With all Mixed Match Challenge Teams Announced, Each Brand’s Highlight:

I wrote before about my predicted WWE Mixed Match Challenge teams, but now that they are all officially announced, a few have me happy to be wrong. While Sasha and Finn will make a great in-ring mix and Bayley and Elias will do great character work together, one team from each brand especially delights me.

On RAW, Alexa Bliss and Braun Strowman are a team I’m officially nicknaming Fastball Special – after the recurring X-Men tactic in which Colossus will literally pick up and toss the relatively small Wolverine at whatever needs killing. Considering that Strowman could probably toss Bliss into the tenth row (someone please do some math on this) I think it’s apt. The characters are polar opposites, as are their ring styles, and the way that their wrestling informs one another’s could be really fun to see.

Over on Smackdown LIVE, Becky Lynch and Sami Zayn are the team I most hate myself for not calling from the beginning. Becky’s campaign to have them put together has contained one of the most compelling character motivations I’ve seen in years in WWE – not to win, but to bring a wayward Sami back to the light. “I still see the good in you, Sami” is a sentiment the audience absolutely agrees with even if he is currently killing it as a heel. With Becky’s own brief heel stint in NXT, ending with her star-making match against Sasha for the Women’s Championship, the dynamic of these two firmly not being on the same page motivation-wise at all is going to be really fun to watch.

I could see either of these teams believably winning the whole thing, and I’d be happy with either. But no matter who wins, these two teams are sure to be the highlight of the Mixed Match Challenge.

Written by Bobby Murphy (@RobertJMurph)

Image courtesy of WWE.com