2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Revival vs. B Team

71. Revival vs. B Team WWE Raw 8/27

ER: Buried in the middle of Raw was this little gem of a tag match, that built off their prior interactions and added a couple false finishes playing off prior matches. I've been flat out loving the Revival this year, think they've been consistently fantastic, and I think this is as much as Dallas/Axel have excelled since they've been on the main roster. The match is not long, under 10 minutes, and followed a 20+ minute Please Don't Stop match with Seth Rollins. These teams clearly knew their time was precious and busted ass from go, with B Team dropping great knees and elbows (Dallas' successive kneedrops here were some of my favorite offense I've seen from him) and taking it to Revival. But Revival are great at cutting off the ring, and Dawson especially has a bunch of cool attacks, a ton of offense he does well. He hits a nice dropkick and controls with a nice body vice, face lock, Once they went into hot tags and nearfalls it felt like they were working a 15 minute match in 9 minutes, but I thought the frantic pace added to everything. Dallas hits his nice neckbreaker off the ropes (which has beaten the Revival before) and that's when we get our satisfying run of pin break ups and unexpected kickouts. The Summerslam match had a fun moving parts finish (the type of finish that typically looks stupid when someone gets rolled up but then gets knocked into so the pinfall reverses) and they play off that here, making it feel like something similar will happen and milk it for a couple of nearfalls. A few years ago it felt like we were getting a fun 8-12 minute tag match like this one every single week on Raw, but a lot of tag teams now feel relegated to Main Event and the only Raw tags that get time to shine are with makeshift singles guys. I would love to see this kind of tag make a TV comeback.

PAS: This was a lot of fun, when I first saw the Revival I thought they were more like 80s tag team Karaoke, but I really think they have pulled it together now. Really loved how they cut the ring off, and kept shifting into different holds, and attacks rather then just sit in a chinlock. Dawson especially seemed to be constantly throwing in tiny cool moves. His face lock was nifty stuff. I haven't seen much of Axel and Dallas as a team, but they were a totally competent face team, solid lightening express. Axel has been in the WWE for 8 years now, which is 2 years longer then his dad's run, and hasn't had a single memorable moment, it is good to see him doing something entertaining, and I am looking forward to checking out more of these guys.

2018 ONGOING MOTY LIST