The Wildly Incomplete History of Aces & 8s (2012-13)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from friend of the program Eamonn. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

I’m not sure how to approach this.

While advertised on Youtube as complete, this is really far from complete given the lack of full matches or entire promos/segments shown, but you get a general sense of the thing over the three (3) plus hours, Jesus Christ, that this goes. The only major problem is that there are no labeled dates or anything, so it’s hard to get any real sense of time for this thing, but mostly, it works.  Recapping everything is lame and something I never want to do here, especially when it is mostly angles, but here are some things that stand out.

• Before anything else, it is always a little bit of a mindfuck to remember that TNA attendances didn’t fall off until 2014 or 2015 really. A lot of these shows are maybe not in the biggest places, but they are in full scale and mostly full venues, and with something like Lockdown 2013, drawing like seven thousand people, or whatever the UK tours did. A reminder that while things got bad about when you remember they did, something was still working here through like the middle of the decade. Although, really, we’re probably looking at at least part of what helped change that (I mean losing the TV deal and the talent they did in 2014-5 is probably way more of it, but nothing is nothing).
• Immediately, as in like the first time they debut to attack Sting, one of them is clearly Luke Gallows
• There’s a great bit during a segment with Sting, Kurt Angle, Austin Aries, and Bobby Roode where Roode’s mic goes out, and (a) Aries immediately slips in by saying they gave him the worst mic because he isn’t the champion anymore & (b) where Angle manages to give him the microphone but without being overly cooperative about it, in two great examples of going with something in-character so it doesn’t look staged or phony.
• The Roode/Storm feud really was just so great, man.
• In a genre of entertainment full of some truly bad acting, Brooke Hogan is a real contender for being the worst actor in the history of pro wrestling.
• Recurring bit: Sting gives this so much more than the material deserves, not just in terms of babyface promos, but also doing a Nolan era Batman voice during backstage segments.
• When he returns after the initial attack to hit one of them with a bat, Hulk Hogan barks and snarls like a dog for some reason???
• I liked how they used the James Storm red herring not only as the usual thing in an angle like this, but also to get the “they ran away from [x guy], he must be in on it” thing out of the way, although it always felt obvious after a certain point, and maybe in the beginning just due to aesthetics and roster composition that the leader was Bully Ray.

• Shaq makes an appearance to have his man’s back, as he can never fully resist the lure of Florida-based one-location-centric number two in the country wrestling promotions.
• Sadly, as nobody in TNA knows ball, there is no segment where Charles Barkley joins Aces & 8s.
• At some point, Sting and Hulk Hogan get kidnapped for a monologue by a guy with a voice device, which sounds a whole lot like Eric Bischoff.
• It is still Luke Gallows doing it so whatever but I can’t entirely hate someone getting hit in the hand with a hammer.
• Shocked, SHOCKED, to find Bruce Pritchard popping up during all this.
• Wes Brisco and Garrett Bischoff. Jesus Christ.
• Great “wrestlers are DUMB” bit where Bully Ray and Brooke Hogan get caught kissing on camera at the end of the show one week, and then Bully is shocked one week later to find out that people know about it, as if they live in a TV show and have no concept of the outside world. Alternatively, a great self-own by TNA to have one of its wrestlers seemingly assume nobody actually watches the show.
• In the same vein as “Brooke Hogan is the worst actress in wrestling history”, there may not be a worse idea ever than “Bully Ray/Brooke Hogan romance angle”. Even as an obvious ruse, it’s one of the hardest to watch things I can ever remember seeing. Uncomfortable and weird and wrong on a cellular level.
• Aces and Eights Jones
• At some point skipped by the video, Mr. Anderson joined. COMPLETE MY ASS.
• The reveal of Taz as a member during the wedding — taking off his suit coat to reveal the vest underneath was an Aces and Eights one — is genuinely actually good pro wrestling bullshit.
• To be fair also, making a bit out of Hogan’s known nepotism — immediately giving Bully Ray the next title shot as soon as he was his son-in-law — is a fun little thing.
• D’Lo Brown, upon joining, says he was told “you will never walk alone” when he joined Aces and Eights. Not to make accusations, but I think this means everyone from Liverpool is in Aces and Eights. Fitting that TNA was using a blue color scheme at this point in opposition to these ghouls.
• The garbage throwing after the long long long overdue Bully Ray reveal feels very manufactured, all coming at once in too fast a fashion as if there was a signal, but it’s also nice to see people throw trash again.
• There’s a long segment where Bully explains all the stuff after the turn, and it’s nice that not every plan went perfectly, like how he was originally supposed to win the Bound For Glory Series when A&8 attacked Jeff Hardy, but Jeff beat him anyways, so they adjusted it, and things like that.

• TNA did it first.
• AUGUST 1 WARNING
• AUGUST 1 WARNING
• AUGUST 1 WARNING
• IDENTITY REVEALED?!??!
• Forgot that Tito Ortiz cost Chis Sabin the TNA World Title
• MY EVIL WAAAAAAAAAAAAYYS
• Brooke Tessmacher respectfully hello
• This all really fell apart once they actually did the heel turn, since Bully Ray just bullying different loser members of the group and them having, like, actual wrestling matches, absolutely sucks. Super boring wrestling TV.
• As a way to really nail down how and why this fell apart, during the go-home face to face bit between Bully and AJ Styles before the blow-off, Bully says as seriously as possible, “I AM THE DARTH VADER OF THE WRESTLING BUSINESS AND YOU AIN’T NO FRICKIN’ LUKE SKYWALKER”.
• The funeral is still so great.

• Fresh off of crafting the hottest vaporwave albums of the mid 2010s (if you know you know), Mike Tenay shows up with a perfect funeral look.
• Samoa Joe delivers his eulogy while eating a dinner roll
• Appropriately, this ends as it spent most of its time, with Bully Ray interrupting to try and swear vengeance like a badass, but sounding like the biggest loser alive.

 

So anyways, Aces and Eights.

It’s not good.

Very obviously Eric Bischoff (more than likely) or Bruce Pritchard or someone else higher up there at the time saw SONS OF ANARCHY a year or two after its peak (the first two seasons, but the quality doesn’t completely fall off a cliff until the fifth season, which hilariously began early on in this storyline), and tried to make a wrestling story out of it.

The failure is obvious.

Like anything, casting matters, and they blew it. Bully Ray, while objectively on a career solo run in his 2011-13 stuff, was not up for this. The romantic angle obviously and especially, feeling like he was in a role originally written for someone 10-15 years younger, but also as the leader of a thing. Trying to fit into whatever this was, his delivey was weird and was more liable to say something impossibly lame in an eye rolling sort of way than anything to really make you want to see someone kick his ass, which was the case more before he joined than after. The rest of the group was also made up either of losers, nepotism hire losers, or Mr. Anderson past his sell by date. In-ring wrestling being great is not the point in TNA past like 2009, but even then, it’s a gang of losers, many of whom came in for this story, so there’s never really a reason given to care about things like Bully getting meaner to the younger guys or conflict with Mike Knox or Luke Gallows.

It also gets WAY less interesting once Bully has the title and the have power. Up through then, quirks aside, it is at least something half entertaining or interesting. When the switch flips, it is suddenly boring heel stable booking, with one of the worst top heel stable rosters in the history of wrestling on this level. Things last forever, much like the build to the Bully heel turn itself, with TNA seemingly hamstrung by a cutback on the pay-per-views the were running beginning in 2013, along with the weakness of the roster not really allowing them to stretch it in any sort of satisfying way in between obvious points like the Bully turn and title win and AJ Styles’ return and saving of TNA, kind of blowing a feel-good moment like Chris Sabin winning the World Title on a one month thank you feeling reign that had a clear expiration date, which also had the effect of making AJ’s win feel less impressive too.

Generally speaking, it’s a decent enough obvious story, but with poor casting and an artificially long life so as to stretch it to major wrestling events, on top of also being a very silly idea. That is, of course, if I have to be serious about the issues with it.

I do not have to be serious though.

The real issue with Aces & Eights — beyond that it was riding an already improbable Bully Ray hot streak that had begun to fade by the time it began and the other problems — is that given the source material, there were so many funnier bits to do. D’Lo Brown or Taz doing the Bobby Elvis bit. Brooke Tessmacher trying to kill AJ Styles’ wife with a meat hammer in a kitchen sink. Marilyn Manson fucking D’Lo Brown in prison. Other ethnic stables as stand-ins for the Mayans and Niners, like idk the Beat Down Clan or the evil ninja stable with SANADA from the next year. Have Luke Gallows fall in love with a trans woman played by Walton Goggins. An English guy pretending to be American but who slips in and out of the fake accent so often that it sometimes happens in the same sentence. CCH Pounder helping take them down. They never once get involved with the cartel. If someone writing the show had any courage, a la Kurt Sutter, they would have written themselves into the gang, only to be stuck in prison and have enemies of the gang gradually cut his eyes out, assault him, cut his fingers off, have him bite his own tongue out not to rat on Bully Ray, and then also die. The biggest failure, of course, was that they never got involved with a Fit Finlay led group that would kidnap an infant, leading to several months of shows overseas, where TNA already was going, during which the A&8s theme would have had an extremely poorly done Irish folk style cover.

Essentially what I mean is that this takes its inspiration from a widely popular and genuinely insane show, and doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Having said all of that, I don’t hate it.

Part of that is that it happened during a point in my life that, when looking back, makes it very hard to really hate anything.

Following TNA being mostly a good promotion in 2012, so much so that I felt obliged to write about them in the Promotion of the Year section in that year’s YIL entry, I got back into a dirty habit of watching it most weeks. Again, it was not GREAT wrestling TV, but on a night when the television was already on due to NBC sitcoms, it was an easy habit to get into. When I went to college, as this mostly happened in my freshman year at God’s own Western Michigan University, that habit sort of fell away, but it was replaced with another habit or routine that I have a much greater fondness for. On Saturday nights, particularly in the spring semester, usually either before or after going out (not ever memory is in crisp 4K, excuse me), I had this habit of watching a SyFy original movie late at night while talking to the gang in an oft-mentioned MSN chat (may have been a Trillian chat by that point), and then watching a TNA replay after that. It wasn’t great, again, I am not endorsing this run of programming or recommending it, but it was a silly habit I had up through when AJ Styles left. It was part of a routine at a time in life when one remembers routines, and although yes, it was all very very stupid, it was stupid in a way I look on fondly, especially so when it is not directly in front of my face.

Part of that is also because, at this point, I have a hard time really hating anything TNA does. Their bed is what they made years and years ago. Lie down with dogs, play stupid games, buy the ticket and take the ride, whatever nice little phrase you want to use to essentially say the same thing. It’s both a little too silly and charming to be mad at, and comes from a company that seems almost fated to have had the history that it did. What we have instead is a goofy little thing, maybe not best summed up in a three hour video (Christ), but as a funny little remember when.

For anyone who wants to ever see this too, here you go.

The Wolves vs. The Hardy Boyz vs. Team 3D, TNA Impact – No Surrender (9/17/2014)

This was a Ladder Match, and the third match in a special challenge series. If either The Hardy Boyz or Team 3D were to win (as each had won one match in this challenge series), they would have won two matches of three to date, and would win the Wolves’ TNA Tag Team Titles.

The match itself isn’t amazing, but it’s real fun

It’s very much a TV kind of a ladder match, and one that isn’t the main event of the show at that. A lot of really really fun and entertaining stuff happens. There’s an argument to be made that it’s very much a TLC Three (not TLC III, despite Davey being Davey) retread, but the Wolves are so wildly different from Edge & Christian that that just feels like someone saying something to try and diminish great work. Davey and Eddie are different and the match celebrates that difference. Their success is through striking and traditional wrestling, rather than the other two teams being way more comfortable in these elements. If someone REALLY wanted to participate in some grade A fanwank, you could even say Eddie and Davey are a little reticent of the ladders after their one experience in a Ladder War in 2009 ROH in this same building. I won’t, but I want you to know that the option is out there for any of you enterprising perverts.

What helps the match most of all is that everyone in this clearly genuinely does give a shit about it being great. The Wolves go nuts in a big spot, both of the Hardys continue this weird and wonderful year of return, and even Bully and D-Von do as much as they still can at this point. There’s a genuinely charming sort of an effort to the entire thing that really makes the match.

In the end, Jeff Hardy takes a truly heinous bump, but in a far more grotesque way than any table setpiece from the legendary series at the turn of the millennium. Richards tips a ladder over, but Jeff doesn’t QUITE make the flip over and just comes down on top of the ladder, entirely on his ribs and chest. It would be horrifying if a twenty year old took it, let alone Jeff Hardy in 2014. There may be bigger things they can do in the match, but it’s also next to impossible to do something that’s as realistic and brutal as that. You should always end on or close to the high note, and this is that for the match. Eddie Edwards follows up by pulling down both titles, and the Wolves finally take one.

The series ends 1-1-1, forcing a fourth match weeks later, which is their most highly thought of match. Before watching all of this, I assumed it was overhyped TNA nonsense like the Gail Kim vs. Taryn Terrell match. After watching all three matches, I’m genuinely excited for the fourth. It’s hard to think of a more complimentary statement than that.

three way

 

Austin Aries vs. Bully Ray, TNA Final Resolution 2012 (12/9/2012)

The roles are reversed now, and if not for a very bad and lazy finish, this would be even better than their more famous Sacrifice match.

Bully Ray is a natural heel, so he’s out of his element. Aries is also a natural heel and a better heel in-ring worker at this point (and all time) than Bully Ray though, so it works. He puts on another really incredible bumping performance. It’s all theatrical and huge in the Hennig/Michaels sort of tradition, but just barely stays on the side of that that isn’t so obviously fake and that still makes the match more interesting. At this point, Aries is established as a heavyweight winner too, so they can just have them work without any underdog angle to it. He’s still a cheater because he’s a coward and for all his horrible brain viruses, Aries totally gets how this role is supposed to work. Some incredible bumps and even better cut offs, as much of a tour de force as Aries’ work against Jeff Hardy was.

Bully Ray gets busted open outside, and early on in what looks to be a terrific segment targeting the cut forehead, Bully Ray’s new beau Brooke Hogan comes out to try and plead for mercy for some reason. Aries is obviously pissed and Hulk Hogan comes out. Bully throws Aries out and has Hulk get Brooke out of there, allowing Aries to come in and low blow and roll him up for the win.

Shitty, lazy, uninspired finish that these two are definitely better than considering their match seven months prior, but the work before that was all tremendous. Classical sort of TNA thing.

***

Austin Aries vs. Bully Ray, TNA Sacrifice (5/13/2012)

The sort of great match that seems laughable to a newer fan, but yeah man, TNA got this over enough that people wanted to see Austin Aries vs. Bully Ray, and got behind Austin Aries as an underdog babyface.

It’s an easier thing to do than you think, actually. It just takes a little commitment and a lack of too many guys better than Aries on the roster, so that — aside from AJ Styles — he can work himself into a workhorse and best-on-the-roster reputation with six months of X Division title defenses. Build a guy up first as a coward, then have him successfully gut it out and do it on his own, and it’s an easy thing to support. Throw him in contrast with another heel, a much less respectable loudmouthed oaf with a horrible accent and a fucking Iron Cross on his shorts, and it’s real easy to get behind Aries for once.

It helps that he takes a real gross bump off the top into the railing and comes up baring a few nasty marks and bruises. Bump is one thing, but it’s hard to argue with the pure physical evidence.

Bully’s work on the back is routine, but it’s just nasty enough to work. Aries’ selling isn’t perfect, but it’s just good enough to work. He’s real energetic and fired up, it’s sort of stunning to see. I barely believe my eyes. TNA being TNA, it’s never entirely perfect or correct. Joseph Park comes to the front row as part of a thing he’s doing with Bully Ray, and Bully is distracted enough for Aries to make a full comeback. Brainbuster and the Last Chancery manages to get Aries the upset. It’s not quite an elevation, because Aries is already over and Bully Ray isn’t really able to give anybody a rub because it’s 2012, but it’s TNA doing the right thing, and that’s always a stunner.

Is this gonna blow you away? No. It shouldn’t, anyways. But it’s a thing done almost entirely right and another case in 2012 TNA of that happening and elevating things which have no business being good at all. It’s the sort of thing that an actual good wrestling promotion would do, elevating unlikable or over the hill talent through the strength of long term booking.

Looking back at the entire decade means looking back at the entire decade, even parts that might not make us super comfortable, including the like four or five months in 2012 when TNA somehow managed to briefly resemble a good wrestling promotion.

***

AJ Styles vs. Bully Ray, TNA Slammiversary IX (6/12/2011)

This was a Last Man Standing match. 

It’s hard to say what the most impressive AJ Styles miracle is. He’s had a lot of them. A whole lot. Random G1 miracles, Abyss in a cage, getting great matches out of Kurt Angle and Booker T in 2009, and however many he pulled in those first few years in the WWE when he still bothered to put in an A+ level effort. Any credible resume of miracles has to include this match though, because wow! 

I am not going to tell you Bully Ray is BAD. He’s a fun character during this initial 2011-2013 heel run. The sort of guy you enjoy week to week, even if his matches aren’t that good. But he’s older and worse and never really got the hang of being a singles guy for super obvious and understandable reasons, and this is so far beyond the quality of just about every other singles match with his name attached to it. He’s certainly fine in this, but it’s the most “on” that AJ Styles has been in a year and a half at this point. He’s fired up, he’s energetic, he gets to throw those delightfully rough overhand rights, he gets to bump around, and he gets to do a big time stunt. It’s the first time that AJ Styles has been his element, or anywhere near it, since Hogan and Bischoff took the reins of the company, and it’s so nice to see. As much as it helps Bully by giving him a great match and a legitimizing win in one, it’s a great reminder that AJ’s skills didn’t just atrophy between January 4th, 2010 and the end of 2013. He was still this great, even if you weren’t looking at him all the time anymore. It doesn’t matter if you see it, a tree still fell in the forest, and all of that. 

The match itself is surprisingly restrained for a Last Man Standing match this decade, but not in a bad way. “Methodical” is a cover that wrestling announcers use a lot of the time to express that a match is boring, but this is the rare match that I would call methodical without trying to be rude at all. There is a method to it. Bully Ray does not respect AJ Styles and thinks he can just beat him up casually and win this match. AJ Styles is less comfortable doing hardcore stuff than he is simply using his body in something like a normal match, even if he really does want to fight and beat Bully Ray’s ass. The lacks of bells and whistles is noticeable, but the match justifies its more spartan approach by both explaining why it happens and then gradually becoming more violent once that sort of dynamic is established, so there’s a ramp up. A slower start doesn’t bother me if it’s going somewhere, and this really does go somewhere in the end. Bully’s routine fails because AJ is tougher than him, and AJ eventually actually does beat his ass horribly. Bully winds up a bloody mess, solely through being thrown into steel things and being punched very hard in the face over and over again. Bully is fine enough in this match and smart enough to do his bits and let AJ cook, but the blood is the best part of it, so I can’t fairly say he contributed nothing. 

The finish is also surprisingly good and smart for TNA. AJ Styles gets so wrapped up in punishing this old shithead that he maybe hurts himself just as much as Bully with a pair of big risks. Following a dive off the stage and then a splash off a truss tower through a table, both men are down for the count. Bully shoves AJ forward from the ground when he’s getting up and AJ flies through the prop wall of the stage. Bully uses the railing to get up just at ten, before falling down again. AJ’s tougher than Bully though, probably tougher than him overall, but Bully is still smarter than he is and that counts for something. Is that a story I love? No. I kind of hate it. All the same, they told it incredibly well and achieved the result of this match in the least infuriating way possible, which is one of the most impressive things that can happen with TNA booking.

Give this one a shot. Not AJ’s finest miracle or even his finest miracle against an old Attitude Era guy in a TNA gimmick match, but a miracle you should witness all the same.

***1/4