Gimmick Some (Wrestlemania) Lovin': The Extreme Return Edition

Pictured: Too Little, and his partner, Too Late.

The Build

Wrestlemania 33's lone tag team title match (the recently-established Smackdown Live! Tag Team Championships being absent from both the main card and the preshow) could be said to have a story leading into it but, really, it's much of the same multi-team tag match story WWE uses to cram as many performers onto the Grandest Stage as it can.

Heading into 2017, the highly-improbable team of Sheamus and Cesaro (still in their Odd Couple phase and still without their moniker The Bar) were the defending RAW Tag Team Champions, having ended The New Day's record-setting 483-day reign as tag team champions at Roadblock: End of the Line.

The win gave the oil-and-water duo much to celebrate. In addition to being their first championship as a team, a title change also gave RAW General Manager Mick Foley cause to debut new tag team championships exclusive to the Red Brand (and allowed WWE to sell more top dollar merch further diversify and enrich their two separate brands).

The win would be short-lived, however, as the Swiss Cyborg and the Celtic Warrior lost their first pay-per-view (well, pay-per-view preshow) defence of the shiny new belts to 2016's most anticipated (and, then, most underwhelming) tag team debut, The Bullet Club. Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson jumped from New Japan Pro Wrestling to WWE in the spring of 2016 in an "are they or aren't they" storyline relationship with fellow former NJPW standout AJ Styles.

The connection between the team and The Phenomenal One would be teased throughout the spring, before becoming official in the summer during Styles' heel turn and feud with John Cena. The trio would be short-lived, as Styles would go to Tuesday nights in the reboot of the WWE brand split, while his Good Brothers would remain on Mondays and languish in a poorly-executed feud with The New Day featuring intimate male injuries, pickled reproductive organs, and the longest, most excruciatingly unfunny parody segment known to man, The Old Day.

Fun fact: I was in attendance for this monstrosity!

When Gallows and Anderson finally accomplished golden glory on the Rumble pre-show, it accompanied a feeling of "too little, too late," with the heat they brought with them to WWE having dissipated throughout their uneventful 2016. Getting the titles did little to raise their profile, and the months between the Rumble and Wrestlemania, as they often are, became less about telling a meaningful tag team story and more about setting up that year's multifaceted tag match for the belts.

At one point, they were a novelty but, since 2000, most Tag Team Championship matches have resembled this one than a two-on-two affair.

Enzo Amore and Big Cass would be added to the fray as a result of their meddling in The (eventual) Bar's rematch for the belts; the trashy New Jerseyites' interference in that match resulted in Sheamus and Cesaro interfering in a Fastlane tag team championship match, which itself necessitated a Number One Contenders' match pitting Sheamus and Cesaro against Enzo and Cass. The Club, of course, would interfere there, causing a double disqualification, and making Wrestlemania's championship contest a triple threat match.

In short, Wrestlemania season tag team things happen, and, apropos of nothing, ladders were introduced to the feud on the go-home edition of RAW; conspiracy theories flew from all corners of the internet, with fans everywhere speculating about why WWE would introduce ladders to the contest so close to Wrestlemania.

The Hardyz, for their part, would sell the surprise the best they could by losing the Ring of Honor Tag Team Championships in a completely separate ladder match less than 24 hours before their Wrestlemania 33 contest.