The Young Bucks/Hangman Page vs. The Briscoes/Punishment Martinez, ROH Wrestling (6/23/2018)

Another great Bucks/Briscoes build up tag.

Mostly, that’s because they are once again simply let loose against each other in a main event in front of a hot crowd.

You do not need to do a whole lot to help a Bucks vs. Briscoes match at this point (or any point after like 2010) outside of simply clearing a path and letting them go, and it is once again tremendous. Neither is ever talked up as one of the great opponents of the other, but this 2018 stuff really makes a tremendous case for it, displaying a real special kind of physical chemistry between the teams, on top of all that they have in common ideologically (and how The Briscoes always manage to get the best version of a wild Young Bucks match out there).

They are not alone though, and the other two add a lot to this.

With the Hanger, that’s not all that shocking. Not only because he has a history of working really well with Jay Briscoe, but because at this point, he is finally starting to really develop. Not just the flashes we started to see in 2015, but a full on really good hot tag, and a lack of any noticeable weak points in the match. It’s not his career match, but given how many of those saw him in situations where he didn’t have to do nearly as much, it might just be his career performance so far. Not just because of the hot tag, but because this asks him to be a believable ass kicker against a much bigger guy, and it’s something he gets almost entirely perfect, showing a nearly complete picture of the wrestler and character he would eventually become.

On Martinez’s end though, it is a little bit of a surprise!

Now, that’s not to say he is some revelation here, that the match works because of him, and that it is a God damned shame he never showed this again. None of that is true. However, it is one of the better showings I’ve ever seen from him too, slotted exactly right in this match and hitting his bits and getting out, but still showing a lot in those moments. He has better bumps than I remember, better offense than I remember, and most of all, in a spot where he absolutely could have let the match down or at least caused it to be worse than this, he simply did not. The standards are lowered for the guy, especially among the others in this specific match, but it’s one of the only times ever where I can recall watching the guy and being even a little impressed.

The match is also pretty immaculately laid out too, another of those perfect marriages where the Bucks and Briscoes seem to understand each other perfectly. Wonderful construction mixed with a chaotic feeling at all times, but without ever going overboard, and always moving forward in the right direction, and escalating as well as always.

A best case scenario for all six, and the match as a whole.

Nick Jackson ducks under the Doomsday Device, and when Matt cuts off the other Briscoe, he’s able to roll down into the Victory Roll to just barely take the win.

We’re past the point where I am going out of my way to praise Ring of Honor booking, but in this specific program, it’s a real good one. They began a month ago with the Bucks nearly having it and the titles won, and now on the go-home show, they prove it’s possible, in a way that still leaves a lot of room for questions going into the pay-per-view. Nobody’s reinventing the way things are done here exactly, but a great example of the quietly confident and steady booking this company is still occasionally capable of.

One of the year’s more underrated matches, if only by virtue of taking place on ROH TV.

***1/4

The Golden Lovers vs. Cody Rhodes/Hangman Page, NJPW Sakura Genesis 2018 (4/1/2018)

In theory, a simple little build up tag.

Ostensibly for the big WrestleMania weekend Ring of Honor show six days after this, main evented by the long-awaited (to some people probably?) Cody Rhodes vs. Kenny Omega singles match, but seeing as that match was itself a prelude to the main event of New Japan’s now annual summer show in America, it is effectively just the first of a few build up matches for the Omega/Rhodes match that’s really going to count. The goal is what it always is here, offer up a little peak of the thing, have the villain evade truly getting his ass beat, and leave people wanting to see the singles match.

That’s not really what happens, at least not on my end as a viewer, because Cody Rhodes vs. Kenny Omega is actually the worst pairing in this match by a not insignificant margin.

It isn’t even that they do anything wrong either.

Chemistry’s weird, right?

That thing that just clicks or immediately connects between people or ideas cannot be forced or taught or manipulated. You can make things better with shortcuts, this match even benefits from the (accidental) use of professional wrestling’s most enduring shortcut. Still, not everything that should work does work. Some things that shouldn’t work, or that seem less obvious, simply do. Cody Rhodes and Kenny Omega do not Have It together, despite a mutual flair for the incredibly dramatic, and the long storyline between them that makes up so much of this match.

However, every other pairing in this match really really works.

Inexplicably (see above), Kota Ibushi and Cody Rhodes simply work together. Likewise, both Hangman Page combinations are genuinely really good here, to the point where despite the actual goal here, the ROH match in six days I leave this wanting to see more of is actually Hangman Page vs. Kota Ibushi, nevermind that Hangman Page vs. Kenny Omega here is better than their more famous AEW Title work years later also. This is not to say Omega vs. Cody is bad, the snippets we get here are honestly better than I remember either of their singles matches being (it helps not going 35+ minutes, weirdly), but it is also also just the least interesting piece of this.

Speaking mechanically of the match as a whole, generally, the match is a really really well constructed fireworks show.

Yet again, a Kota/Cody meeting seems to find some bridge between Cody-ism (old school wrestling ideas but, as Cody is a WWE system guy through and through, without the best idea of how to 100% pull them off) and what the Lovers do best (really cool moves, melodrama). You get your basic kind of tag structure here, cool moves at the start before Cody uses a chair for the cut off spot, and then a real fun parade of sick spots, tinged with character work, before one real big setpiece and then a finish to further the story. It’s a very easy sort of thing to like, and when carried off by four wrestlers who are either great at the flashier aspects of the thing and/or who try really hard in other ways, it works.

It also helps that, at the start of the finishing run during Kota Ibushi’s great hot tag (something he has shown a real gift for in this Golden Lovers reunion year), Cody Rhodes gets busted open over the left eye, and it soon turns into a real gusher. This isn’t a match about blood loss and it is never even a thing that either Kenny nor Kota really goes after, and it would be more useful on any of the other three given that Cody is the central antagonist, but few things make a match feel bigger than some quality blood loss, and this is some QUALITY blood loss.

All the twists and turns the match has to offer in the back third just work a little better and carry a little more impact when aided by the easy visual charm of a man’s face covered in blood.

Kenny takes the big table bump off of the apron, not for anything Cody does but instead for Hangman’s Yakuza Kick to knock him off the ropes in a nice little rub, and against the two, Ibushi can only last so long. In his distraction with Hanger, Cody is able to roll him up with a big handful of trunks, and steals the thing while slightly getting revenge for the absolute ass beating he took in the Tokyo Dome three months prior.

The match fails to accomplish maybe its number one clearly stated goal, but given that it wound up being great anyways when it very easily could not have been, or could have been a far weaker effort than it was and given that this was a match with far more to offer than I had remembered, I think we’re all capable of a little forgiveness.

***

Bullet Club and/or Mount Rushmore and/or Mount Rushmore 2.0 (Adam Cole/The Young Bucks) vs. Ricochet/Matt Sydal/Will Ospreay, PWG Battle of Los Angeles 2016 Night Two (9/3/2016)

(photo credit, as always with PWG photos, to Mark Nolan Photography)

Sometimes, I’m a little confused about what it is you, The Readers, either want or expect out of me. There are commission requests every now and then that baffle me, either leaving me wondering why someone thinks I would like this or a feeling right around the corner from that, wondering why you needed me to tell you something was bad. There’s a compliment implicit in that, I suppose, but that same feeling of confusion when grappling with what I want or what I feel, and what I have in my mind as someone else’s expectations of what I’m going to think about something.

I feel like a lot of you either want or expect me to hate this, and I get it.

Really, I do.

Within the pantheon of every match to get a Meltzer five boy before this and all the better matches that didn’t — specifically all of the many PWG matches like this over the last half decade plus that failed to garner the same accolades because one old bitch couldn’t get his ass in the building during the actual peak of the company — it’s something of a curiosity. A real outlier. It’s easy to get worked up about this match because of the rating it received and the acclaim that goes with a thing like that, especially if one was a longer term fan of all of these guys. With the Bucks especially, it’s (or was) this sort of avatar for the turn they’ve taken in the last year or more, focusing more on schtick and the sort of mindless displays people always accused them of without actually watching, in a slow departure from their 2011-2014 peak.

Beyond the critical reception, it is a match that seems to dare people to hate it at points. Unashamedly nutty, as if they realized the potential for absolute nonsense that existed here, and turning the dial up to 22. It is an ambitious match, if not in the way that we often think of ambition, and not all of it works. There are some really really ridiculous choices made and then there’s something like Ricochet taking a full on backflip on the head bump off a simple upkick counter to a spot where he ducks his head too early after sending Adam Cole into the ropes. It’s a silly and ridiculous match in almost every way possible, and being yet another match where Cole and mainly the Bucks somehow get applauded for being the most annoying people in the entire world is a dizzying sort of a thing, Reseda having fully become this vile heel crowd right at the same time as PWG’s largely lost whatever heart that it had left, as the results of the tournament around this show.

It’s an easy match to get mad at, for any number of reasons.

And yet it also kind of just fucking rules.

While it is a gleeful sort of a nonsense, presenting the wildest stuff in the world as proudly as possible, there’s also a real structure and flow here that I didn’t remember so much of at the time. A lot of that’s schtick from the bad guys, but it doesn’t go on forever like a lot of their other schtick work does, and there’s a real motor to them otherwise. In 2016 especially, it is easy to see when Cole and the Bucks really give a shit, and this is the most they seem to have really given a shit all year. Even if it’s not quite on the level of the original run 2013-2014 Mount Rushmore stuff, it’s so much more than they’ve been doing. It’s not the most complex thing in the world, annoying shitheels getting overconfident and getting owned, but there’s a joy to it that — when it happens in a match like this, that escalates right, that never does anything TOO stupid, and that obeys some basic rules of construction — I find just charming enough to work.

It helps as well that this match always obeys the central conceit and core logic of a match like this.

This match is about fireworks. It’s about the early explosions, trying to limit the flow and stem the tide of more explosive offense, and eventually not being able to. It’s about real shitters trying to hang in a match like that down the stretch, only to be both slowly overwhelmed in a longer term sense and then quickly shut down entirely in a few key moments. Most importantly, it’s a match about cool offense in which the coolest offense in the entire match ends the match, and that is so important. There’s no awkward interruption in that process, no highlight that comes too early and that nothing else can top, just a smooth process leading to the brightest light and the loudest sound that had in the arsenal.

Ospreay intercepts a Cutler Driver with a springboard cutter from the other side, in a spot not seen in close to a decade since the Briscoes, setting up a SSP version of the Meltzer Driver, before a Shooting Star Press in stereo plus one ends the match. A perfect little flurry, sure to both make the sorts of people who would never like this at all absolutely frothing mad and make everyone else shriek in delight at at least one of those spots (I got to two, the SSP Meltzer Driver is a bad one), and a perfect ending for a sort of match designed with those two goals in mind.

Wildly overrated at the time, a deeply annoying piece of Disc Horse for a while there, but I cannot deny its brighter moments, and much like the Bucks’ success rate with double teams, this is like 85% brighter moments. In the wake of the many many worse matches like this that lack both its structure and its charm only to be even more widely revered, I can’t help but look back a little more fondly on this as the years go by.

Quaint, in its own way.

***1/4

AJ Styles/Kenny Omega vs. Shinsuke Nakamura/YOSHI-HASHI, NJPW New Years Dash (1/5/2016)

Famous for all that comes after the bell, but in between those bells, this whips a ton of ass.

AJ Styles leaves New Japan with another great performance, getting the most out of a real average wrestler in YOSH-HASHI while leading the majority of the match’s control segment, delivering a few more great minutes against Nakamura, before setting Omega up perfectly for his breakout pinfall win. Nakamura isn’t exactly leaving after this match, he has his own beautiful exit to see through, but he’s good here in all the same ways. It’s a match, in general, that benefits a ton from its position in the middle of the card, getting to get in and out in something like fifteen minutes, resulting in a real lean sort of a thing.

Nobody benefits from the lack of excess and fat here more than Omega.

It’s the perfect match for Kenny to really break out in, shaped as a match and personally assisted by two different all-world level wrestlers (even if Nakamura’s time as such will be over by the end of the month), so that Kenny can look as good as possible. A shorter match based entirely around action, allowing the new kid to throw a bunch of huge bombs out there as the stars clear out and give him the floor.

AJ and Omega gang up on Nakamura at the end, and it’s too much. YOSHI-HASHI shows flashes of his future career-defining moment by falling flat on his face — only metaphorically this time, at least — and is easily kept at bay. AJ lands the Pele, setting up a poison rana from Ken, and then the One Winged Angel for a real emphatic win.

Secretly one of the most fun matches New Japan ran all year.

(as you know, after the match, Kenny Omega turns on AJ Styles and the Bullet Club ejects its all-time best member. He cuts a bad promo about it after, assuming control, and also naming the Omega/Bucks group “The Elite”, which is obviously important, if not also an incredibly embarrassing e-fed ass name. To Kenny’s credit, he toned down a lot of the bad heel stuff in this initial ascension, but nobody can hide forever. Coming months will reveal the massive downgrade that this is, in between all the annoying Elite six man tags and the bad singles matches before the G1 megapush, but yes, obviously, it is a downgrade.

AJ Styles brought an air of legitimacy to his matches that Kenny Omega rarely even comes close to on his best day, making everything feel bigger and also more dignified. Better at everything mechanically, but also much smarter, rarely doing things that don’t make sense on some level and having a great feel for slowly escalating a match without any real excess to it. With Kenny in the role instead, things shift more to accommodate him, and matches involving the top foreigner begin to become much dumber and longer. It’s a maximalist style of wrestling that does a whole lot less for me than AJ’s more measured approach, but maybe appeals much more strongly to people discovering wrestling outside of the mainstream for the first time, and maybe that is the point and where things were always heading anyways.)

(the match still really really really rocks though.)

***1/4

 

Bullet Club (AJ Styles/The Young Bucks) vs. Team AAA (Aero Star/Drago/Fenix), CHIKARA King of Trios 2015 Night Three (9/6/2015)

This was the final of the 2015 King of Trios tournament.

At the time, this was regarded as something of a disappointment, and so I had actually never seen it until right now (or, October 20th, 2015, for those reading in the future).

While I won’t go that far, it’s not hard to see why other people thought that. Combine the killer run that AJ and the Bucks had been on as a trio and as individual acts and pair it up against the Lucha Underground trio only a month after that landmark first season came to an end AND given the hype their recent PWG weekend had garnered. People seemed to expect some all time barnburner, but it’s 2015, and nobody on this level is going to go nuts in CHIKARA anymore. That’s kind of the trade off. You maybe only get this in CHIKARA, but you still get the sort of a house show effort that stars are going to put in on a 2015 CHIKARA show.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad match though or that it’s not a good little match.

Not getting the hardest effort version of a thing doesn’t mean the thing you do get is inherently bad.

This is no epic, but it is just a fun little match with a nice story to tell.

I’ve always been someone very interested in house show or smaller show level performances from guys, mostly because of how revealing they are. Who gives a shit and who doesn’t, but also the ways in which that’s reflected in the match. While neither AJ or the Bucks are breaking out a lot of dives or things off the top, or doing much beyond a B level heel performance, that’s still really good. The Bucks bother less with the schtick now, stooge a lot, and AJ joins them in that. It’s a fun change of pace for the usually very serious AJ Styles at this point, stooging and playing a fool early on like he hasn’t in a while.

As they’ve spent all weekend demonstrating, the three luchadors once again have a much more interesting and effective match when faced with this contrast. The Bullet Club team is better than any other at repeatedly stifling them, leaping on each new entry into the match as they come on, but having to do more and more each time to stop them. Eventually, they can’t. The kicker is then that, for the first time in the tournament, it’s not immediately over within a minute or two of Team AAA finally getting free and loose and going wild. It’s not a perfect match, but it is picture perfect tournament wrestling, building up something for three matches and then giving the biggest challenge yet in the finals.

The final third or so is pretty awesome, if not out of this world great. You don’t get EVERYTHING, but there’s still a lot, and almost all of it is very very fun. Some unfortunate slip ups do happen, but they’re all covered up especially well, typically by an all-time master at hiding the mistakes of faster junior heavyweights in AJ Styles. The Bullet Club team succeeds in the ways they always do, but they’re always cut off before the second or third thing in a row. The key is what it always is, and that’s splitting the Bucks apart in crucial moments. The luchador contingent is able to do that, and after doing their crowding spots to Nick Jackson, Fenix uses the rope walk springboard 450 Splash to win.

If not all that it could be, still a more coherent and thus better match than virtually every other time that Fenix and the Bucks met. Having never expected anything going in, it’s a match that did more for me than I would have imagined.

three boy

Bullet Club (AJ Styles/The Young Bucks) vs. The Kingdom (Adam Cole/Mike Bennett/Matt Taven), ROH Best in the World 2015 (6/19/2015)

Largely a retread of the surprisingly fun match from the month prior.

It’s better and worse in some ways.

Worse because Terminal 5 in New York City is nowhere near the venue that the ECW Arena is. It has a higher ceiling and sound has a way of disappearing much easier. It not only means the crowd sounds less hot than the probably are, let alone than they were in May, but also that shots delivered in the ring sound less impactful than the might in another venue. The result is that matches in Terminal 5, during the few years in which Ring of Honor held shows here, tended to never quite be all that they had the potential to be and rarely achieved anything beyond a certain base level of greatness. The lone exception is the main event of this show, but that was a match built up and promoted so well that it would have worked just about anywhere.

The match is also lesser for the most simple reason that it’s been done before. The order of some things is changed and there are minor changes, but this is not a great enough match up for that not to matter in some way.

The positive change comes in the final minutes though, as Adam Cole gets stuck alone because his partners are total losers. He can’t do it on his own, but trying and failing earnestly and honestly is the most interesting thing he’s done in the ring in ROH in a while now, especially now against the odds and not just one on one. It’s a rare protagonist facing performance from Cole at this point and like when he did this in the second singles match he had against AJ Styles, it’s novel and unique enough to make the match more interesting. It’s hard to tell if it’s just the novelty of that change or if Cole is actually better at this point as a babyface in the ring, but something about this performance and the run it kicks off simply works. ROH won’t run with it for long enough without fucking it up, but it works.

An unnecessary sequel to a surprise hit, but not one wholly absent of value all the same.

AJ Styles/The Young Bucks vs. Kazuchika Okada/Rappongi Vice, ROH Global Wars 2015 Night Two (5/16/2015)

New Japan tricks ROH into running a Road to Dominion 7.5 match as the main event of the final show of the tour, but it doesn’t matter because it whips ass. Not as much ass as it was reported to whip at the time, but you look at the people who had this match and you can all connect the dots on that yourselves.

In this match, they do ten million things.

Something like nine and a half million of them absolutely rule.

It’s all empty calories, but as long as you know that, there’s nothing wrong with it.

***

The Bullet Club (AJ Styles/The Young Bucks/Karl Anderson/Doc Gallows) vs. Team ROH (Roderick Strong/The Briscoes/War Machine), ROH Global Wars 2015 Night One (5/15/2015)

A true banger and one of the better pure no-frills fireworks shows in recent memory.

There’s a lot here that seems like it shouldn’t come together quite as well as it does. Big Bullet Club tags in ROH beyond the core Styles/Bucks trio rarely come together as more than a collection of bits, War Machine aren’t totally there yet, and it’s a match in which Doc Gallows is a participants. So a lot can go wrong.

However, nothing really does.

This isn’t to say it’s some work of genius or that everyone is on their best behavior. It’s just so relatively compact and there’s so little waste that if anything doesn’t work, the match immediately shifts to something that does. Mechanically, it’s just about perfect in all the ways that really count, thanks to effectively just being AJ/Bucks vs. Roddy/Briscoes for at least half of the match. In terms of the construction of the thing as a whole, it’s as great as it ever could be.

In fact, it’s the best assembled multi man tag in wrestling since The Shield broke up.

The thing is just air tight.

Doc Gallows is only asked to do ninety seconds worth of wrestling in total. Karl Anderson and War Machine aren’t anywhere near as useless but they’re not asked to contribute much until it becomes a fireworks show in the last third of the match. The foundational aspects are also handled perfectly, opting for a double control segment match on account of how popular the Bullet Club are at this point with the ROH audience (or at least AJ Styles and the Bucks). Those segments are left in the hands of masters on both ends, with Roderick Strong first as the man in peril with the top trio handling things and then with one of the Jacksons getting their asses whipped by Roddy and the boys. It’s tried and tested on both ends, and delivers just as well as it ever did, if not even better.

The final fireworks show is then out of this world great and the real impressive part of the whole thing.

It’s a victory in every possible sense. In terms of execution, everyone is perfect. Roderick Strong is again the best wrestler in the match, and he’s allowed to go on several classic Roddy runs of offense. In terms of construction, it’s just as perfect. There are three or four big moments outside, two with someone coming off the top onto a pile, and they’re all given just enough space from each other that each stands out and blows everyone away. Both in terms of the big floor spots and the match in general, each things gets bigger, moves faster, and feels more urgent. It all builds to one of the most satisfying possible conclusions, in which one of the world’s most annoying men, Matt Jackson, is caught alone and gets his ass turned inside out and then handed to him. He takes the End of Heartache, Jay Driller, and Mark Briscoe’s Froggy Bow all consecutively, and the dream team takes it home. It ends as any fireworks should, with all the best stuff in a row.

A road map to follow for matches like this in the future, but one sadly lost somewhere in the glove box.

One of the most purely fun matches of 2015.

***1/4

Bullet Club (AJ Styles/The Young Bucks) vs. The Kingdom (Adam Cole/Mike Bennett/Matt Taven), ROH War of the Worlds 2015 Night Two (5/13/2015)

A continuation of the previous night, as well as of the truly unfortunate Bullet Club vs. Kingdom feud from New Japan, revolving around Karl Anderson and the NJPW camera crew being super horny for Maria and Karl trying to cheat on his (hot Asian) wife.

It’s fun.

This is definitely a match with some flaws. Matt Taven and Mike Bennett do more than a little bit of offense, The Young Bucks lean further into pure schtick than ever before, some real convoluted stuff happens, and the ending minute of the match sees Maria Kanellis eating a triple superkick. Worst of all, Mike Bennett spends several minutes of this match trying to actually do bits as if he’s a funny or engaging presence all on his own.

However, so much more goes right than wrong here.

Mostly, it’s that this Bullet Club trio is too good to deny. This is still when the Bucks had the correct idea of the right schtick to action ratio, and where their cool ideas were still just cool enough to work. It succeeds in the back half when it becomes a wild spotfest, and given how often the Bucks were in six or eight mans in later years in ROH that had better talent against them and failed to be as great as this was, it’s hard to say that they didn’t have a better handle on it here. AJ Styles obviously helps out too, always injecting some legitimacy into it and anchoring the Young Bucks in something a lot closer to reality. Without that tether, things fall off the rails, and AJ Styles makes sure everyone stays on the track and gets where they need to go.

To be fair, this isn’t entirely one sided. Adam Cole hits a similar balance to the Bucks, engaging in fun schtick like shouting out Mount Rushmore and trying to align with the Bucks as a diversion. The glee in which he cheats and pulls off cheap shots is also unparalleled and it’s part of what makes him so much fun in spite of all his weaknesses prior to his brain totally melting at some point in the next twelve months.

Mostly though, it’s that AJ and the Bucks don’t miss as a trio.

This is the ultimate test of that, with an opposing team that is two-thirds useless, and they pass it pretty easily.

An exceedingly fun match, and an overall victory for ROH and the atmosphere of these shows, because you would be absolutely correct to write this off on paper.

***

AJ Styles/The Young Bucks vs. Matt Sydal/ACH/Cedric Alexander, ROH Wrestling (2/14/2015)

I love this match.

It might be the best example ever for AJ Styles and The Young Bucks as an all-time great trio.

There’s an argument to be made that the Bucks mimic their third man in matches like this, and in general, that they mimic their frequent partner (six man or otherwise) at any given time.

There’s a reason they were arguably at their best when with or against Kevin Steen and AJ Styles, and why they’ve largely gotten worse and worse (save 2018, in which there was an unfortunately brief but concentrated effort by the Bucks to have different sorts of matches as if to prove a point) since AJ left and they’ve primarily teamed with Kenny Omega and against far worse tag tams on average.

I’m not sure if they’re better than the Steen/Bucks trio in PWG. That brought a sort of manic energy out of the Bucks. I really like the Adam Cole/Young Bucks trio, as they all brought out the best and worst in each other. However, the best thing that AJ Styles does with the Young Bucks and what makes this my favorite trio of theirs is that AJ has a way of keeping them honest. There’s schtick, but they never get lost in it like they sometimes can with the others. There’s never too much going on. AJ Styles is one of the best ever at balancing unbelievably cool stuff with a sense of logic throughout everything, and The Young Bucks largely take their cues from him in a match like this.

The argument to be made is that this is a clear showcase match. That’s not wrong.

At no point in this does it feel like the Sydal/ACH/Alexander trio is going to win. They’re real far from being total schmucks, they’re three of the very best in the entire world, but they’re always capable in this. It’s less like the clowning of guys that we’ll often see in the future from The Elite and far more that AJ Styles is maybe the best wrestler in the world, effectively carries himself like the best wrestler alive, and The Young Bucks are his tag team counterpart. They simply feel unbeatable as a trio in the way that few trios in wrestling history every really have. It’s not some judgment on the trio against them that they’re unable to ever close it out, because on this level, who could?

Most importantly, it’s totally god damned INSANE.

In a few months, I wouldn’t be shocked to write 2015 A YEAR IN LISTS and have all six of these men in the top twenty five WOTY (albeit in five slots). I wouldn’t be shocked if The Young Bucks win Tag Team of the Year, although it would be their last for a few years. Simply put, this succeeds through force of talent and some Newton’s Law shit. It’s easier for this to be great than to be not, and matches in ROH always seem to go the easiest route. Everyone goes completely insane for fifteen to twenty minutes and when the people going insane are not only some of the best in the world, but in a few cases (AJ, Sydal) some of the best wrestlers of all time, it goes off without a hitch. It’s loud, it’s crisp, it’s exciting, it’s surprising sometimes, but it all just works perfectly.

It’s as great as a match like this (pure showcase, not a ton of story behind it) can really be.

It comes down to teamwork, as it should. the Bucks take out ACH and Alexander, still inexperienced and excitable enough to make mistakes. Matt Sydal doesn’t make those mistakes, but his steady veteran presence doesn’t do shit when it’s three on one. He eats an assisted Cutler Driver, fed back into AJ holding him upside down for the Bucks to double superkick, before AJ hits the Styles Clash for the win. It’s a sequence that got a lot of social media play at the time and rightfully so, but that I really still love. There’s a line somewhere between dominant heels showing off and something going too far, and this is just exactly on the right line.

It’s the true gift of the AJ & Bucks trio to constantly end up exactly on the right side of that line.

A god damner and one of my favorite television matches of the decade.

***1/2