This was a No Disqualification match for the vacant PWG Tag Team Titles.
It’s an absolute banger.
Classic PWG style brawl, only without quite the sense of danger and chaos that Kevin Steen brought the proceedings in the last several, or the gift for layout of a match like this that El Generico brought. Still, the Young Bucks have been in enough of these by now to get set loose without training wheels and they mostly nail it.
While the Bucks aren’t quite capable of creating as chaotic an atmosphere as Steen, they’re still able to communicate a real sense of dislike between the teams. Maybe more importantly, they are such contemptable little pieces of shit. You can see little parts of the broader act that got famous a few years later here like playing air guitar on anything they can get their hands on or the off-putting comments like “I’M ON FIRE, BABY” and it works a million times better when the match asks you to despise these two little shitheads for behaving like this in public.
They also may not have El Generico’s gift for the construction of a match like this, but god damn, this match has some really cool shit in it.
It’s also not like this is some mindless display either!
They get Stup/Dos down on the floor and beat up Uno a lot. Some nasty chair throws into Dos’ head, cut offs that are both nasty and petty so that no reasonable person could ever cheers for The Young Bucks. Dos’ return to the match is terrific, and they do some very cool things. There’s also a significant amount of dead space between spots, which is an interesting contrast to how well they manage to set up the big setpiece spots. Usually, a match where they have problems in between the big moments doesn’t have the latter going for it to counteract that.
The final three to five minutes really elevate this though, just exceptionally well done stuff. The first three-quarters of this might have had minor issues, but they get this like 95% correct, beginning with a truly heinous elevation of a normal spot for a match like this, resulting in a god damner of a bump from Matt.
The Fatality seems to have it won again, but poor Rick Knox is pulled out and superkicked. The Bucks move in with the bullshit while Matt is still hurt, which means just A TON of low blows. Real vile stuff, removing even the façade of trying to win this in any way that even looks vaguely fair. Another referee comes out ONLY FOR OUR HERO RICK KNOX TO PULL HIM OUT AND HIT HIM. KNOX COMES BACK IN AND DUCKS ANOTHER SUPERKICK AND FINALLY GETS REVENGE ON THE BUCKS WITH A CLOTHESLINE
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(as longtime readers know, it’s a great match and great booking when I instinctively just type what happened in all caps)
A second Fatality now has no interference to stop it, and the Super Smash Brothers win the PWG World Tag Team Titles with a second consecutive upset of the Young Bucks.
A must-see for any fans of the Bucks, the SSB, or just wild stuntfests like this in general, even if they top it two months later. The sort of match you can throw on at three in the morning after doing some accounting work for a class you’re taking at a community college during a p andemic, somehow injuring your back in the process, and still get all fired up about.
It’s not a perfect match by any means. It’s the sort of thing that someone dedicated to tearing holes in the Bucks’ work or the SSB’s work would have a pretty easy time with. But it’s just so fun and so well booked that I really do not care. This was an absolute blast, a great example of the strengths of peak era PWG, and a testament to how good the Bucks are getting at this point. This 2012 feud is destined to slip through the cracks of history because of how rough the attempts at it on national television in 2019 and 2020 have turned out, but after watching this again, it’s really hard to blame anyone for wanting to try and run this back in front of a larger audience.
HANDWERK 