WWE Elimination Chamber 2018: The Bar vs. Titus Worldwide full match preview

Titus Worldwide have the Bar’s number.

They’ve wrestled four times this year, and three times Apollo and Titus O’Neil have scored the victory. That’s a pretty solid success rate, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Like how the one time the Bar won, the tag titles were on the line, so you have to ask yourself if Titus Worldwide can get it done when it counts.

Or how one of those victories came about only because Jason Jordan stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and let Apollo slip out of the spike White Noise and scoop Sheamus up with a schoolboy for the three-count.

Worldwide!

The two teams are quite similar when you get down to it. Neither exactly wanted to be a tag team to start, although the mechanisms that brought them together are rather different— The Bar being united by Mick Foley’s conviction that the best way to end a best-of-seven series was to create a tag team from two rivals where Titus Worldwide went from O’Neil trying to use Apollo to build his own brand up to a full-blown stable legitimately dedicated to improving his allies’ prospects, and has now shifted to the tag team backed by their in-house statistician, Dana Brooke.

Can _____ lose?

And is that the defining advantage Titus Worldwide have? Sure, Dana was wrong about Apollo’s chances in the four-way qualifier for the Elimination Chamber match, but this match is straight team on team action, and so the variables are cut in half.

But there is one wildcard. It seems silly, but hear me out; Apollo dropping his last name this week might make the difference. Think about it, Titus Worldwide literally debuted a catchphrase describing how he is definitively going to win a mere two weeks ago, and it hinged on “Crews” rhyming with “lose.”

Now this could cut both ways— Maybe it got into his head and cost him the four-way, and now without that distraction, he’ll be able to focus and make the difference. Or maybe he really bought into it and it boosted his confidence such that without that kind of mantra to live by, he’ll fall short.

But even if you don’t buy into the catchphrase line of thought, a change of name has meaning, it has weight to it. And, just like the butterfly that flaps its wings and affects weather patterns on the other side of the world, that might make a difference.

Will the Bar remain where it is or can Titus Worldwide shift it by divesting them of their gold?