Welcome to another edition of WWE Heat Index, where one of the biggest stories from the past week is examined under a microscope and picked apart for analytical purposes.
This week, the mystery of who has been attacking Enzo Amore and Big Cass was solved and the culprit turned out to be a real estate agent in a ghost costume. Wait, never mind, that was the old Scooby Doo shtick. This is WWE, so, of course, it turned out to be Big Cass the whole time.
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There were plenty of red herrings along the way, but if you’ve been a fan of professional wrestling long enough, you saw this one coming from a mile away.
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While the heel turn itself was predictable, it’s the future of where the storyline goes from here that is somewhat up in the air—probably even as far as behind the scenes, too.
It’s unlikely that WWE’s creative team has mapped out a game plan for both Big Cass and Enzo Amore to lead them through several feuds and into next year’s WrestleMania like they do with some of the bigger talent, and we may very well be in for some rough times rather than a career surge for both men.
This sounds like pessimism, and in some ways, it is, but it’s more so just another byproduct of having watched the company operate for a few decades.
Very often, a tag team will split up and WWE doesn’t have enough plans in motion for the two wrestlers, so within the span of a month or two, both of them are either not showing up on television or they’re jobbing because there’s “nothing for them at the moment.”
This doesn’t help them in their careers. It only hurts them. In the long run, we end up looking back and wishing they hadn’t split to begin with, because nothing positive came out of it.
However, if we try to remain on the optimistic spectrum, there are a handful of options WWE can take Enzo and Cass for the future -- one particular plan for Enzo in particular which has been doing the rounds in the rumor mills.
Just like when a regular relationship breaks up, there needs to be a division of assets. In the case of professional wrestling tag teams, this is normally the remnants of the tag team gimmick: merchandise, catch phrases, music and so forth.
When it comes to the leftovers, all of these should go to Enzo Amore. Not only is he the one that spearheaded the vast majority of the slogans and the style that made the tag team what it was, he’s also the one that needs to be able to piggyback off the loss by retaining something in the split.
It sounds like a sad pittance in exchange for being booked as the Marty Jannetty of the two, but it couldn’t happen any other way. He’s the babyface and the gimmick applies solely to getting a positive reaction from the crowd.
Big Cass, on the other hand, has to reinvent himself as a heel now. This means stripping him of the S-A-W-F-T promos, getting him some new gear (as using the same attire will make it feel less like he’s moved on) and allowing him to flex his muscles as a villain.
Before they both move on to other things, they need to lock horns. At least one match has to take place between the two of them so we can not only get some closure, but Big Cass can be emphasised as having a newfound mean streak in him.
Enzo will have to take a fall, if not several. He’s been a punching bag for a long while, so this shouldn’t be anything groundbreaking, but WWE has to resist the urge to have Enzo score a cheap fluke victory over Cass unless they want this feud to last for a few months.
If it’s going to be a rather short one, as recent rumours have suggested, Cass needs to emphatically decimate his former tag team partner to make a statement that he’s truly been held back and everyone else in the locker room has to be put on notice.
Then, of course, WWE needs to make sure they don’t just skip over finding new feuds for both men. That will be the death knell for them, as that problem has plagued tag team splits for years.
What is concerning is the timing that this is all going down, as it feels like Raw is getting cramped.
Great Balls of Fire has a ton of matches already being hinted at. We know Brock Lesnar will face Samoa Joe, Roman Reigns will fight Braun Strowman, it’s likely we’ll have a tag title match, a women’s title match, Akira Tozawa vs. Neville, The Miz vs. Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins vs. Bray Wyatt, Finn Balor vs. Elias Samson and maybe even Goldust vs. R-Truth.
That is already nine matches, which would fill up the normal time frame of the card. Adding a tenth match with Enzo vs. Cass wouldn’t be unheard of, but it might cut into the amount of time allotted to the lineup.
Then, we start gearing up to SummerSlam, which is going to be even more packed since it has just two extra hours to make room for everybody on the SmackDown roster as well.
It’s unlikely Cass and Enzo would get a match at SummerSlam—even on the kickoff. At that point, their feud either exists solely on Monday Night Raw and doesn’t feel important enough to get on the card, or WWE puts a pin in it and hopes to pick it back up in September.
Dragging it out that long could be difficult without a pay-per-view match to give it credibility, particularly since it should be a one-sided affair.
What needs to happen is that Big Cass has to destroy Enzo at Great Balls of Fire and subsequently move on to a feud with Big Show where he picks a fight with the biggest kid on the playground, essentially, to make a statement. There’s more of a chance that Cass vs. Show gets on the SummerSlam card than Cass vs. Enzo.
The Battle of the Bigs is one thing, but where does that leave Enzo? It’s unlikely he’d get a new tag team partner, but it’s a possibility, with Darren Young being really the only one available to fill that role, possibly as a throwback to his former party boy gimmick from NXT.
A better fit, perhaps, would be to utilise Enzo as a member of the 205 Live squad by placing him in the cruiserweight division, something that has been rumoured according to WON.
He suits the weight limit, being billed at 200 lbs, and he could bring a lot of vivacity to an otherwise stagnant program. Enzo is a lively character with a strong fan base. Putting him in a division that gets little attention is a good test to see if he can pull in some more viewers along with him.
Speaking of moving to a new platform, that is even a possibility when it comes to Big Cass, too.
While it was Big Show who hinted at the idea of switching brands, Cass could be the one to jump ship to SmackDown for one main reason: Carmella.
The Princess of Staten Island and the first-ever Ms. Money in the Bank (at least temporarily) tweeted out her support for Cass’s heel turn after it happened.
This is somewhat blurring the lines between her previous affiliation as part of their stable along with the fact that behind the curtain, Big Cass and Carmella have been dating for quite some time.
While Carmella has James Ellsworth by her side, it’s been strictly stated on multiple occasions that they aren’t a romantic couple, so that doesn’t preclude Cass from still being the on-screen boyfriend of Carmella.
Now that he’s a heel, the chances of them shacking back up again skyrockets, as he may change brands just to be able to travel with her on the road as well as to work together with her to help each other’s characters out.
Also read: Plans for Enzo and Cass going forward
Cass isn’t a slouch on the mic, but he does do better when he can play off someone else, and Carmella can fill that void. Likewise, Ellsworth is fine for a comedic fall-guy, but Cass provides a legitimate imposing threat standing next to Carmella.
WWE may even take the opportunity of the women’s Money in the Bank ladder match fiasco as a means to give Ellsworth the boot from SmackDown, where he can move over to Raw and also join the cruiserweight division or become a jobber over there.
What this all boils down to is that there are different roads WWE can take when sorting out the direction of Enzo and Cass now that they’ve split, but the only one that will spell guaranteed disaster is if they choose to do nothing with them.
Perception becomes reality and if WWE gives off the vibe that neither Enzo, nor Cass are important enough to find time to write storylines for, the WWE Universe will quickly stop being invested in them and in a few months, we’ll be retroactively wishing they could just rejoin as a tag team to undo the mistake of breaking them up.
Here’s hoping Enzo and Cass have clear skies ahead and championship gold in their futures, since they were never able to reach that mountain summit as a tag team.
How would you like to see these two utilised in the coming weeks and months? Tell us your ideas in the comments below!
