Holding patterns

Holding patterns.

Damian Priest seemed poised for a real big breakoff coming off of WrestleMania this year. Teaming with one of the biggest stars in the pop music world, Bad Bunny, to take out veteran tag team schmuck douchelords the Miz and John Morrison is an obvious springboard to success and greater things.

But instead he lost a handicap match against the selfsame douchelords on the next Raw and continued to feud against them, building up to back-to-back lumberjack matches, wherein Miz and Morrison got eaten by zombies and then showed up to work just fine, except a minor knee injury that put the A-Lister in a wheelchair for a few months.

And then he largely disappeared from TV for a few months.

Holding patterns.

Meanwhile, Sheamus, having won the United States Championship from Matt Riddle at WrestleMania, kicked off his reign by invoking the glory days of John Cena’s United States Championship Open Challenge... except because he’s a curmudgeonly git of a champion, he didn’t actually hand out title matches, just fights.

But still, it was going swimmingly until Humberto Carrillo cracked him in the nose and broke it, and suddenly the Celtic Warrior, too, was largely off TV for months.

WWE officials chose not to strip him of the title, allowing him to recover enough to wear a protective face mask and get back in the fight, and definitively end his feud with Humberto, defeating him in a hard-fought non-title encounter.

And then finally our stories merge, but they don’t quite move on.

Holding patterns.

Miz and Morrison are still present as antagonists to Priest. Sheamus is still contending with Ricochet, who he had also been feuding with going back to the post-Mania season.

The more things change...

But Damian had started to buddy up with Carrillo, and managed to beat Sheamus in one of WWE’s godawful codified “beat the champ to get a shot at the champ” matches, earning himself the title shot you see before you tomorrow.

Which brings us to the match and, look— it’s Sheamus and Damian Priest. They’re gonna beat the hell out of each other and it’s gonna be fun. What more can you ask for?

Will the Archer of Infamy claim his first main roster title or can the Celtic Warrior continue to keep his gold?