9 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (April 25)
7. An Effective Tag Team Build
Not every segment involving PPV hype has to be a knock-down, drag-out battle. And not every PPV hype comes in the form of a distraction rollup, or a contract signing that ends in a fight. Sometimes, the simplest hype can be perfectly effective, and thats what we got Monday night for the WWE Tag Team Championships #1 contenders match.
Tag champs New Day came out to hype the finals of the eight-team tag tournament to crown a new #1 contender (sponsored by Booty-Os), which drew out the Vaudevillains. In a cute twist, Xavier Woods referenced the recently deceased Prince, saying the winners would party like its 1999. Aiden English corrected him, noting that the old-timey grapplers would celebrate like its 1899 when they won. (English also sang his way to ringside, which was a nice throwback to his former character.) He and Simon Gotch said they would bring the values and standards of that bygone era back to WWE.
Then Enzo Amore & Colin Cassady came to ringside and ran down their opponents with their usual, catchy shtick. (Granted, it was short, but Enzo & Cass have had ample time on the mic since debuting.) New Day put the punctuation on the segment by noting that whomever won Sunday would just lose to the tag champs because they rock.
So simple. And yet, it got across a simple feud to win the tag titles. What an uncanny idea.