Titus O’Neil and Darren Young were never going to be the
slickest or greatest tag team working in wrestling. But they easily had the
potential to be the one of the most entertaining. More than that, they hold no
appeal as singles acts. Working alone they’ll just get lost amongst WWE’s
packed roster of no-hopers.
 |
| The dream is over... |
The PTPs had things left to achieve together. Despite
teaming up while the doubles scene was at a low point and working together for
nearly two years they never won the tag team championship (although they did become
the number one contenders several times). That’s an obvious goal they could
have worked towards. They could have tried to get themselves a meaningful non-title
tag match on a pay-per-view. A match against the New Age Outlaws would have
been a nice thing for them to try and obtain too. They would have been a great
choice to be part of the division’s foundation because they’re decent
wrestlers, have solid characters, and can function as either fan favourites or
dastardly bad guys.
They also had a lot of potential outside of the ring.
Specifically they could have done well with their own WWE flavoured chat show.
When I say chat show I mean the sort of show you get in the US, rather than
British shows hosted by the likes of Jonathan Ross (his shows are more about
shilling movies, TV shows and other assorted nonsense) or Jeremy Kyle (a man
too aggressive and angry to have started his career in the US). I mean more the
likes of Montel Williams or Maury Povich.
Picture the scene. A talk show set is constructed on the
entranceway (the ring long ago became passé for this sort of thing), consisting
of a couch, an armchair, a fake wall with a logo on it, and a lamp (because
shows like this always have needless furniture). Titus strolls out wearing a
polo neck or a suit with tinted glasses and talks about two men who have been
having a disagreement (to wrestlers feuding, though it’d all be framed in chat
show terms as opposed to wrestling terms). He introduces the first and gets him
talking about the problems he’s been having before announcing that he has a
surprise and brings out the second guy.
As the two men answer his questions Titus makes
affirmative noises and cuts over them with new
questions. As those are being answered he throws things out to the floor, where
Darren Young’s wandering around in the crowd holding a microphone. ‘Delicious’
Darren (Titus’s name for his partner) asks members of the crowd their opinion
on the disagreement and moves on before he can be given an answer.
Back on the stage Titus wraps things up with his thought
for the day, ignoring his guests and concentrating on himself. The name of the
show? Titus.
This could work with the Prime Time Players as either
faces or heels but would probably work best as the latter, with Titus using the
segment as an in-character way of getting himself over. It’s exactly the sort
of thing WWE puts on slower episodes of SmackDown and would have been a nice
way of getting less important feuds on TV and giving The Prime Time Players
something to do.
It would have been an entertaining use of the two. I’m
confident it would have been more interesting that what they’ll end up doing as
singles wrestlers. And that disappoints me. It’s another wasted opportunity
from WWE: changing things for the sake of it instead of trying to make use of
what they already have in place. As things stand right now I'm not expecting RAW to become The Titus O'Neil Show anytime soon.
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