WWE Backlash 2016: Why Heath Slater and Rhyno Should Have Lost

The One Man Band can now upgrade to a double-wide and feed his seven kids. But it wasn’t the right way for SmackDown to evolve its tag team division at Backlash.

Against all odds, SmackDown Live has succeeded in its infancy in getting fans to care about Heath Slater. And not “care” as in really wishing he weren’t on the screen every Tuesday night. “Care” as in actually receiving crowd support during an enjoyable, entertaining babyface run.

Which makes his crowning – along with partner Rhyno – as the first-ever SmackDown tag team champions at Backlash the…absolute wrong call.

Don’t get me wrong: it was a memorable moment and a solid match. The in-ring, post-match interview gave us more reason to like the duo and getting to wear the slipper is the most fitting end to the Slater’s Cinderella story. He can eat real crab cakes now instead of imitation meat!

But this isn’t about Slater. It’s about cutting your nose to spite your face, and SmackDown may have handicapped the short-to-medium term future of its tag division in order to pop the fans for one night.

As the Usos came out wearing black and white, ditching the Siva Tau ramp entrance, and brutally dismantling the Hype Bros., they looked like legit badasses. Their interactions with the crowd and the way they viciously attacked Zack Ryder’s knee had them firing on all heel cylinders. Even the kicking away of Rhyno’s hand after taunting Slater to make a tag midway through the title bout was cocky heel perfection. Basically, the Usos had become, in one match, everything Gallows and Anderson have been trying and failing to do for weeks over on Raw.

And all that goodwill and credibility they had built up in such short order is now gone, all for the sake of Slater getting his contract.

Where does this go now? Slater and Rhyno as fighting champions and kings of the tag team hill just isn’t believable. They’ve spent weeks painting Slater as a bumbling fool who kept backing into lucky break after lucky break. Even in winning this match, Slater basically spent all night taking a beating, only for a hot tag and Rhyno clearing house to keep them in it. And then they couldn’t even win cleanly! These babyface underdogs had to resort to cheating behind the ref’s back to get their belts.

The immediate and most obvious path is to now have the Usos chase the belts. But how long can you stretch a program with the more obviously dominant team chasing the obviously far inferior outfit? The Usos should theoretically take the belts in their next rematch. And maybe that happens Tuesday: put the belts on their rightful owners while still allowing Slater to have earned his contract. And immediate title changes are nothing new to WWE. But doing this would certainly cheapen Backlash in retrospect.

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Instead, if you allow the Usos to win at Backlash, they immediately earn dominant heel status and become the undeniable top dogs in a burgeoning division. With a target on their back and fan heat on fire after stomping out Cinderella Slater, the Usos could’ve ratcheted up the rhetoric of how they put American Alpha out of commission and then forced Slater to foreclose on his trailer. Like a Randy Orton “legend killer” storyline, the Usos could’ve run roughshod through the division, completely wrecking the lives of their opponents. That’s how you build up a heel team to eventually have a conquering American Alpha or whoever else eventually take them out. That’s how you build up a tag division with unified focus across the board.

And if you were worried about Slater then not getting his contract, come on. Shane McMahon wasn’t supposed to come back at all after Wrestlemania if he lost to the Undertaker, and now he’s SmackDown general manager! Who knows; have Rhyno sacrifice his contract for his new best friend Slater and have Shane be so moved by the gesture that he offers jobs to both. You can fix that problem.

You can’t as easily fix the problem where the biggest bad guys in the tag division can’t even beat a part-time politician and a sidekick less than a month removed from losing to Jinder Mahal.

Backlash was a nice moment for Slater and his clan, but SmackDown will now pay the real price for upgrading that single-wide.

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