THIS Is The Top Heel In Wrestling Today

Page listened to FTR, during the August 27 Gauntlet match, by holding the leg of Nick Jackson before he could complete the Meltzer Driver. The Bucks got rolled up, and FTR went on to All Out - but not before destroying Hangman's confidence on the go-home Dynamite. Hangman, already distraught by his own actions, was called a "piece of sh*t". Omega, always more friendly with the Bucks than Page, lost his patience at last. Page's friendship with FTR had already driven him to beat the sh*t out of Marko Stunt and reveal a glimpse of the Cleaner within.

In a moment loaded with pathos, Page handed the title to Omega. But Omega wasn't there. The Top Guys, the top heels, had successfully cut the ring in half. Omega had referred to FTR as "d*ckhead hillbillies" earlier in the segment. Page was born in neighbouring state Virginia. Omega had shown himself to only care about Page in the professional sense - because it benefitted him professionally - and the team was all but done, with precision timing, just before the pay-per-view. In a great and underrated match, in which Page wore the long tights in a visual plea of atonement, he was drawn by FTR into making one definitive mistake. He smashed Omega with the Buckshot, and FTR ultimately took advantage.

One might even consider this the greatest tag team character arc of all time. It's so perfectly in-character.

FTR's in-ring strategy is divide and conquer. That's the lost art they have spent a career in a bid to revive. The genius of FTR's AEW arc is that the booking has applied this strategy well beyond the ring. They cut a team and a stable in half. They're still the Shatter Machine, even if they can no longer use the name.

That they did all of this, over a campaign lasting months, to put over the sheer prestige of the AEW World Tag Team Championships and their former holders.

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