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The 2019 WWE Superstar Shake-Up has only featured one tag team splitting up so far, with SAnitY leader Eric Young moving to Raw by himself while Killian Dain and Alexander Wolfe remain on SmackDown Live.
The rest of the new Raw recruits are as follows: AJ Styles, The Miz, Ricochet, Aleister Black, Erik (Rowe), Ivar (Hanson), Andrade, Zelina Vega, Rey Mysterio, Lars Sullivan, Jimmy Uso, Jey Uso, Naomi, EC3, Lacey Evans, Eric Young, Cedric Alexander.
It is uncertain what the future holds for Young as a singles competitor on the Raw roster, while only time will tell if Dain and Wolfe will keep the SAnitY tag team going on SmackDown Live.
Nikki Cross’ future is also up in the air. The fourth member of SAnitY, who is also Dain’s wife in real life, has appeared on both Raw and SmackDown Live since joining the main roster from NXT in late 2018. She did not appear on Monday’s Raw, which presumably means she will join SmackDown permanently, but it is not known if she will reunite with Dain and Wolfe.
In this article, let’s take a look at four theories why WWE decided to split up the former NXT Tag Team champions.
#4 Better as singles Superstars?
Until Killian Dain and/or Alexander Wolfe appears on SmackDown Live, nobody will know exactly what plans WWE has for the two remaining SAnitY members.
The only extra piece of information that has emerged since Raw is the following tweet from Dain, which seems to suggest that every member of the group will go their separate ways:
Dain was previously given a short run as a singles competitor towards the end of his time in NXT in early 2018, while he also took part in the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania 33 in 2017.
Perhaps WWE has decided to let the trio split up in order to try them all out as singles Superstars instead.
#3 Losses damaged their credibility
Following two months of build-up and vignettes, SAnitY finally competed in their first main-roster match as a trio when they faced The Usos and Jeff Hardy in a six-man tag match on SmackDown Live in June 2018.
The new recruits were surprisingly defeated by the makeshift trio and they only went on to win just two matches together over the next 10 months, with their only 3-on-3 victory coming at Extreme Rules 2018 when they defeated The New Day in a tables match on the kickoff show. Their only other win took place in a 10-on-10 match at Survivor Series, but they were eliminated before the end.
In amongst those rare victories were long spells of not being featured on television, as well as sporadic losses against the likes of The Usos, The Club and The New Day, while all three men were defeated by The Miz in a handicap match recently.
Simply put, one of the most dominant factions in NXT history turned out to be just another weak main-roster tag team, so perhaps WWE decided that their loss in credibility over the last year was going to be too difficult to rectify if they kept the trio together.
#2 Too many teams in WWE
The WWE roster is stacked with tag teams right now. Monday’s episode of Raw saw Aleister Black & Ricochet, The Usos and War Raiders (now known as The Viking Experience) join the Raw tag division, adding to the following teams that are already on the red brand: Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder, The Revival, Chad Gable & Bobby Roode, The Ascension, The Fashion Police, AOP, The B-Team, Lucha House Party and The Singh Brothers.
Over on SmackDown Live, The Hardy Boyz are the current Tag Team champions, while The New Day, The Bar, The Club, Rusev & Shinsuke Nakamura and The Colons are likely to be joined by two or three Raw tag teams when the Superstar Shake-Up continues on Tuesday’s episode.
Needless to say, even with two sets of Tag Team titles, there are far too many tag teams on the main roster, so it is no surprise that established teams like SAnitY and The Club were hardly given any opportunities in the last year.
Perhaps WWE decided to cut the number of tag teams in an attempt to create more singles Superstars, and they figured that SAnitY was dispensable.
#1 Lack of creative ideas
Looking back at SAnitY’s year on the main roster, what have they actually done? Following successive defeats in their first two weeks on SmackDown Live, they joined forces to defeat The New Day in a tables match, while Eric Young was victorious in a singles match against Kofi Kingston.
From there, they lost matches against The New Day and Aiden English & Rusev within their first three months of debuting, and then they were completely forgotten about for the next seven months.
Between September 2018 and April 2019, the following matches took place: 10-on-10 Survivor Series win (November 2018), 4-on-4 SmackDown Live loss (December 2018), Ricochet def. Eric Young (February 2019), The Miz def. SAnitY (April 2019).
If that is not a match record that reads “creative has nothing for you”, what is?
At this point, it is clear that SAnitY are not going to be taken seriously as a trio on the main roster, so perhaps WWE broke them up for the simple reason that there is nothing to lose by letting a forgotten team go their separate ways.
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