This was for The New Day’s WWE Raw Tag Team Titles.
I don’t often praise a lot of 2015-2016 New Day matches on this blog because, save for a stunt show, they’re not usually that good. It’s a babyface act through and through and I always got the sense that they never quite knew how to put together interesting matches as heels. When one compares the amount of good to great matches that they had as villains to the amount they had from their late 2016 face turn onwards, I don’t think this is especially controversial either.
This match is something of a turning point.
Partially, that’s because it is mechanically and structurally the best match they’ve had, and it’s that by a hundred thousand miles.
It has far more in common with the years of better babyface New Day matches to follow than anything before it. The pacing is pristine, there’s absolutely no wasted motion, and above all, there is SUCH a confidence to it. They’re throwing out huge nearfalls in the middle, big spots really early on, and amid so many other formulaic WWE tag team matches, it’s exactly the sort of thing that has a way of feeling not only markedly different, but so much more important as a result. It’s a sort of match that by nature of its surefootedness and the lack of flaws throughout the thing only drawing further attention to that correct confidence, feels like that much more of an accomplishment.
The other part of the thing is that it is one of those occasional WWE main roster booking masterpieces.
Of course, we are all smart enough to not pretend as though any of this is some grand design going back a year and change, or even going back a month and change. It is likely more the result of people in the match or in smaller roles somewhere than any one unifying vision.
However, it still rocks.
Constantly in this match, there is a story told is about New Day leaning on their speed advantage and the teamwork (which allowed them to not only get past everyone for the last sixteen months, but also past Cesaro and Sheamus in their previous challenges), but also on the third man outside in Xavier Woods. This is also about Cesaro, and to a lesser extent Sheamus, having finally figured the system out. In a year where one of real sports’ most crushing and impactful results came as a result of a generational talent figuring out an incredibly fun motion system, there’s something that feels even more real about this when Cesaro and Sheamus repeatedly either survive or cut it off here.
The ending is especially masterful, and the real stroke of genius here. After a real hot back and forth nearfall run, Cesaro fakes on tagging in, only to come in anyways. Kofi catches him, only for still-legal-man Sheamus to dive over the cover and pull Kofi Kingston into a cradle for the win. It’s the perfect finish, not only turning a New Day trick against them, but allowing Cesaro this year and a half plus overdue payoff to the way The New Day first won the titles, a fake tag twin switch over the Cesaro and Tyson Kidd team, way back when. A charming piece of revenge, and in a rarity for the WWE, recently turned babyfaces having to pay the consequences for the shit that they pulled back on the other side of the aisle.
As with any great and smart long-term payoff in the WWE, it is never really mentioned at all and you have to chalk it up to the talents involved for putting something this cool and rewarding together. Likewise, as with any of that, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still also a really cool and rewarding thing that got put together, on top of an enormously fun match to boot.
HANDWERK 