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WrestleMania week is finally in the books and it ended with a real bang! No, I do not mean the tepid 6-man tag team match that closed the show. I mean the amazing headline that we got right before that! Matt and Jeff Hardy are your SmackDown Tag Team Champions, and the landscape of the brand will change for good.
But why did this big title change actually take place? Let me try and explain that in this article. What do you think of the decision to have The Usos drop the title belt?
Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought of the SmackDown after WrestleMania and the week overall. Did you feel that it lived up to your expectations?
In any case, here are my views about the action that transpired on SmackDown Live...
#5 Because The Usos may be moving to RAW soon
Look at this Tweet that came out from The Usos, thanking The Hardy Boyz for competing with them and putting on a great match. This is an indication that The Usos may be headed to RAW very soon indeed, to boost the red brands for the foreseeable future. And this was a very necessary step because the red brand's tag team division needed a boost.
I mean SmackDown Live has been the brand to watch for Tag Team Wrestling since the most recent brand split. On the one hand, you had The New Day and The Usos tearing down the house with historic matches, and then you had teams like The Bar enter the fray. RAW has had a very depleted and underwhelming tag team division, when you compare the two WWE brands.
RAW needs The Usos. And they will probably get The Usos too.
#4 To have them create history
We all know that WWE is pretty big on statistics. Shortly after The Hardy Boyz defeated The Usos to become SmackDown Live Tag Team Champions, the following Tweet came out. One that really proved how great and now durable the act has been, over the years.
And while WWE may certainly be the biggest sports entertainment company in the world, they are certainly not the only one, by a fair margin. In fact, WrestleMania week was full of events from other companies, putting on incredible showings for their fans. So, with that in mind, here is yet another statistic that you should find very interesting indeed.
While I doubt that the latter is a big reason that The Hardy Boyz become Tag Team Champions, the former certainly is and you should expect WWE to bring it up, at every opportunity that they get. The Hardy Boyz were given the titles because, well...they're the Hardy Boyz!
#3 Only real headline coming out of the show
Now, imagine for a minute that you bought tickets to watch the SmackDown after WrestleMania (read results here). Would you not be disappointed at how the event turned out when all was said and done, this week?
I mean you had some superstars from RAW show up and Paige tease a surprise but that was pretty much it, in my opinion. There was literally nothing else that happened through the course of the show that warranted our attention to any great degree.
At least RAW had The Undertaker show up and also had Dean Ambrose bid farewell to the WWE Universe, which was a pretty significant event, I suppose. But SmackDown Live was just a tag team mess with one real headline coming out of the show.
I daresay that The Hardy Boyz stopped the WWE Universe from asking for a refund, because the show was disappointing.
#2 Separate plans for Bray Wyatt
When this vignette was first aired, it was pretty clear who it was about. Bray Wyatt is going to make a return to WWE very soon, and it will be in a brand new avatar. Which means that his run with Matt Hardy has officially come to an end.
In order to properly dissociate the two acts and have them go their separate ways, WWE decided to make the Hardy Boyz champions once again so that there's not even the speculation of an overlap. Maybe Hardy and Wyatt will meet down the line. But for the time being, Matt Hardy is no longer 'woken'.
As entertaining as the oddball pairing was, I am glad that it has come to an end because it was more 'Hardy' than 'Wyatt' if you do get my drift. It's all about the Hardy Boyz in the tag team division going forward!
#1 Jeff Hardy's disappointing singles run
I know that Jeff Hardy's matches with Randy Orton were interesting for the cringe-inducing moments that the two men created. But at the same time, they didn't exactly set the world on fire, until the Hell in a Cell match.
His feud with Samoa Joe, while based on a decent premise, turned out to be a real dud. Hardy did not really become the breakout singles star that WWE thought he would.
And this is why the band was brought back together once again and awarded with the titles. And now that they rule the roost on SmackDown Live, they seem like a big deal once again. Somehow, the 'Woken' run did not pan out well for Matt Hardy either, quite honestly.
I daresay that, all said and done, The Hardy Boyz are not a nostalgia act. They put on a great match with The Usos and proved they can hang with the current generation. Congrats to them.
