WWE SummerSlam 2012 Results: R-Truth and Kofi Kingston Defeat Prime Time Players

R-Truth and Kofi Kingston defended their WWE Tag Team Championship by defeating the Prime Time Players, Titus O'Neil and Darren Young, at SummerSlam.

The victory comes just over a week after R-Truth and Kingston's title reign surpassed the 100-day mark, making them the third straight team to pass that barrier after nearly a year without a single extended championship run.

Even though they passed that milestone, nobody would mistake their reign for anything special. The WWE has really decreased the importance of midcard titles in recent years, which limits the upside of being the tag champs.

In reality, it's mostly a way to help keep R-Truth and Kingston, who are both popular superstars, relevant, since there aren't any available singles feuds for them right now. The same was true for Kingston when he teamed up with Evan Bourne last year.

It was believed the additional hour of Raw would help superstars like R-Truth and Kingston by giving them more television time, but that hasn't happened. At least not yet, due to the build toward SummerSlam focusing so much on the big names.

Now that things should calm down a bit for a couple months, perhaps the tag champions can finally start making an impact on a weekly basis and make the titles mean something again.

It's a disappointing result for the Prime Time Players. They have been given a moderate push over the past few months and certainly seemed in line to take over the title at some point, but it didn't happen at SummerSlam.

You have to wonder if the recent problems with the team's former manager, A.W., had any impact on the outcome of the match. He was released from the WWE last week and might have cost the Prime Time Players a chance to hold the belts.

Since there are only a few viable tag teams right now, O'Neil and Young have a good chance to stay in the championship picture. But it's going to take a more popular team in order to restore the belts to a higher level of prominence.

The jury is still out on whether or not R-Truth and Kingston are capable of making it happen.

Check back for more on the World Wrestling Entertainment as it comes, and visit Bleacher Report’s wrestling page to get your fill of WWE/TNA. For more wrestling talk, listen to Ring Rust Radio for all of the hot topics you just can’t miss (some language NSFW).

Listen to internet radio with RingRustRadio on Blog Talk Radio