Ranking 20 WWE Debuts And Returns In 2019

1. Viking Raiders

CM Punk, WWE Backstage
WWE.com

For a time, it looked like the Viking Raiders were going to be a forgotten team, being remembered more for their stupid repackaging than anything else.

The former NXT Tag Team Champions War Raiders were called up to the main roster after WrestleMania 35 and were immediately renamed The Viking Experience, and Hanson & Rowe were now dubbed Ivar & Erik, respectively. Keep in mind this is while they were still NXT tag champs. The laughable name was tweaked to the more tolerable Viking Raiders the next week, but soon after, they disappeared from WWE TV.

The Viking Raiders resurfaced shortly after and began squashing jobber teams for weeks on end. Then, just when it was reaching annoying levels, the duo captured the Raw Tag Team Championships in October. They’ve only lost a tag match twice, to The OC.

Overall, Viking Raiders have been booked strongly, at the top of the Raw tag division, with a lengthy undefeated streak, and holding gold for nearly three months. This might be the high-water mark for them, but it earns them the top spot for debuting/returning talent in 2019.

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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.