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

In each edition of Gimmick Some Lovin', we take a look at one iteration of a gimmick match available on the WWE Network. Some are iconic for their success, others for the extent to which they flopped, and some just... happened.

We defined a "gimmick match" as, in any way, adding a rule/stipulation to or removing a rule from a match, changing the physical environment of a match, changing the conditions which define a "win", or in any way moving past the simple requirement of two men/women/teams whose contest must end via a single pinfall, submission, count out, or disqualification.

WWE has advertised that, this Monday night on RAW, the famous Hardy Compound will make its triumphant return to professional wrestling glory, alongside Reby Hardy, King Maxel, Vanguard One, and, maybe, the Lake of Restoration (I'm assuming; I've admitted my lack of TNA knowledge before and only know of the Broken Universe from memes and podcasts).

I don't need context to enjoy this, do I?

It's the Hardy insanity the WWE Universe has been clamouring for over the course of nearly 12 months and, while Brother Nero may not be a part of it thanks to a lousy DUI, the return of the Compound is certainly an intriguing story heading into this week's television offering from the Red Brand.

In honour of the return of the Hardy Compound, today we look at the DELIGHTFUL return of the Hardyz themselves, as they crashed the RAW Tag Team Championship Ladder Match at Wrestlemania 33 in Orlando last year.

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.

It's the traditional ladder match rules if anything about this photograph can be called "traditional".

The Rules

The match was billed as a triple threat match contested under traditional ladder match rules: the tag belts would hang above the ring, and the first team to have one member (or both) retrieve the belts atop a ladder would be declared the winner and new tag team champions.

If this moment didn't give you chills, I would love to know what you keep in the spot where your soul should be.

The Match

Okay, so, this match can't be covered without acknowledging the fact that the best part happens before the bell even rings. That's nothing against what any of the eight men involved accomplished that night, but there's something truly magical in the surprise re-debut of Team Xtreme.

The Hardyz' entrance is preceded by Enzo and Cass's first Wrestlemania entrance (sidenote: how odd is it, in the wake of Enzo's allegations and Cass's disappearance is it to hear a stadium sing along to their opening spiel), The Bar's premiere of their matching-jackets-and-kilts tandem entrance (and one of the best uses of the handheld camera ever, as we are positioned behind the European pair to glimpse the Mania crowd and fireworks from the stage), and The Club looking like a surly, sleeveless biker and the head elf from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer if he got really into Black Sabbath.

A promo package highlighting the tag-team chicanery of the previous weeks' RAWs ends with Wrestlemania 33 hosts The New Day (in ring gear) announcing that the match would no longer be a triple threat, and had been upgraded to a Fatal Four Way as they advanced, menacingly, toward the ring; it would make perfect sense, based on the previous autumn's tag team stories and the sensibilities of the three men's characters, that they would be inserting themselves into the contest.

The only Enzo image I'm willing to show, only because his face is all of our faces when that bass line played.

A small "DELETE!" chant would show that the Internet Wrestling Community had its suspicions as to the new additions, but the utter shock that came with 1999's favorite drum-and-bass-line revealed that shock and spectacle still followed the winners of the first tag team ladder match in company history.

The entrances take ten minutes, leaving only 13 for the match itself, and it gets started quick; a dual Poetry in Motion to both members of The Club is followed by a tandem flippy thing maneuver (technical term, of course), then a double suplex to Cass and a Whisper in the Wind to The Bar. At that moment, it seemed the brothers Hardy had returned for the nostalgia pop and their Greatest Hits moves, as the spotlight shifts to the original three teams booked for the contest.

Part of me wants to be frustrated that old-timers are getting the spotlight over superstars building impressive resumes, but the rest of me loves this flippy nonsense.

Cesaro nails an impressive double stomp from Gallows' shoulders onto Anderson, and Sheamus would then fireman's carry Gallows into a rolling senton onto Gallows's partner. A melee, again, ensues, and lots more hardware (or plunder, if you're Dusty Rhodes) comes into the match. Ladders are balanced between the ring and the barricade, then forgotten about, then Sheamus and Cesaro exact revenge for their lost titles with an extremely fun count-along sequence where Cesaro Big Swings Anderson as Sheamus applies dozens of Beats of the Bodhran to Gallows.

The crowd literally loses count. That's how many sledgehammer forearms Gallows takes (and how many revolutions Anderson makes).

Nothing about this match makes linear sense, but all of it is entertaining; a series of fun dives to groups of superstars on the outside (a modern multi-man ladder match staple) lets the ring slowly clear out via finishers depositing men on the outside. Sheamus and Cesaro would end up on those forgotten ladder bridges as The Broken One takes Anderson off the top of the ladder below the championships with a Twist of Fate, allowing the younger Hardy to deliver his trademark Swanton off the top of another ladder, to the delight of all of Orlando.

This, of course, closes out the match, as Matt re-ascends the in-ring ladder to fumblingly grab the titles (WWE must not have had time to let the pair in on their new hanger setup for ladder matches, which takes away a lot of that "undoing the snaps" frustration at the end of these types of contests), the first changing of a tag team title since another Hardyz contest at Wrestlemania X7.

Things don't need to make sense to be great.

My Rating

So far, in our Wrestlemania-centric gimmick match rewinds, we've taken aim at matches that feel less like matches and more like promo segments with moves and a closing bell.

In all honesty, this one is more of the same but, unlike some of those other contests, it really works. WWE breaks its own pattern by making a huge return transpire on its biggest show, rather than the fabled Wrestlemania Monday edition of Monday Night RAW and, from that moment on, all story goes out the window.

As Diamond Dallas Page circa 2002 would say, "That's not a bad thing; that's a good thing!"

The build to this match was nothing special, and multi-team Wrestlemania contests (at least, those not involving Matt, Jeff, Edge, Christian, Bubba Ray, and D-Von) seldom have a build that truly matters. Like the matches with their own namesake pay-per-views (TLC, Hell in a Cell, Elimination Chamber), the Wrestlemania tag team match has stopped being about the match, or about the titles, or about any semblance of a story; it's about cramming as many stars onto a card as possible.

To paraphrase a line Ric Flair used about Wrestlemania X, Matt and Jeff had a match with a ladder, and three other teams just happened to be there.

With all three teams' storyline claims to the red leather and white gold equally flimsy, the addition of a fourth team makes about as much sense as the addition of the ladders; the fact that the fourth team is Matt and Jeff Hardy, though, finally makes the match feel like something special.

Few superstars on the main Wrestlemania card receive the adulation these two brothers receive; only Roman Reigns would get a louder reaction, but that was one which could be generously described as "mixed" (or, more accurately described as "a lot of booing"). All of a sudden, an overstuffed match with meaningless spectacle had an emotional hook; the dullest parts of the match seem to be anything not involving the Hardyz, as they play to very muted reactions (the Sheamus and Cesaro tandem count-along attack on The Club excepted).

Anyone predicting this would happen before Wrestlemania 33 began had to admit that it was mostly wishful thinking.

When the proudest sons of Cameron, North Carolina, come anywhere near a ladder, something special always happens; simply walking through the curtain here, they give legitimacy to a match which fans otherwise assumed would be a pre-show contest wrestled in front of a half-full stadium. Even knowing, 12 months after its first airing, that they would join and win the match, their entrance and victory were still enough to quicken this fan's heartbeat.

It's an easy 7.5/10. Is it a perfect, or even great, match? No, but it's great television, and the true definition of the Wrestlemania Moment WWE seems more intent than ever on manufacturing each year.

Meltzer Says

Dave goes ***3/4 here, which my math skills tell me is identical to my rating; even hardened critics have to be overjoyed fans sometimes, too.

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