3 Reasons We’re Struggling To Care About New Day’s Title Record

 

Did you know The New Day is on the precipice of breaking the record for longest reign as World Tag Team champions? If you’ve watched wrestling for even a millisecond in the past couple of weeks, you assuredly do. The WWE has been making a huge deal out of it, and it all comes to a head Monday on RAW. If The New Day emerge from Monday’s event still champions, and all signs point to that being the case, they will pass Demolition’s current record of 478 days as tag team champs. The WWE would like you to feel this is momentous and noteworthy, but it’s actually a perfect microcosm of WWE’s weird relationship to both tag team wrestling and the company’s past.

For starters, the very idea of celebrating a record in professional wrestling is somewhat odd, since it’s all scripted. The New Day is not on the verge of being record holders because of their inherent skills and their hard work, but because that’s how things have been written. It’s like celebrating Inspector Gadget for setting a record for besting Dr. Claw. However, since WWE operates within the universe of their shows as if though everything is legitimate, they can be somewhat forgiven for all the hullaballoo. There remain other reasons for not really caring about this.

httpss://youtube.com/watch?v=xH9YFf6S5v8

WWE doesn’t really seem to care about tag teams. That’s not to say they don’t care about tag team matches. It’s just that the concept of a “tag team” seems largely meaningless to them. Take, for example, the situation over at Smackdown. They have several tag teams that are dedicated solely to being tag teams (American Alpha, The Usos, etc.) So who became their inaugural tag team champions? Rhyno and Heath Slater, a team thrown together to put a button on the storyline of Slater’s quest to getting a contract. Who beat them for the title? Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton, who are a new, and likely short-lived, tag team made by smashing two traditionally singles wrestlers together. Meanwhile, over at RAW, it seems destined that Sheamus and Cesaro, another team that is barely a team, will be the ones to finally take the title off The New Day. Oh, and The New Day is a tag team that consists of three members, by the way. Sure, they aren’t the first, but it always feels like a bastardization of tag team wrestling, especially for a team on the cusp of being record holders.

There’s also this ugly little button to the story. The men behind Demolition, the erstwhile Ax and Smash, are part of a class action lawsuit against the WWE related to head injuries. As such, there is an undercurrent, rumor though it might be, that part of the reason New Day is going to be made the new record holders is so that Demolition won’t have the record anymore. They are, in essence, dead to the WWE for having the temerity to sue the company. This would be exceedingly difficult to prove, but it wouldn’t be the first time Vince McMahon had been accused of being petty.

So when New Day ensure they will break the record on RAW (and it would be truly surprising if they don’t), the WWE will view it as a remarkable moment. Others, though, will be left with an unenthused, perhaps even apathetic, feeling. That won’t go away when Sheamus and Cesaro take the title, either. Wake us up when an actual tag team holds a tag team championship.