This was for the Guns’ TNA World Tag Team Titles.
With the Guns having somehow stumbled into a six month long title reign and Beer Money (as part of Fortune aka FOURTUNE aka FIVETUNE) being a part of the truly hideous Immortal stable, it’s time for the universe to set itself back into order. All good things must come to an end, especially when it’s a miracle that they existed to begin with.
I’m no huge Beer Money fan. I think they were good, but they’re certainly a distant second on the list of great tag teams James Storm was in, and probably only third or fourth, at best, on a credible list of all time TNA tag teams. It’s the peak of Bobby Roode’s career in the ring, I guess, if that’s something you could ever hold close to your heart. That being said, something about this pairing just works. This and the Guns/Gen. Me series represent the last of the three peaks of TNA’s tag team division historically (XXX’s run in 2003, the run in 2006 with AJ & Daniels hunting AMW and then being hunted by LAX), and I think that’s worth covering the end of here. The best and shortest thing about this rivalry that I can say is that it’s the closest any long term rivalry has felt like The Rockers vs. The Brain Busters since it happened. The Guns aren’t quite The Rockers. Beer Money aren’t even close to Arn and Tully. Together, it feels correct.
This match feels correct. The company is collapsing around them amid the Immortal story and this is the last hurrah for this era in the division. It still feels like they could go another five or six matches and keep it interesting. Shelley is one of the more creative wrestlers of the time, and he and Sabin always find ways to keep it interesting. Roode and Storm aren’t creative at all on their own, but plugged into an MCMG match as traditional power heels, there’s so much for them to do. In a tag team environment, they’re rarely asked to do more than a thing or two every few minutes. Their value in this is how well they work with the Guns. It’s a fascinating little things. Shelley and Sabin have matches up with almost every major great team of the era that they could, and Beer Money was the team they had the most natural chemistry against. Styles make fights, and all of that. They do basic heel things well enough and don’t make any sorts of errors in terms of execution or offensive choices. I’m no Beer Money fan, but they’re better here than many far more celebrated teams later in the decade ever were. I’ll give them that, if nothing else. They’re better here than reDRagon were in the majority of their matches. There definitely aren’t more than two or three Lucha Bros. matches or performances as good as this, etc. Don’t go crazy with the adulation, but this was not an entirely unfair distribution of weight.
This match doesn’t present anything new if you’ve seen the 2010 stuff, but it has the feeling of two old rivals mixing it up again and trying to find the one thing that the other team isn’t prepared for. The only situation that feels right as a comparison is something like a repeat match up in a G1. Nothing’s going to surprise either of them, so it’s about trying to get the right thing off at the right time, MAYBE stumbling into something, and hoping for the best. After all the cool shit and a big kickout of the DWI (Drinking While Investing, naturally) by Sabin, Roode is able to manipulate Sabin into missing a corner Yakuza Kick and hitting Shelley by mistake, before rolling him up with a handful of shorts to steal the win and regain the titles. The order of those two feels wrong, and given that it’s their final match of any substance, it’s a letdown of a finish.
Of course, nobody really knows this is the end. Nobody ever does. TNA’s tag division had long been a haven for decent wrestlers away from the stupider shit, going back years (Pac Man Jones aside), so the division being infected more and more with that nonsense in 2011 and beyond wasn’t something that seemed so obvious. Similarly, Sabin’s injury in 2011 and Shelley’s in 2012 caused the Machine Guns to go on a break that lasted until 2016 in Ring of Honor. So, this is the end of one of the great tag team rivalries of the decade, unfortunately. As things go in TNA, a whimper and not a bang, etc. There’s great tag team wrestling to be found elsewhere, but as far as mainstream TV wrestling goes, it doesn’t get this good again for at least another few years, until the greatest tag team wrestler of all time somehow finds his way into WWE giving him a hot storyline, his dipshit brother, and regular access to television time.
HANDWERK 