Sheamus and Cesaro teamed up in 2016 as the team “The Bar” to much fanfare. The duo had been locked in a brutal best-of-seven series of matches, aiming to win the competition and earn a title opportunity in the early days of the WWE brand split.
However, they drew the series, so Raw General Manager Mick Foley instead gave them both a title opportunity – as a tag team. They joined forces and soon discovered their incredible chemistry together. They didn’t just set the bar in regards to their in-ring work – they were the bar. That is where the team name The Bar came from.
The team broke up in 2019 and went on their only solo runs, and Sheamus revealed just why that happened in a recent interview and what he wanted to achieve as a singles star after the two stars left each others side for good.
Why Did WWE Break Up The Bar?
The Bar was broken up as a team in WWE because they had achieved everything they could as a team, revealed former member Sheamus in an interview with Cultaholic. The former WWE Champion was candid about his time with Cesaro and the reason for their break-up, revealing his opportunity to pursue a singles career also being a factor in their break up.
Together the duo won four Raw Tag Team Championships, as well as the SmackDown Tag Team Championships on one occasion, making them one of the most successful teams in WWE history. They put on many classic matches, most notably against The New Day and the Usos while battling for the tag team titles on both Raw and Smackdown.
They teamed together for three years before the decided to end their time together as a tag team, and go their separate ways. However, Sheamus revealed that the reason for this was due to the unparalleled success they had a same and how there was nothing left for them to do together, and that he had championship ambition as a singles star in the WWE before he retired from wrestling.
Speaking to Cultaholic, Sheamus said about The Bar splitting up;
“Well me and Cesaro have achieved everything there is to do, we’re five-time tag champs. I think The Bar is something where we have cemented our legacies as The Bar, like we can always go back to that and anything we do will be massive.
But we’re both on a bit of a singles journey at the moment and there’s still a lot I want to achieve as a singles guy. Obviously the Intercontinental title is the one I still haven’t won, so that’s all I really care about right now.”
Despite being a highly successful team for a number of years, Sheamus and Cesaro split up without the usual fanfare that top teams get when going their separate ways. Their last outing as a team came on the Raw after Wrestlemania 35 and the following Smackdown, after they interrupted a match between Kofi Kingston and Seth Rollins, inserting themselves into a tag team match.
That match was famous for the crowd reaction. The duo were booed heavily, with the crowd audibly expressing their displeasure by chanting such thing as “Bullshit” “CM Punk” and “AEW”. This was not a good look for the team and could be what signalled to Vince McMahon that it was time to let The Bar move on to singles competition.
The next night on Smackdown, Sheamus suffered a concussion during a match with The New Day. Cesaro was then drafted to Raw and the pair quietly drifted apart.
Sheamus mentioned his goal of winning the Intercontinental Championship during his recent singles run after leaving The Bar. He currently heads the group The Brawling Brutes, taking youngsters Ridge Holland and Butch under his wing. He has won every WWE Championship available to him so far (bar from the Universal Championship, although he has won the defunct World Heavyweight Championship), including the Royal Rumble, King of the Ring and Money in the Bank briefcase.
He is currently battling Gunther to try and win his first Intercontinental Championship and become a Grand Slam Champion. Meanwhile, former Bar teammate Cesaro is now signed to AEW under the name Claudio Castagnoli, where he recently won the ROH World Championship, although he dropped it to Chris Jericho last week at AEW Grand Slam.
Where do you rank The Bar in the history of WWE’s Greatest Tag Teams? Let us know in the comments or click below to read about Sheamus’ trademark Good Old Fashioned Donnybrook Match