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Blending work/shoot lines is nothing new for pro wrestling, and WWE has taken things up a notch since the ‘Reality’ Era kicked off with CM Punk revealing his plan to leave the company at the end of his contract in his famous 2011 pipe bomb promo.
But this feels a little too on the nose?
The behind-the-scenes story is The Revival asked to be released from their contracts before this year’s Royal Rumble, and were asked to stick around for a few months while WWE proved they could make them happy. The next few months happened, and the company offered Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson $2.5 million/five year contract extensions. The Top Guys said “no thanks”. Then we got an angle on the April 29 Raw which featured The Usos filming them shaving one another’s backs in the shower and mocking them for it in the arena.
In case you were wondering if it’s one of those angles which will be quickly forgotten, WWE.com’s official preview for this upcoming Monday has this section:
You shave my back
Okay, so the headline shouldn’t have been that The Revival shave each other’s backs in the shower, but the mildly embarrassing footage obtained by The Usos was still enough to unman the “Top Guys” when all was said and done. The Usos now have a psychological edge in this young rivalry, and in order to catch up to their rivals, the former Raw Tag Team Champions have to either develop thicker skin or finish out their business between the ropes in a way they couldn’t this past week against Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins in what was otherwise a very impressive performance. In other words, this could be the beginning of a whole new Revival or the first humiliation of many. The choice is up to them.
“The choice is up to them” whether the back shaving bit was “the first humiliation of many”? Wow.
Dawson’s contract is supposedly not up until April 2020. WWE is said to have added two months of injury time to Wilder’s deal, keeping him tied to the company until June of next year.
That could be a lot of humiliation...