What’s the story?
Even though SmackDown Live has been viewed by many as the better show, the tag team title picture has been poorly exposed. The current champions, American Alpha, won the championship on December 27 at the conclusion of a fatal four-way match including the defending champions The Wyatt Family, along with challengers The Usos and Heath Slater & Rhyno. Since then, American Alpha have not been in a notable feud to make them look strong as a team, and did not even compete at the Royal Rumble in any capacity.
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On the recent episode of SmackDown Live, the champions issued an open challenge to any team backstage. Not only one other team accepted the challenge, but five teams in total. As a result, it was announced that a tag team turmoil match will occur at the Elimination Chamber pay per view on February 12. This will be the first pay-per-view that American Alpha have defended their titles since winning it at the closure of 2016.
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The teams involved in the match at Elimination Chamber will be American Alpha, The Usos, The Vaudevillains, Breezango, Slater & Rhyno, and The Ascension. With the exception of The Usos, each of these teams are desperate to regain some steam in the division and start experiencing an upswing in their careers. Slater & Rhyno were the inaugural SmackDown Tag Team Champions, but have had a not-too-impressive win-loss record since losing the title.
For Tyler Breeze and The Vaudevillians, all of these competitors are the result of WWE calling up talent from NXT and having nothing to do with them. Perhaps the most bizarre example of this is the ongoing woes of The Ascension.
The heart of the matter
The Ascension were arguably the most dominant team in NXT, holding the record for the longest reigning tag team champions in the history of the brand. When called up to the main roster, it was perhaps doomed from the start. The commentators started to mock the team, and they were the laughingstock of a tag team segment on Raw involving the New Age Outlaws, nWo, and APA. Since then, they have had one of the most embarrassing win-loss records in tag team history.
In fact, the last time The Ascension participated in an actual pay-per-view match was the tag team Elimination Chamber match, nearly two years ago, in May of 2015. All the other bouts were either dark matches, or part of the pre-show. They have not won a tag team match on SmackDown since September of 2015, although they were a part of the winning team in an eight-man tag match that occurred in September of 2016.
What’s next?
It is highly doubtful that The Ascension will win the SmackDown Tag Team Championship in the tag team turmoil match. The team seemed to be injected in the match for the sake of simply being a current tag team on SmackDown, and nothing more.
Sportskeeda’s take
Unfortunately, The Ascension may be the next team to be future endeavored. While both competitors have the look of a dominant team, and they exhibited that with their run in NXT, the “powers that be” are clearly not getting behind them. In turn, it has sabotaged their career on the main roster. It will take a great deal of investment in The Ascension to make them a relevant team again, and the WWE does not appear to be very interested in doing that.
