What's next for The Prime Time Players in WWE?
The Prime Time players
In the last few weeks,The 6′ foot 6, 270 pound titan, known to the WWE Universe as Titus O’Neil, has begun to create quite a bit of buzz around himself . The former Florida Gator made waves in the WWE, after turning on his longtime tag team partner, Darren Young, following a losing effort to team Rybaxel on Smackdown two weeks ago.
Now with O’Neil’s heel turn complete, and his rivalry match with Darren Young scheduled for The Elimination Pay Per view. The only question left to ask is, What does this all really mean for either superstar?
During their two year tenure as a tag team, The Prime Time Players were little more then a comedy act relegated to the mid-card for squash matches. The only reputable accomplishment to their credit, was winning a Number One Contender’s Tag Team Turmoil match during The Night of Champions preshow for a chance to face The Shield later in the evening.
The only other highlight of The Prime Time Players run as a tag team, was the brief push the supers stars received when Darren Young came out about his real life sexuality during an interview on August 30th 2013.
It seems like The WWE has made a mistake by breaking these two superstars up. Once the feud is over between these former tag team partners, where are both of their careers supposed to go? Neither wrestler posses much marketability or skill on the microphone to carry them into the main event scene.
Although Titus O’Neil is a magnificent in ring performer, with a ride array of punishing maneuvers, his promos as a heel seem so forced and artificial, ultimately yielding little to no reaction from fans.
Darren Young faces much of the same problem. He has an amazing Dolph Ziggler like charisma in the ring, but just doesn’t seem to have the right tools or look to ever get a WWE World Title match. The 34 year old New Jersey natives only accomplishment in his span with WWE, is a “Slammy” award for debuting with Nexus back in 2010.
Ultimately, by breaking these two superstars up, The WWE is not solving the problem of the failing mid-card booking. Now instead of creating an interesting storyline to occupy the beginning or middle of the show, they just have a feud that will go on for a month and lead to nothing for either talent.
O”Neil may have a few short runs in lower card feuds after his match with Darren Young is done with at Elimination Chamber, but unfortunately, the break up was a waste of time that will eventually end up in both superstars going off TV, and working house shows.
If the company wants these breakups to work, they need to invest more time and factors into the feud. Having O’Neil ditch his partner because of a losing record seems like a horrible idea for a breakup storyline. Especially since no one cared that much about The Prime Time Players anyway. The only reason they got the reaction during their split was shock value only. It had nothing to do with either talent being popular or overly loved by fans.
to make these kind of storylines work. It needs more to it. whether its having the two fight over a girls affection, having one of them turn on the other and join another team, or just have them fight over a title, it would do a lot more to make it interesting, then to just have them split over a losing record.
In the end, The WWE Universe will have to wait and see what becomes of these two as singles competitors. Maybe Titus Will go on to feud with some of the bigger names of the company, like Mark Henry or even John Cena. Unfortunately, with a lack of appeal and less then amazing promo cutting skills, like his former partner, he will always be a lower to mid-carder in the company.