Last year's ever-exciting post-WrestleMania edition of Raw marked the main roster debuts of Enzo Amore and Big Cass, who had been fixtures on NXT for several years.
Despite never once winning the tag team championships while they were down in developmental, they were widely considered as one of the most entertaining acts in the history of the promotion.
Their arrival on Raw signalled big things for the future of the depleted tag team division, especially after their alliance with John Cena that led to them scoring a huge victory against The Club at Battleground 2016.
Unfortunately, they have fallen far since the summer and have not been the biggest beneficiaries of the Brand Split. Granted, they'll be contending for the Raw Tag Team Championships at Fastlane next Sunday, but these are the five reasons the duo has lost its lustre in WWE.
#5 Unresolved rivalry with The Shining Stars
At the peak of their popularity last summer, Enzo Amore and Big Cass were involved in an entertaining angle with Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho heading into SummerSlam. Their loss at the event in their backyard of Brooklyn didn't greatly hinder their momentum, but the fact they never got their win back definitely did.
The short-lived feud was obviously designed to get the four guys onto the card and was not meant to last longer than it did. While Owens and Jericho moved on to bigger and better things, Enzo and Cass moved into a random rivalry with The Shining Stars.
Also read: WWE News: Big Cass talks what it'd be like to win the WWE RAW Tag Team Titles
The Shining Stars were destined to fail from the moment they re-debuted on Raw, and working with (and subsequently beating) Enzo and Cass didn't do anything to change fans' perception of them.
In fact, it merely dragged down the NXT graduates, and after losing to The Shining Stars on an episode of Raw, the feud was abruptly cut short coming out of Clash of Champions.
#4 Lack of direction
This aforementioned lack of direction is certainly among the biggest criticisms of Enzo Amore and Big Cass at the moment. They have transitioned from feud to feud over the past six months without any sense of motivation as characters.
For example, shouldn't they have made it known from the get-go that they had their sights set on winning the Raw Tag Team Championship? Sure, they'll be going for the gold at Fastlane next weekend, but only after months of losing countless matches, and thus it's difficult for the fans to take them seriously.
Cesaro and Sheamus may not be as cohesive of a unit as Enzo and Cass, but at least their story has been told properly that they are former foes turned friends, leading to them taking the titles together late last year.
With Enzo and Cass, they just so happened to stumble upon a shot at the straps, a mere microcosm of how sad of a state Raw's tag team division is in at the moment.
#3 Repetitive promos
Possibly outside of their series of matches with The Revival, Enzo Amore and Big Cass were never known for their incredible in-ring ability in NXT. Cass is a decent wrestler while Amore is downright deplorable, but it was their crazy charisma and more specifically their unbelievable mic skills that got them over with the audience.
In a way, they were/are virtually this generation's New Age Outlaws with how they could captivate a crowd simply with what they said. Enzo was always coming up with original material down in NXT, but in recent months, most of the promos he and Cass have cut have fallen flat with the fans.
I'm not sure if the writers are to blame for giving them awful lines or if they're just in a creative rut right now, but their last few promos have been borderline terrible, talking about fried chicken, hot chocolate and a slew of other random nonsense.
It's time for them to switch up their shtick, or risk becoming stale, which they arguably already are.
#2 Constantly coming off as bullies
WWE has had trouble making their babyfaces likeable in recent years, most notably Roman Reigns. Enzo Amore and Big Cass seem to suffer from the same problem, as very little about their current characters endear them to the audience.
Their atrocious feud with Rusev will be discussed in more detail momentarily, but throughout the entire angle, Enzo and Cass constantly came off as bullies. Even just recently, they looked like heels going up against Cesaro and Sheamus, by being annoying and shoving their victory in their opponents’ faces.
This criticism dates back even further than that, though, as Enzo was implying in his promos many months ago that Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens were romantically linked. This is drastically different from the underdogs that they were portrayed as in NXT, and a heel turn might be inevitable.
#1 Failed feud with Rusev
One night removed from the Survivor Series pay-per-view, Rusev picked a fight with Enzo Amore after Enzo walked up to Lana backstage, sans clothes. That silly segment kicked off one of the most asinine storylines that WWE has produced in recent years.
In the weeks that followed, Enzo had his sights set on winning over Lana, going so far as to almost committing adultery in a hotel room with her and showing zero signs of regret. Rusev came across as the heroic husband in all of this, so Enzo and Big Cass were miscast as slimy sleazeballs from the get-go.
Virtually all of the matches Enzo and Cass had with Rusev were a waste of time, and once Jinder Mahal got involved, the feud took a turn for the worse.
Granted, the feud lasted only two months, but it didn't feel like it would ever end, doing much more damage to Enzo and Cass than good.
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