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| Believe in The Shield. Believe in the power of trios. Photo Credit: WWE.com |
If tag team matches have a better probability of being good than singles matches, it should follow that further stocking of a match with garrisoned wrestlers on each side should improve it even more. The more wrestlers are on one side, the less each individual one has to do. Obviously, Chikara does huge matches with grace and entertainment (you haven't lived until you've seen their annual Torneo Cibernetico), but I've found on average view, the trios match is probably the tipping point for most companies in terms of overall expected match quality. Look at me, dropping advanced metric-sounding terms over here. I wish there was a way to apply math to wrestling, but it's hard to totally quantify art. But I digress.
I think that the trios ethic is a big reason why The Shield is as good as they are right now. It's one thing to throw three guys who rarely if ever team together in a trios match for angle purposes. They turn out well for the most basic of reasons. Take for example The Shield's opponents last night. Kofi Kingston is, on his own, an average-at-best wrestler (and that might be gentle), but he does one thing really well, and that's take an ass-whipping. Kane is another guy who is limited (although I think he's far more well-rounded than Kingston), but he comes in LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE really well. Daniel Bryan does everything well, so of course he fits. In a singles match, Kingston would not only have to take the heat, but he'd be tasked with the comeback as well, and to have an effective comeback, well, you need to have effective-looking offense. If he can pass that buck off to either Kane or Bryan, then that's less of a chance he has for screwing his end of the match up. Everyone works together if the match is laid out right.
But when you have a group whose entire thing is being a well-oiled unit, that becomes their routine, their MO so to speak. It can be a lot easier for them to not only define roles for themselves (Dean Ambrose as the point man, Seth Rollins as the guy most likely to impale himself on the ring post, Roman Reigns as the SURPRISE SPEAR guy), but they have the best license actually to tweak those formulas, wear out the ruts enough to create new ones, and innovate where other trios don't get the time to try.
It's not a surprise when the group is batting 1.000 with their match quality right now. What is surprising is that it took WWE this long to blaze this kind of trail in terms of group play and stable wrestling. I'm not saying there needs to be a Six Man Championship (because they shit on the belts they have now), but there'd be a lot less of a problem with staleness in match variety if they used the trios match more than for The Shield lately. Again, they have this giant roster. They've done the whole "let's smush all the main eventers we can in a six-man match," but what about combining the strata? They started to tease at a broader network of affiliation last night when they mentioned that the Prime Time Players were training partners with Mark Henry. Trios matches where Henry and the PTP teamed up to go against Sheamus and the Usos would be so gangsta on RAW. Hell, I'd settle for it on Main Event. Remember that trios match last year when Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio, and Sin Cara took on Alberto del Rio and the Prime Time Players? I do; it was one of my top 100 matches last year.
Then again, maybe I'm not surprised it's taken WWE this long. They're the top of the food chain. They don't innovate, they borrow from those who do. Maybe it took a Chikara blowing up on the level that it has to cue in WWE on the power of the trios match. Whatever the reason, it works well. When you can hide weaknesses and accentuate strengths, then you have the recipe for being on top of the heap. While WWE Creative has to fundamentally change in order for that to happen on the out-of-ring side of things, the accentuation of trios matches is a huge step in the right direction inside of it.