The Revival def. The New Day to become the new SmackDown Tag Team Champions
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Thanks to The Power of Positivity, The New Day’s bodies were always going to give out before their hearts. They simply do not allow themselves to accept defeat, except under the most strenuous of circumstances. So it says quite a bit about The Revival that they took the SmackDown Tag Team Titles from Big E & Xavier Woods — making them the first tandem to hold the NXT, Raw and SmackDown Tag Titles — and did so via submission, targeting the still-healing knee of Xavier Woods.
Woods, back in action for the first time since getting his knee destroyed by The Revival and Randy Orton, was something of a question mark throughout the evening, and Big E seemed determined to do the heavy lifting to make sure his brother didn’t sustain more damage than he could bear. That choice seemed taken away from New Day early on, however, after Dash & Dawson took Woods out on the apron, leaving Big E alone and at the mercy of the self-proclaimed “Top Guys.”
The challengers’ plan seemed to be to force Big E to go to a less-than-100-percent Woods if he needed saving, and that’s exactly what happened. And when Big E was downed by a Shatter Machine outside the ring, Woods’ fate was all but sealed. He valiantly threw hands as much as he could, but Xavier was dropped by a Shatter Machine of his own before submitting to a figure-four kneebar from Dawson — a maneuver specifically designed to damage Woods’ banged-up knee.
The Revival didn’t mince words after their victory, proclaiming it as the old-school quieting the new noise. Of course, The New Day are too popular and too positive to ever be quieted for good, but for one night at least, The Power of Positivity was silenced, and brutally so. Top Guys, in.
