WWE News: What happened Before SmackDown Live went on the air? February 22nd, 2017
What’s the Story?
Before SmackDown kicked off, Heath Slater and Rhyno joined forces with Mojo Rawley and defeated the team of Konnor and Viktor of The Ascension, who were accompanied by Aiden English as well.
This match is part of a series of matches that have been taking place on the WWE Live: Road to WrestleMania Tour this weekend, the matches also happened during Monday Night Raw yesterday.
In case you didn’t know...
While The Ascension did have a match against the SmackDown Tag Team Champions, Chad Gable and Jason Jordan of American Alpha last week, Heath Slater and Rhyno haven’t been seen on WWE programming in a singles contest since their match at the SmackDown exclusive pay-per-view, Elimination Chamber.
Heath Slater and Rhyno carried the Tag Team Division of SmackDown with their odd pairing storyline that the fans had become enamoured with. However, they have seen a significant decline in their status since they lost the championships to The Wyatt Family.
On the other hand, The Ascension have been booked poorly since mid-2015 when they were so low on the totem pole that they teamed up with Stardust as the Cosmic Wasteland.
The Heart of the Matter
Heath Slater and Rhyno teamed up with Mojo Rawley to take on the team of the Ascension with Aiden English. The match saw Slater, Rhyno and Rawley make quick work of their opposition and they ended up coming away with the win.
This was a dark match, in a series of dark matches that are taking place before and after shows to hype up Wrestlemania 33.
What’s next?
American Alpha have dominated every team in the tag team division since their recent title defence at Elimination Chamber. If they win their feud with The Usos, they will have no fresh opponents left for WrestleMania.
In some ways, this can be viewed as a good thing because it means that the WWE is giving them a strong push. On the other hand, this one-sided push has killed teams like Slater-Rhyno while The Ascension seem to be no better or worse than they have been in the past two years.
Sportskeeda’s Take
Hopefully, the SmackDown Creative Team manages to make Slater and Rhyno look better as well as give them some more TV time because they were viewed by many fans as one of the more entertaining tag teams on the roster.
As for The Ascension, the best thing for them would probably be to go back to NXT and bolster that tag team division, because at least there they have a chance.
Tweet Speak:
Here are some of the tweets fans made about the match:
1st match #WWESanDiego Heath Slater, Rhyno, Mojo Rawley vs Ascension & Aiden English pic.twitter.com/HfAP6B8yrK
— SoCal UNCENSORED (@socaluncensored) February 21, 2017
Watching @HeathSlaterOMRB and @Rhyno313 possiby my favorite part of #wwesaskatoon pic.twitter.com/xzmwtpI1TJ
— Dustin Pilon (@dpylon) February 21, 2017
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