The Motor City Machine Guns being pushed too quickly in WWE?

Like all of you, I was really surprised to see the Motor City Machine Guns choose WWE over AEW. I thought for sure they would have picked AEW because their style fits AEW a lot better, and let’s face it, AEW cares a bit more about tag team matches than WWE. But they chose WWE, debuted last week on SmackDown instead of NXT as rumored, and were immediately put into the tag team picture. Quite frankly, it felt odd because they seemed a little out of place in that environment. The match itself was fine because they had two teams that could wrestle their style and bump like crazy—and they won.

This brings us to this week. They had a great match with DIY, and while it still felt a bit out of place, it was a solid match, and they became the number one contenders for the tag titles. The aftermath is where I have some issues. The Bloodline arrived, and quite frankly, they exposed how bland Sabin, in particular, is in promos. Solo was on a completely different level than Sabin during that segment.

Then the Guns got their tag title shot in an overbooked match that pretty much overshadowed them and only served to advance the Bloodline storyline. The main takeaway from all this was that Jimmy and Roman took out Solo and Jacob, and that Jey cost Tama Tonga the tag titles. Even the last image shown wasn’t the Guns with the titles but rather Jimmy and Jey reuniting with Roman looking on from the aisle.

What they’ve done in two weeks is push the Guns way too quickly while making their tag title victory feel irrelevant since they didn’t win the titles cleanly and played second fiddle to the OG Bloodline.

Now, they’re champions of a pretty bland division, with nowhere to go but down, and fans are likely to care less and less about them.

This is why I dislike when WWE or any company rushes to put a title on a new act they’ve just signed. They essentially give us, the fans, the payoff right away instead of building the chase and making the title win actually mean something.

I would have preferred for the Guns to climb the ladder slowly and have a feud with another team before going for the titles. They could have had DIY win the belts back from the Bloodline instead of using the Guns as they did. This would introduce the Guns to a new fanbase who may not know them and make their first title win memorable instead of forgettable.

There’s still time for WWE to build them up and make stars out of them, but it will be challenging because their story of chasing the title has been taken away. Now, all we have is an indie-looking tag team with the championships, so when they eventually drop the belts, they’ll likely become just another team in a division full of bland tag teams.