Ridge Holland and Butch of The Brawling Brutes are your new number one contenders for WWE Tag Team Champions The Usos.
Holland and Butch won a Fatal 4 Way in Friday night’s SmackDown main event to earn a title shot from The Usos. They defeated Kofi Kingston of The New Day, “Top Dolla” AJ Francis and Ashante “Thee” Adonis of Hit Row, and Ludwig Kaiser and Giovanni Vinci of Imperium. After stealing the pin from Kaiser, Holland won the match over Kingston.
WWE then confirmed Holland and Butch vs. The Usos for SmackDown from Salt Lake City next Friday. The straps will be at stake.
The New Day, Alpha Academy, The Street Profits, and Los Lotharios were originally scheduled to compete in Friday night’s Fatal 4 Way, but WWE replaced the last three teams with Hit Row, Imperium, and The Brawling Brutes. WWE was considering The New Day vs. The Street Profits vs. Imperium vs. The Brawling Brutes earlier in the day, but no word on why they changed their minds.
Next week’s title match, believe it or not, will be Butch and Holland’s first standard tag team match on the main roster. While in WWE NXT, they suffered defeats to Tommaso Ciampa and Unified NXT Champion Bron Breakker on September 21, 2021, and Von Wagner and Kyle O’Reilly on October 12, 2021. They have worked multi-man or multi-team matches with Sheamus, as well as two standard tag team bouts, but those were at non-televised live events, as they defeated Los Lotharios on August 20 and August 21 in Ottawa and Quebec.
Jimmy and Jey Uso have been champions for over 425 days. They began their fifth reign as SmackDown Tag Team Champions on July 18, 2021, when they defeated The Mysterios at WrestleMania Backlash. On the May 20 SmackDown, they began their third reign with the RAW Tag Team Titles, defeating Randy Orton and Riddle in a Winners Take All match to become the undisputed champions.
Here is footage from Friday night’s Fatal 4 Way:
