWE did a better job developing legitimate feuds and storylines for them? Instead of keeping the ball rolling with these guys, the WWE seems to find it easier to just shift focus to others, then run them through the same cycle. For that reason, I cannot get too excited for this new gimmick.

Second, what does this mean for the tag division? Former Tag Team Champions are getting focus again. I know Epico and Primo didn't exactly have a great run with the titles. Nevertheless, they were a part of the revival of the tag division. Is there another revival happening right now? Darren Young's coming out has led to his Titus and him getting a push. I didn't like seeing Jack Swagger lose on Raw like that, but that's another issue. The Usos were getting pushed until recently. Los Matadores will surely be pushed. But there is one big problem. Where are the tag titles? Still on The Shield. Without the Tag Team Champions being involved more with these other teams, all you really have is a bunch of teams with various gimmicks rotating around each other. There is no real direction. The WWE invests in a team to make them look good, pulls the plug to do this for another team, and then repeats. While that is going on, The Shield is leagues above everyone else. If another upper-midcard team does take the titles off them, which is most likely, that won't help matters anytime soon.

And one last thing on something not related. Fans are acting like AJ Lee dropped a "pipe bomb" last night on the cast of Total Divas. If you say something that neckbeards agree with and throw in a few edgy remarks, that is now considered a "pipe bomb" to some people? Okay, I'll keep that in mind. I honestly didn't find anything too shocking about what AJ Lee did. This wouldn't be the first time that a heel diva slammed the extra-curricular activities that other divas were getting. A heel diva has never spoken out against another diva getting a Playboy push? In another note, I may not watch Total Divas or have any desire to, but the show has been a success. More viewers than TNA Impact Wrestling usually gets. Was AJ Lee edgy? A bit. Fact is, just speaking personally, if CM Punk's big promos from 2 years ago didn't make me a fan of the guy, what AJ Lee did this week isn't going to move me. Instead of focusing on a feud between just Natalya and AJ right now, it looks like the WWE will instead be developing something involving AJ and all the cast of Total Divas, not just Natalya.

Nice Tag Division Development

When you look back at last night's Money in the Bank PPV, you will see that the tag-team division got featured pretty well. Not only did R-Truth and Kofi Kingston win a pre-show match, but the actual PPV featured a tag match, as well. Primo and Epico took on Darren Young and Titus O'Neil. You can say it is weird that the Tag Champions didn't get on the actual PPV card for their match, but the challengers did. However, this is good to get the focus on other teams that need it.

There is something that is even more surprising than good focus on the tag division last night and the Champions performing on the pre-show. The challengers to the tag titles actually lost. Epico and Primo are not being buried, yet. I like that. That means that you have a lot of potential here for a good feud in the tag division.

Go back to last year, when the WWE hyped that there was going to be some kind of revival of the tag division when Kofi and Bourne won the titles. I didn't buy it. They didn't have enough resources for a proper revival. More importantly, they didn't really push a proper revival. Even before Bourne had his issues, possibilities were running dry. Now, however, I see some kind of proper revival happening. Actions are speaking louder than words. How long will it last? Unless they create more teams when the time comes or start signing more teams, it will run dry sooner or later. Until then, the WWE is continuing to push the tag division better. And it isn't just hype.

Jobbers Take Over Tag Division

The direction the tag division has taken recently is kind of funny. In the last few weeks, you had Ziggler and Swagger, who are arguably the top heel team, split up for the benefit of Ziggler getting more of a singles push. As far as R-Truth and Kofi Kingston went, they were obviously the top tag team of the division and held the titles. Problem is, R-Truth got injured. That pretty much leaves your two major teams broken.

What does the WWE do? With the tag division showing even fewer resources to run optimally than the diva division, they pulled in four tag teams for a #1 contenders match at No Way Out. There were actually four other teams other than Ziggler/Swagger and Truth/Kingston? Yes. They were hidden away in the lower-midcard. These teams would be lucky if they even got to job on Raw in recent weeks.

Darren Young and Titus O'Neil have been getting some good exposure lately. They are the ones who ended up winning the title shot. They also have developed a little feud with Epico, Primo, and Rosa, after A.W. betrayed his former clients. An actual storyline in the tag division? Epico and Primo have held the titles before, so it is good that the WWE is still giving them attention. I did find having them win on Raw this week stupid. If you are going to build up Darren Young and Titus O'Neil, they will need some wins to build up their credibility. Even a cheap win would do. Instead, Epico and Primo get the cheap win. But I do realize that the WWE pretty much needs to do this. Even if the current Tag Champs were at 100%, they would have to break up eventually. And then what? You start building up new teams? Why not start now, especially when R-Truth is not ready to go? Overall, I have to give the WWE credit for their recent interest in the tag division. It's too bad it took the possible short-term collapse of the division for them to do it, but still good.

Tag Division Little Better Or No Change At All?

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?

Epico And Primo Win Tag Titles

I was going to use today to compare Eve/Ryder to AJ/Bryan, but it would seem we have new Tag Team Champions. The titles changed hands at a house show over the weekend. Epico and Primo now have the gold.

If you have no idea who those two are, I don't blame you. If you don't give a damn about them, I still don't blame you. Primo, obviously, has been in the WWE for a few years now. Problem is, he hasn't done much in a while. Even recently, he was not being pushed well. Having these two just pick up the tag titles at a house show will not help them get mega over. And I doubt this will be the start of an awesome push for them. After Kofi Kingston and Evan Bourne retained the titles against a team like Ziggler and Swagger a few months ago, it is insulting to have them drop it to two, and no offense here, complete jobbers. I see this as one of those situations where no one involved will benefit too much. Rosa fans might be happy at the chance of seeing her a little more.

What does this mean for that revival of the tag division they were supposedly having? I knew it was just too much hype when it started. Bourne and Kingston were not going to revitalize anything. Even before Bourne's suspension, you could see that there were really not too many good options for the Champions to face. Momentum was already starting to slow. Bourne getting suspended may have brought about the inevitable a little sooner, but he did come back, the WWE did have an opportunity to build a proper feud with the previous Champions and the team that now holds the gold, and the WWE did not do it. Who is the WWE punishing more, Bourne or themselves? I don't have much confidence in Epico and Primo, but I still feel you could have done more in developing them. Having this feud play out on Superstars is garbage. In the end, the tag division is pretty much as crappy as it was a few months ago.