The Street Profits have been one of the best tag teams in the WWE for a very, very, very long time.
Since initially debuting all the way back in 2016, when Montez Ford was then known as Kenneth Crawford, the duo have gone on to wrestle together on 403 occasions in every city imaginable as part of the NXT, SmackDown, and RAW rosters. They've won the EVOLVE Tag Team Championships, the NXT Tag Team Championships, the RAW Tag Team Championships, and the SmackDown Tag Team Championships, with one reign with each belt, and yet, through it all, the red solo cup-drinking performers have been considered one of the best tag teams in the promotion still currently owned by Vince McMahon.
And yet, over the last six years, the duo's schtick has gotten a tad stale, with more than a few rumors over the years suggesting that a split between Ford and Angelo Dawkins is destined for their future.
Has it happened yet? Well, no, obviously not, the duo have never wrestled against each other in a WWE ring and don't appear destined to do so any time soon. Still, when even WWE's in-ring interviewers bring up rumors about things not being totally copasetic between the two wrestlers, you know something isn't perfectly right within the Universe; way less right than when Dawkins interrupted Ford's date night with Bianca Belair at Applebee's.
So naturally, when an all-time legend not just in the WWE but in the entertainment world like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson explicitly calls out Ford for his talents both as an in-ring performer and as a charismatic talker outside of it, you know it's going to only elevate the hype surrounding a potential breakup between the Profits of the Streets. Here's the quote from Rock from his appearance on ET as dictated by Sportskeeda.
“I love that guy. I love his energy, I love his charisma, I love his work ethic, and you know, in the world of pro wrestling, there's nothing like the world of pro wrestling. It's very unique, and it's also a business. Professional wrestling, WWE, it's in my blood, it's my passion, I love it. So for a guy like him, he's worked his butt off. And by the way, they all do.” said the Rock. “Everybody in that locker room, the men, the women, but him in particular, he's got great athleticism, he's got the whole package. He's cool, he's very cool.”
*phew* welp, let's hope the Street Profits match versus the Usos as SummerSlam is a good one, as it may be their final match on a major premium-live-event as a team, which is bad, bad news for Angelo Dawkins, as many fear he'll be the Marty Jannetty of this tag team.
A solo run for Ford would be great news for the WWE but bad news for Dawkins.
When Corey Graves asked Angelo Dawkins about the prospects of being the 1B in The Street Profits on his After the Bell podcast, Angelo Dawkins gave a very candid response, as dictated by Wrestling Inc.‘s Dakota Cohen.
“I’d be lying if I said I ain’t hear all the talk on the internet,” Dawkins said. “Like, especially about me and stuff like that. Like, obviously, I see it all the time with Tez. Tez is second-world, like, that dude’s a freak of nature. That’s my brother. I know he’s good, I know he’s talented. He’s destined to become the World Champion. But then, on the other hand, I saw people talking about me like I’m like some scrub or whatever, and I’m like, ‘Oh, wait a minute, hold up. Like, oh, they must not know about me. Okay, cool’, and it kind of like, that took me back to when I first started in a way.”
That's a pretty mature response for a spur-of-the-moment question; almost as if Dawkins has been thinking about that question for quite some time.
Now, the WWE has a bit of a reputation for being a singles promotion. Sure, the company has employed some of the best tag teams of all time, and the Usos are considered one of the best teams in the business today despite being basically a WWE-only team, but when a team is hot, it's only a matter of time before a member of the team is spun off to be their own solo performer. It happened with Edge and Christian, happened with Jeff Hardy and Matt Hardy, and even happened with Miz and Morrison. In all three of those cases, the one performer became a star on their own, and the other was released after fading into the mid-card, with their next opportunity in the fed having to come via a ton of hard work on the indies.
Really, outside of The Shield, where all three former members of the group became world champions, the only examples of tag teams that both go on to better success at the same time come from situations where the duo were already very popular before they united.
Can Dawkins break that trend? Can he get himself over with his larger-than-life personality and big-man athleticism? Or will he fade into the background like Christian, Matt, and Morrison before him? For his sake, let's hope it's the former, as watching Ford succeed when his buddy is on the outside looking in would take some of the shine off of his ultimate success.
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