Tonight is another PPV in the age of the Pandemic, and I can only imagine what people will think looking back on these shows years from now. This time around it’s WWE Backlash 2020, and tonight, after weeks and weeks of the Street Profits and Viking Raiders competing in any which way they can think of, they finally actually have a Raw Tag Team title match. You can expect the same coverage as any major event gets from the Overtimer, including in-depth previews of each match.
WWE Raw Tag Team Championships: The Street Profits (c) vs. The Viking Raiders
This has… certainly been an angle. I bet most people don’t remember that Bianca Belair actually incited this. When the Street Profits were celebrating with their titles on the Post-Mania Raw backstage, she was the one who brought up that the Profits had never defeated the Viking Raiders and actually suggested that they needed to take their title run more seriously if they wanted it to continue. They uh… haven’t really taken her up on that advice sense, perhaps because she’s vanished since then. (Not at all an uncommon thing in this era, mind you.)
This parlayed into the Profits and Raiders getting into a bizarre feud in which they agreed to a number of challenges to “prove who the better team is”. As you can see from the graphic, it involved basketball, axe-throwing, golf, bowling and a ‘decathlon’ full of various events. In hilarious, extremely WWE-to-a-fault fashion, this went entirely 50/50 with them trading victories every single week with nobody ever managing to put a streak together. The decathlon was theoretically intended to be the blowoff but because they’re both pretty dumb, they set it to have an even number of events and naturally it also ended 5-5.
So instead we needed a new tiebreaker. Something with the same level of grandeur and finality as the decathlon’s flip cup challenge, the dance off, the turkey eating contest and that one event with the inflatable kiddie pool full of milk. And so they came up with a Raw Tag Team Championship match! Yep, after all that, we’re concluding with a regular ‘ol wrestling match. Seems odd really.
If there’s one place where this has succeeded for me, it’s that it was definitively a friendly feud between two babyfaces, something many companies have struggled with nailing the tone of at times, WWE definitely included. I mean mortal enemies probably aren’t going out for a round of golf together. There’s no tension here aside from an innate competitiveness, which is about right. Anyway Profits retain. I think after Backlash they’ll be feuding with MVP and Bobby Lashley.
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