“You gotta show a little bit of trepidation in your voice” Dutch Mantell feels The Viking Raiders are being disrespected in WWE


“You gotta show a little bit of trepidation in your voice” Dutch Mantell feels The Viking Raiders are being disrespected in WWE

Viking Raiders and Dutch Mantell

Hanson and Raymond Rowe popularly known around the world as Erik and Ivar are a tag team named ‘The Viking Raiders’ who currently work for WWE on Smackdown. In 2014 when Erik and Ivar were singles competitors faced off with in Ring of Honor at Top Prospect Tournament finals where Ivar defeated Erik to win the tournament and later formed a tag named ‘War Machine’. After signing with ROH The Viking Raiders defeated the Elite Killer squad in anon title match which earned them a future title shot for GHC Tag Team Championship which they ended up losing.

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In late 2015 The  Viking Raiders defeated Matt Tavern and Michael Bennett to capture the ROH World Tag Team Championship which was their first title as a tag team. In 2017 they challenged Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima for the IWGP Tag Team Championship and won the match for the titles. After spending  4 years on the independent circuit The Viking Raiders signed a multi year contract with WWE in 2018 . The contract saw them move to NXT which was WWE’s developmental territory at the time. Erik and Ivar made their television debut in NXT when they interefered in a match.

Erik and Ivar after their debut went on an undefeated streak defeating teams like Heavy Machinery and the Mighty which earned them a title shot against the Undisputed Era which they won because of disqualification but didn’t win the titles. The Viking Raiders finally won the NXT Tag Team Championship when they defeated The Undisputed Era at NXT Takeover : Phoenix, which was their first title in WWE.

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The Viking Raiders recently re-debuted on Raw and attacked the New Day

Viking Raiders
Former Raw Tag Team Champion Viking Raiders

Erik and Ivar Made their main roster debut on Raw In 2019 under a new name ‘The Viking Experience’ which was widely trolled on social media. The next week they made their in ring debut under the name ‘The Viking Raiders’ and won their first match on the main roster. On an episode of Raw the raiders defeated Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode to win the WWE Raw Tag Team Championship which made them the first tag team in history to hold championship in three major companies i.e. WWE , ROH and NJPW.

The Viking Raiders made an much awaited return on Raw after Ivar’s injury had put the team on a hiatus. Dutch Mantell who is former WWE manager recently in an interview with Wrestling’s Smack Talk shared his thoughts about the Raiders and had this to say :

“Well, at least they’re doing something with them. They’re trying. I mean, they could’ve done things a lot worse. But the New Day, they don’t talk like they’re fearful of anybody, and then they get the cr*p beat out of them. If you really want to put somebody over, you gotta show a little bit of trepidation in your voice. They showed none. They just went out to talk about them and then one of them said, ‘Let’s get dangerous too.'”

With The Viking Raiders back they are sure to shake up the tag team division and have  certainly put everyone on notice following there attack on the New Day.

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