The past few weeks have seen the Raw tag team division increase by two members, and both recently in contact with the rising new unit of Ricochet & Cedric Alexander. On March 23, the Australian duo of Shane Thorne & Brendan Vink debuted against Raw Tag Team Champions The Street Profits in a non-title match, and have gone on to face Danny Burch & Oney Lorcan two nights later on NXT, and then return to Raw last Monday to face Alexander & Ricochet. On this past Monday, the Canadian tag team EverRise (Chase Parker & Matt Martell) made their Raw debut against Ricochet & Alexander, following their Main Event debut against now-departed Good Brothers Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows on March 30. SmackDown recently added a unit of their own, in NXT’s Forgotten Sons.
https://twitter.com/WWENXT/status/1254960956695818240
Shane Thorne & Brendan Vink
Shane Thorne has been a part of NXT since 2016, when he arrived as Shane Haste with former tag partner Mikey Nicholls (Nick Miller in NXT) from 2x GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions The Mighty Don’t Kneel from Japan’s Pro Wrestling NOAH. They were repackaged as TM-61 and then The Mighty, but injuries derailed any push the talented tandem would receive. Nicholls finally left WWE in 2018 and returned to Japan, but Thorne has remained a part of NXT, mostly off television.
Brendan Vink only joined NXT in early 2019, but since 2008 he’s been one of the biggest indie stars in the Australian indie scene as Elliot Sexton. A former Melbourne Championship Wrestling (MCW) Heavyweight Champion, he was also part of The Mighty Don’t Kneel stable in the Aussie indies, where he would also tag team with NXT’s Bronson Reed (aka Jonah Rock) in SexRock. Hopefully, this TMDK pairing fairs better than the first entry. They appear to be getting MVP as their manager, who has seemingly entered them into a feud with Ricochet & Alexander.
EverRise (Chase Parker & Matt Martell)
Announced as part of the WWE’s January class of new recruits in 2019 was Canadian tag team 3.0 (Scott Parker & Shane Matthews). Niagara Falls, Ontario’s Scott Parker and Shane Matthews (aka Big Magic) have been a tandem together since the very early 2000s, when they teamed up in Quebec’s Northern Championship Wrestling (nCw) as Under Construction 2.0 (Matthews replaced Parker’s first partner, Nova Cain), which was eventually shortened to just 2.0. It didn’t take long for the 2x nCw Tag Team Champions to gain attraction from other Canadian indies, and they began to work with IWS and Ottawa’s Capital City Championship Combat (C4), becoming 2x IWS Tag Team Champions as well.
In 2006, they made their US debut with CHIKARA in the Tag World Grand Prix, as well as working with IWA Mid South. By 2010, they were full-blown regulars with CHIKARA, becoming 3.0 in the process en route to becoming 2x CHIKARA Campeonatos de Parejas (Tag Team) Champions in an 11-year career with CHIKARA. They also worked in Ring of Honor, Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW), Smash Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (PWG), and Westside Xtreme Wrestling (wXw). They signed with NXT in 2019 and have since rebranded with Scott Parker becoming Chase Parker and Shane Matthews renamed to Matt Martell. They made their NXT television debut that August, still as 3.0, but by their next appearance in September, they were renamed EverRise.
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