6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (Results & Review - 15 Jan)

3. Sucking Them In With Tag Wrestling

DIY Judgment Day
WWE.com

Johnny Gargano and Tomasso Ciampa’s reunion as #DIY has been less spectacular than they would have liked, with muted reactions from fans who are likely unfamiliar with their work in NXT and haven’t been given a reason to rally behind them in WWE.

Monday night, they figured out a crazy concept: Let #DIY have an old-fashioned tag team match against Judgment Day’s heat machines Dominik Mysterio and JD McDonagh. They used every little trick: false tags, blind tags, double teams, pulling Ciampa off the apron to avert a tag, and of course a rapid-fire barrage of kicks, clotheslines and signature spots.

Fans rallied behind #DIY and gave a hearty “This is awesome” chant to a match featuring Dominik Mysterio. That’s how you know the formula worked. And of course, Ciampa and Gargano met in the middle and beat the Judgment Day B-Team.

Whether this will translate beyond this week and to other arenas remains to be seen, but kudos to them figuring out how to use the basics to get a desired reaction for the babyface team.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.