Sheamus and Cesaro should beat the Hardys at Extreme Rules because nothing else makes sense

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It’s not going to be the end of the world or wrestling as we know it if the Hardys retain the RAW Tag Team Championships against Sheamus and Cesaro this Sunday at Extreme Rules. It will, however, be a pretty weird use of both teams that just keeps Monday’s tag division in a weird stasis — one the arrival of the Hardy Menz and the heel turn of Sheamus and Cesaro was supposed to help them avoid.

The Hardys are still kind of running on nostalgia fumes, and that’s been working out so far, but they’re eventually going to need more than that if they are going to be anything besides a Dudley-esque return that never did much with character outside of “hey look it’s those guys you used to like!” Losing to a heel team — a heal team who should beat the heck out of everyone always, too — would be a good way to do ensure some Hardys development. And this isn’t even a reference to making sure the Broken version of Matt shows up, either.

(That would be fine, too, but it’s not happening until the lawyers sort it all out.)

Plus, as Sheamus and Cesaro have said, they’re the future. This is a tag team who could anchor that division for a long time, especially if there isn’t any room in the main event scene for the pair at the moment. They’re two huge dudes who should be able to wreck anyone, they connect with the crowd both as faces and heels, and setting them up as the pins for someone else to knock down makes so much more sense than the Hardys defeating a team they’ve defeated before, except this time, that team is the bad guys.

Anything that opens us up to the possibility of Matt and Jeff working singles and adding depth to RAW is a good thing. And losing to Sheamus and Cesaro, who seem to have found their niche as a killer tag unit, is part of that anything. It puts over the future, it lets the old guard move on to the next stage of their return tour — be it a new tag feud following a rematch or singles competition — and it opens the door for someone down the road to benefit from defeating Sheamus and Cesaro. And that can all start this Sunday.

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