On Tuesday night, after a steady month-plus of vignettes, the Bludgeon Brothers of Luke Harper and Erick Rowan made their debut on Smackdown Live. Of course, these two men have been around before, for quite some time. For the majority of their WWE careers, they’ve even already been a tag team together. But this is NEW, because of the hammers. And the new burgundy gear. Maybe that’s a nod to Erick Rowan’s past as an award-winning vintner?
Anyway, the Bludgeon Brothers are here now, and doing things, which is way better than them wandering around in a greenscreen forest and hitting cameras with mallets. Probably. The last thing these two guys did as singles wrestlers was have a feud against each other. They’ve both been pretty much absent from television since at least July. So any forward progress counts, I suppose.
Luke Harper’s career trajectory continues to play out like the world’s saddest version of Cesaro, where he gets a reputation as an under-the-radar fan favorite super-worker and gets brief moments to shine, then gets shuffled back into a tag team. Except without all the titles and glory and what have you.
Anyway, back to the re-debut of the Bludgeon Brothers. In the interest of making this an ALL-NEW, ALL-DIFFERENT team than when they were in the Wyatt Family, not only do Harper and Rowan have new music, new attire, and a new entrance, they also have new names! Again, kind of.
Based on changes made to WWE.com after Smackdown Live, Harper and Rowan are now known as … Harper. And Rowan. Full stop. No first names.
Yes, the Bludgy Bubbies are now members of that sad group that includes artists formerly known as Antonio Cesaro, Alexander Rusev, and Adrian Neville, and the inverse crew of Big E Langston, Colin Cassady, and Elias Samson. In recent memory, only Charlotte has been lucky enough to have a name ADDED.
Of course, we’ll get used to this. At this point, “Antonio Cesaro” and “Alexander Rusev” sound weird, anyway. And most people referred to them as “Harper and Rowan” anyway, so one million shrugging emoticons. It’s just weird. If they wanted to make a radical re-debut, they would give them entirely new names, like PULVERIZER and CRUSHFIST. Or GORGEPUNCH and THE MURDERCAVERN. Or maybe something truly terrifying, like ROWE and HANSON. Heck, maybe their first names are scarier than their last names? I have no idea.
Welcome, Harper and Rowan. We hope we can somehow get used to your new personae.
