This Monday night’s episode of RAW saw the conclusion of the semifinal round of the WWE Tag Team Championship No. 1 contender’s tournament (sponsored by Booty O’s). It felt obvious that one of the two recent NXT call-up teams would advance to the final match at Payback, but the odds were seemingly low that both The Vaudevillains and Enzo Amore & Colin Cassady would make it to the very end. One of these two teams that just surfaced is going to be challenging for the tag straps, which are higher profile now thanks to The New Day than they have been in a long time. That’s great news.

But is it actually a sign of change?

I hate to be pessimistic, but when it comes to WWE it’s really just cautious realism. They don’t have a good track record of letting hot acts get hotter — it’s like they pull the pot off of the stove as soon as it starts to boil. Sometimes they’ll just let it simmer for so long that it eventually burns itself out.

Sometimes there’s Roman Reigns.

Okay, that’s not fair. True, but not fair, so I’ll use it as a transition instead. Simon Gotch and Aiden English, two guys WWE appears to want to get over as heels, actually defeated Roman’s cousins, The Usos, clean as a whistle. In less than four minutes! Yeah, one of them had a hurt shoulder from the beating he took last week from Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, but it’s still a pretty big deal.

The other team in the finals, Enzo & Big Cass, defeated The Dudley Boyz on Monday. It was also completely clean in the middle of the ring. That feels like one part of a bigger feud, which makes it feel like the realest guys in the room (bada boom how you doin’?) are going to fall short in the finals likely thanks to Dudleyference. Which is cool, and helps The Vaudevillains get some momentum as bad guys going into their title match with The New Day.

Can The Vaudevillains be the team that takes the titles from New Day? It would be a heck of a skyrocket strapped to their backs and a loss could possibly derail them before they make it very far along the tracks.

And how do Gallows and Anderson fit in?