Motor City Machine Guns' title win needs to spark WWE change

How the Motor City Machine Guns won their first WWE Tag Team championships shows everything amiss with how the division is being presented, along with hope for change.

Maybe I was the only one, but industry veterans and trendsetters Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin scoring long-awaited WWE gold after just three matches in the company felt assured the minute the title-holding Bloodline came out to address them on SmackDown from Barclays Center last week.

The combination of Jey Uso needing to get payback on Solo Sikoa’s Bloodline for costing him the Intercontinental championship on Raw and the MCMG beating DIY to become No. 1 contenders so quickly assured this path.

What followed next, however, can be seen as polarizing.

You could make the case it elevated the Motor City Machine Guns and the tag team division by using the Bloodline story to put a greater spotlight on their win. You could also make the case it hot-shotted a moment that would have been more meaningful with more storytelling.

The victory was instead overshadowed by the Bloodline and the more important hug between Jimmy and Jey Uso that ended the show after the Motor City Machine Guns’ victory pyro went off. Much like The Judgment Day holding the World Tag Team championships on Raw, the tag team divisions are just a subplot to a greater WWE story instead of feeling like its own separate entity with its own narratives.

At a minimum, WWE cleared all championships away from the Bloodline story before the Survivor Series.

What we got was the Motor City Machine Guns, who had waited their entire career — after debuting together in 2006 — to get into WWE became tag team champions, defeating Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa with help from Roman Reigns and the Usos. It ended their reign at just 84 days and one successful defense after they stopped DIY after 28 days and one successful defense.

I get it. You’re trying to make a splash in Brooklyn, but it just feels like a chance to tell a greater story for the MCMG and get the audience truly invested and connected with them was missed.

Corey Graves provided tremendous real-life anecdotes about his decades-long friendship with Shelley, who used to sleep on his floor. Shelley and Johnny Gargano are also close friends and have a long history.

Why was this not made a bigger deal outside of Graves’ commentary during the match and a few social media posts by Gargano and Shelley? Instead of WWE relying on the pure excitement of getting an impromptu championship match, allowing a little time to let the Motor City Machine Guns’ quest for gold and room to breathe may have been more beneficial in the long run as it’s a great story to tell.

The win also continued the tag team division being stuck in television main event slots – which is not bad real estate – and not Premium Live Events where they have rarely been defended.

Maybe things change now. Maybe how the Motor City Machine Guns winning the championships was the last sacrifice the division needed to make to start being presented with more weight and more meaningful creative.

How quickly WWE put the belts on them indicated how much they value them. Here’s hoping they continue to show it.

Halloween Havoc was another solid NXT show with two clear big winners in new North American women’s champion Fallon Henry and Ridge Holland, whose character feels refreshed and is now thrust into the NXT championship picture with Trick Williams and a potential tag team match that includes Bubba Ray Dudley at the ECW Arena

The only booking decision that surprised me was the babyfaces in Tony D’Angelo and the family turning the North American championship match basically into a 4‐1 handicap match to beat Oba Femi. Femi’s previous attack on The Family I guess gave them a reason to retaliate and to not have the powerhouse Femi lose clean twice to D’Angelo, but there has got to be a less blatant way to tell that story even in a street fight.