5 Biggest Winners & Losers From WWE Raw (July 25)
4. Losers: The Tag Division
It wasn’t the best of shows of one of WWE’s fastest growing divisions. There are nights when The New Day’s shtick comes off as tired, uninspired, and specifically designed to fill airtime rather than push their characters forward. This was one such night.
Coming out to celebrate surpassing Paul London and Brian Kendrick’s reign as the longest-reigning WWE Tag Team Champions of all-time, The New Day struggled to deliver. They promoted Booty-Os, delivered a couple of cringeworthy “package” jokes, then laboured their way through a pandering crowd interaction segment with “Sonny Boy”, their honorary member for the evening.
Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows came out to mercifully interrupt the tedium and set-up The New Day’s SummerSlam feud, but even The Club’s ambush couldn’t save this segment.
The division continued to struggle later in the show. Having spent most of their evening playing Pokemon Go, The Golden Truth came out during Enzo & Big Cass’s match with The Shining Stars. The Stars were distracted, and Cass sealed the victory in under two minutes.
While the New Day segment was a case of misdirection, the Pokemon angle is exactly the kind of material that WWE need to avoid. If the tag division is to be legitimised, WWE cannot allow one of its most marketable acts (Enzo & Cass) to descend into ridicule, which is exactly what they did here.