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What's the story?
Despite their rather promising start on WWE Smackdown Live earlier this year it appears as though the WWE has given up on the idea of pushing Mike and Maria Kanellis.
Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer gave a huge indication that the pair's future was in doubt, along with several other members of the Tuesday night roster, following Summerslam.
In case you didn't know...
Maria and Mike Kanellis made a return to WWE as part of the Smackdown Live roster in June 2017. Maria originally joined the company back in 2004 as part of the Diva Search and enjoyed middling success during a time in which women's wrestling wasn't a major priority for the McMahons.
Mike Kanellis, better known to ROH and TNA fans as Mike Bennett is a former TNA X-Division Champion as well as a former IWGP Tag Team Champion over in Japan. The pair has been married since October 2014.
The heart of the matter
Mike and Maria were brought into the Smackdown Live roster as a way to fill out the mid-card division following a 2017 Superstar Shake-up. With top talents like Dean Ambrose and The Miz going over to RAW, Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan needed some new faces to solidify the roster.
Dave Meltzer in the Observer Radio mailbag revealed that WWE has already seemed to have given up on the couple, thus their push has been cancelled.
Their somewhat obnoxious 'power of love' angle seemed to be getting the couple over as heels. In a time in which being an all-out heel is a lot harder said than done, the Kanellis' really seemed to have zoned into something potentially money making. For one reason or another, however, their future now does not look so bright.
What's next?
Meltzer admitted that he didn't know why they had not been seen or why they were no longer courting Vince's favour. Perhaps this means that no final decision has been made and we will be seeing them back in prominent roles soon.
However, with the changes to the Smackdown Live roster being enacted after a lacklustre display from the show at Summerslam, there may no longer be time for the married couple to redeem themselves.
Author's take
There does appear to be some resentment towards the pair for not going through the NXT division before making their debuts on the main roster. This feels like a reasonable accusation considering the likes of Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly are having to prove themselves first before competing on the main stage.
However, it is never a good thing to see two promising superstars like the Kanellis's dropped after such initial promise. There were certainly some decent looking match prospects involving Mike in particular and it would be a shame not to be able to see them develop.
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