The Young Bucks vs. Best Friends, ROH Honor Reigns Supreme (2/9/2018)

This was for the Bucks ROH Tag Team Titles.

Great bits about this match:

• Colt Cabana mentions our collective alma mater, Western Michigan University, on commentary
• …

rating: horse emoji 

Chuck Taylor vs Archibald Peck, CHIKARA It’s How You Play The Game (3/25/2012)

This was another commissioned review from frequent contributor Eamonn, as the snake turns back around. You can be like them and pay me to write about anything you would like also, be it a match, a series of matches, a show, or whatever. The going price is $5/match (or if you want a TV show or movie, $5 per half hour), obviously make sure I haven’t covered it before (and ideally come with a link). If that sounds like a thing you’d like to do, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and do that. If you have an idea more complex than just listing matches and multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out. 

Dirty little secret time.

Come in close, I’m gonna whisper in your ear through text.

I’ve never really loved this match. 

Put the emphasis there on “loved”, because I like it a whole lot, but being in the middle on this one has always felt like a real solitary island to be on..

For reasons that escape me, this match has always seemed to have a special place in the hearts of people who started watching CHIKARA a few years after me, or some crossover appeal with people who never did but were highly susceptible to its many charms. As someone who was starting to get out of CHIKARA before the whole Marchie Archie thing really got going, it’s always been act I liked more than loved (Handsome and Mysterious Stranger aside). It’s cute, it’s funny sometimes, but it’s not like, Los Ice Creams or Hydra, or whatever. I’ve never felt for it like that. I watched it around when it happened, thought nothing of it until whenever it achieved this status or maybe whenever I noticed it had achieved that status, and that’s always sort of confused me. A post-peak CHIKARA thing through and through.

This match is sort of a great display of why I feel like that, as they have something with some promise in Archie being depressed all match following the breakup with band girl Veronica (a wonderful longer term story that does not affect this match too much), and Chuck playing with him to liven his spirits because it’s no fun beating him like this. Unfortunately, they forget that somewhere along the way and do other bits instead, and it kind of loses this narrative focus. You can chart it together if this is the sort of thing you want to spend your time fanwanking, but when I watch it, it just doesn’t really feel like that, as the match ends on a bit (albeit a stellar one) not really related to the other ones at all. The problem I have with it, or rather, the thing that stops me from LOVING this so much as appreciating it as a nice little thing, is more that it never really comes together as anything more than a collection of bits, and certainly as not some would-be contender for comedy match of the decade, as a different Chuck Taylor match will have wrapped up nearly four years after this.

Still, as far as collections of bits go, this is at least a collection of some pretty good bits.

Obviously, there is the painting stuff everybody knows about. They wander over to the lovely paintings on the wall of the venue, after Chuck throws Archie into the painting after shouting that he’s going to drown him, thinking the painting was a window to the outside, and pose for pictures in front of them. It’s cute and funny, they’re both real likeable guys with a certain charisma and it works, especially as the payoff is Big Dust obviously betraying Archie after they pose for one together.

What they go for with the finish is another one of the louder bits, so to speak, a big silly idea, as Archie stands up on the top rope but his head moves a ceiling tile up and he pretends that he’s stuck and can’t move, until Chuck shakes him loose by shoving Bryce into the ropes, setting up a hanging Sole Food to win. Like the painting thing, it’s big and broad, but it works because of the natural charm of the two, and because, admittedly, it is a very good little bit.

What I like so much more though are the less obvious and quieter bits here.

The real gems here are things like Peck crying in the corner or Big Dust’s arms to start the match, Dust taking pity and playing dead on a delayed shoulderblock bump or faking losing a test of strength, getting Bryce and Chuck to fight each other, or the way Chuck shouts “KARATE CHOP” or “THIS PLACE IS HAUNTED”, the latter after a failed Peck springboard, which comes back around to a success later in the match. Wrestlers shouting things to be funny and crowd work in the place of other wrestling is the sort of thing that sucks so much in most independent wrestling, but Chuck Taylor is one of the few to ever do it well (also Kevin Steen, Bryan Danielson when it turned vicious, probably a few others), and to make it into a manic kind of endearing sort of a thing. Archie’s thing is funny enough, but it’s the total commitment of Chuck Taylor in a match like this in moments big and small (but especially small) that makes this so much fun.

In these better moments, the match effectively becomes the BETTER OFF DEAD (1985) of professional wrestling, with Chuck Taylor as the hot foreign exchange student who knows how to fix cars and tries to bully a recently dumped loser protagonist into being better. Unfortunately, this doesn’t end in a ski race, but the movies are better for a reason.

 

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Chuck Taylor, PWG Pushin’ Forward Back (7/7/2017)

As always with PWG, photo credit goes to Mikey Nolan Photography.

This was for Sabre Jr’s PWG World Title.

Independent of the match — what they do, how they do it, the stories, the mechanical aspects, etc. — what works so well about this match is the atmosphere. For reasons I will never understand entirely, there is a certain element of PWG crowds that is purely and simply evil by this point, and so it’s not one hundred percent in the favor of Our Hero. Outside of that rogue element though, there is such a wonderful and palpable anger at Zack Sabre Jr. for just existing. Impromptu impassioned heckles of “WE’RE TIRED OF YOUR SHIT, ZACK” and things like that, big dramatic kickout responses, and things like that. It makes the match feel like a big event and a memorable occurrence, before the qualities of the match even really come into question.

The match is pretty good, it turns out.

Comparing the two, the match in February was definitely better.

It was tighter, shorter, and had I think more of a form than this did. This had a lot more back and forth, that sort of annoying Zack Sabre Jr. match where there so obviously is a narrative, but it doesn’t seem to quite get the respect it deserves in terms of the construction of the match, as this is not really a pairing you cant just trading stuff. Chuck Taylor is not a mechanical marvel, and as always, there are some Sabre Jr. bumps and sells that are just plain weird. Zack is particularly a coward for avoiding the thumbtacks bump at the end which is clearly supposed to set up the finish, and comes of lesser for him clearly never hitting the things. Mostly though, that first match had what I felt was a significant amount more meat on the bones in terms of the narrative told, whereas I think this leans a whole lot simply on being the conclusion of a story, without filling the match up with quite as many twists and turns along the way to that conclusion.

That’s not to say this is all narrative, of course, as the performances are still great.

Relative to another Zack Sabre Jr. title switch match in 2017 where the crowd was mostly viscerally and near violently against the champion, Zack Sabre Jr. isn’t exactly Timothy Thatcher. No moment here is as cool as Thatcher finally losing his cool and shouting “I’M FUCKING WINNING”, which is why Zack’s never been as good of a wrestler as Thatcher. Zack’s big moment here, removing the bottom rope so Chuck can’t get out of holds anymore is an all-time great trick and piece of heel bullshit, but it’s a setpiece clearly plotted out in advance, rather than this guttural reaction, and there is a difference. He does, however, offer up so many cool little mean things. Gross twists and bends of Chuck’s body, forcing Chuck into giving the crowd the finger, stomping on it, and making all sorts of real mean little faces. It’s not the best heel performance of the year, it’s not even the best Zack Sabre Jr. heel performance of the year (again, see the first one), but there’s so much to like from him in this match.

Likewise, Chuck Taylor is really good here. He’s certainly not some marvel, but he lays in the elbows more than usual, breaks out a few newer tricks to sell the “tries his hardest” angle of the thing, and super impressively commits to selling his left arm in small ways all match long after a few brief moments of Sabre Jr. zeroing in on the thing. Zack loses focus, of course, but Chuck never does. It’s unintentional of course, but in a match about good and evil, it’s a funny little way that that idea is expressed. A further reinforcement of the wholly correct moral stance the match takes, that Chuck Taylor is the one of the two worth rooting for as the best professional wrestler in the match.

Mostly though, the fact that this is a great match is mostly down to the fact that they had a match that was exactly great enough in a mechanical sense to not let down the tremendous narrative work done here.

In February, Chuck Taylor went into a match and immediately betrayed a lack of confidence by trying to win in a flash, and then banked too much on the Awful Waffle, before losing because he just wasn’t used to matches like this anymore. The takeaway was that, in order to beat Zack Sabre Jr. for the PWG Title, he’d have to not only try his best, but try his best for an entire match.

That’s what the match is.

Chuck Taylor tries his hardest, and Zack Sabre Jr. grows increasingly mystified as it somehow begins to work.

The real beauty of the attack and — dare anyone say it — Chuck’s plan (????!) is that Chuck doesn’t have to figure out a way to beat Zack Sabre Jr. so much as that he has to do just enough so that he can wait for Zack Sabre Jr. to beat himself. Mostly, Chuck gets his ass kicked. He breaks out some holds and old stuff, there’s a pep in his step that is far from common, and a success long term that he didn’t show in the first match, but Zack never REALLY has trouble with him. He cuts off a classic old Kevin Steen era PWG big chair contraption spot and knocks Dust off the apron onto it. He never lets Chuck even use the thumbtacks he tries to use. Before any of that, Zack torments and pummels Chuck, with the key each time being Chuck no longer expressing frustration or panic, but laughing and daring Zack to do more.

Zack Sabre Jr. finally slips up, plays a little too long near the tacks while trying his usual submissions, only for Chuck to powerbomb him near and probably into a few thumbtacks. The execution isn’t perfect, but the idea is a phenomenal one and a complete turnaround of the first match. In his frustration, Sabre Jr. finally gets caught playing one of those away games, trying to handle magicks he himself neither properly respects, nor understands, and pays for it.

Big Dust finally reels off the Awful Waffle, this time with a better set up and a body of work leading into it, and removed, through his own hand, of his ability to use the ropes to escape, Chuck Taylor pins Zack Sabre Jr. to win the title.

As pictured in the header image/attached image for this match, Chuck has this unbelievably wide and bright and genuine feeling smile on his face at the three count, and as much as the result or Zack Sabre Jr. finally getting what’s been long overdue, it’s one of the most endearing and heartwarming sights in recent wrestling history. It’s an overwhelmingly good feeling out of a genre and out of a promotion that so rarely offers up anything like this anymore.

A better moment than a match, something I don’t mean AT ALL as an insult to either, and a situation where the former elevates the latter.

Sometimes it is more important simply to stick a simple landing than for anything else to go right, and few other matches in wrestling have had the benefit of being able to stick this specific landing like these two do. The year’s great climax, and in a year like 2017, a nice reminder that good things, some might say miracles, do occasionally still get to happen, and that every so often, the good guys do actually get to win.

Far from one of the best matches of the year, but one of the best individual pieces of pure professional wrestling to be found anywhere in the world in 2017.

***

Chuck Taylor vs. Trevor Lee, PWG Man On The Silver Mountain (6/16/2017)

As with most PWG shows, photo credit to Mikey Nolan Photography.

With PWG in the state it has fallen into, where even half promising matches on the undercard are no guarantee of greatness or even borderline greatness, we get our joys where we can.

(Or, at least we do on shows like this, main evented in half hour matches between LDRS and reDRagon, now actively booking the sorts of matches that give me nightmares in what I can only assume is a concerted effort to put on the worst main event possible before Big Dust saves the territory the next month.)

It’s not always so clear where those joys will come from, but thankfully two of independent wrestling’s more reliable wrestlers in Chuck Taylor and Trevor Lee have the sort of match that lives up to at least some shadow on the wall of what it had the potential to be. For once, a match you can expect to be great on one of these mid 2017 PWG shows actually is, even if it’s just barely over the border.

That’s not to say there’s really any fault with this match, so much as that in the opening match of the show, Trevor Lee and Chuck Taylor have the rare PWG opener that actually feels like and is wrestled like an opening match. They have a big one in them, I have the utmost confidence that — in a correct world where Trevor ever got to win the title, and ideally he’d be the one to dethrone Taylor as this evil funhouse mirror version of him — if they ever had a real chance at something, they would have had a truly remarkable match, but given the time and the place, I’m so happy they didn’t bother trying to force it.

Instead, Big Dust and Medium Trev have a lovely little ten minute hoot, breaking out all sorts of cool moves, big strikes, and wild bumps for the duration of their time together, leading to a memorable finish that operates both as a nice surprise and a genuinely exceptional bit. That’s it. That’s all it is, and even if it’s not all it CAN be, for where it is on the show and for the sort of goals a match in this spot should have, that’s all it ever has to be.

Following three years of nobody being able to crossbody Trevor Lee in PWG, Chuck Taylor once again Tries His Best and succeeds where nobody else can. Chuck Taylor hits a crossbody on Trevor Lee and beats him with it. Some people hated it probably, but I don’t care. This is how you do a good comedy finish, stick it on a match that works as a real match anyways and allow it to work as a joke to people who know, but not so much of a joke that it ever feels phony or too inside baseball to work for anyone else. Chuck’s a big enough guy to make it feel like a thing that could knock the wind out of Trevor Lee, especially if taken by surprise. Beyond just the physical dimensions and realities of the move itself, the way it’s done is really what makes it work, with Trevor in shock after just barely missing the kickout and Excalibur selling it as someone finally catching Trevor and suggesting that it’s why he trained that counter so perfectly. It’s all just tremendous bullshit.

This finish doesn’t quite live up to PWG’s best comedy this decade, but it goes to show once again that the real key to truly great wrestling comedy is to never once look like you’re telling a joke.

A lovely little sprint from PWG’s two most likeable wrestlers.

***

 

Best Friends vs. Zack Sabre Jr., PWG Nice Boys (Don’t Play Rock & Roll) (3/18/2017)

Like the 2013-2014 stuff in which Candice LeRae had great matches with a tag team partner who was an (alleged) sex pervert, I felt okay covering it because it’s not like I had anything positive to say about her partner, which has always been the weird bit about covering stuff like this for me and why you don’t get a lot of these for a wrestler or two that I do think is among the best in the world at this point. The same is true here, the one ignored here offers nothing anyways, and so I don’t feel like I’m losing TOO much here. The compromise I make is just acting like it was a handicap match or leaving that one blank, which is not totally the same thing here, but I tried to act in the same spirit, at least. I reviewed that at the time because those matches either led to or were one of the best matches of the year/decade, and while this is not quite in that category, it is part of one of the great feuds/stories of the year, and feels like something I ought to at least mention as being great.

It’s really great.

Zack Sabre Jr. is again just TREMENDOUS now that he’s leaning entirely into being a irredeemable shitbird, as nasty as possible towards Our Heroes whenever possible. Gross holds in control, some of the best preening, taunting, and posturing in the entire game, and beyond just the performance, he gets the longest and most persistently negative responses PWG’s seen in a really really really long time. Even when the great wrestling happens, there’s no point where it feels like he goes with it like the Mount Rushmore guys or a Chris Hero might, it’s all focused on these negative reactions and it’s one of the more impressive performances of Sabre Jr’s career.

Likewise, Chuck and Trent are phenomenal on the other end. Trent less so, all the match asks of him is working face in peril against wrestlers Reseda already despises, but Chuck’s a wonderful hot tag and the Trent vs. Sabre Jr. run (after Big Dust fights a grey static void to the back) is sensational too. It seems like a clear loss post here, only that Trent fucking catches him and hauls his narrow ass up for the Cradle Piledriver to get what feels like a real big upset.

Is it one of the best matches of the year? No.

I maybe didn’t absolutely need to cover it. But it’s a part of one of the best things of the year, and it’s a Zack performance that I’ve always found to be particularly impressive.

Okay.

***1/4

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Chuck Taylor, PWG Only Kings Understand Each Other (2/18/2017)

As with all/most PWG photography used on here from 2015 on, photo credit belongs to Mikey Nolan Photography. 

This was for Zack Sabre Jr’s PWG World Title.

More importantly, it’s the culmination of the last fourteen months of Chuck Taylor in PWG and his improbable and increasingly bizarre undefeated streak. What began with one of the great comedy matches of the decade ends up with him in the ring with if not actual (it’s Thatcher) than consensus pick for being the world’s greatest active technical wrestler.

A majority of Zack Sabre Jr’s greatest matches come when he’s playing the antagonist of the two, and this is the absolute apex of that, I think.

The look on his face early on when he realizes that the crowd is ten thousand percent in favor of and entirely in the tank for Chuck Taylor is incredible. So many other great Zack matches like this offer a transition, some way in which he’s shown up before getting mean, but the joy here is that the wrestling has nothing to do with it. Zack is not rivaled at all in that category by Big Dust, and it is entirely about something much greater, more mercurial, and wholly impossible to entirely define. And as with many of the great villains, the indignant rage of Sabre Jr. is incredibly easy to understand. Zack’s done every single thing right, gone through every trial and crucible that the great ones do, studied all the right people, beaten all the best people, and succeeded in all the right ways, and his reward for that is that Chuck Taylor, a wrestler who has spent his career celebrating a lack of effort and goofing off whenever possible, whose most acclaimed work this decade might be a series of shoot interviews, suddenly on a one year hot streak after not winning a match in PWG for half a decade, is chosen over him when contrasted with each other, and picked in a god damned HEARTBEAT.

Genuinely — and even before the bell — it is one of my favorite stories in wrestling all decade, and maybe ever.

You never want to ascribe intent, especially not to PWG at this point, but there is something so perfect about it that almost seems planned. Immediately after Zack Sabre Jr’s BOLA 2016 victory, Chuck’s streak began, and the two have largely run parallel to each other all year. I’ve written before about the classical booking idea to build up two forces on parallel lines and then hurl them at each other, The Shield vs. The Wyatt Family is one of the great mainstream examples of that philosophy, but it’s just as much at play here, and once again, it works.

The match itself, independent of the story, is also a real thrill. There are things about it that I don’t love, to be sure. A piledriver on a few chairs on the floor shouldn’t be recovered from as quickly as it is here. The same goes for the Awful Waffle later on. Zack’s bumping sometimes is weird to me in a way I can’t totally explain and in general, he recovers from things faster than he maybe always should. Generally, I think they could have done even more with the material, although there is also a real charm to how efficient and tight this was, kind of their attempt at a WCW Sting/NXT Bayley kind of a pace, with everything feeling like an immediate and frantic attempt to win in a way that both ZSJ and PWG matches so rarely do.

Mostly though, this is a story based match, and it is one of the great stories either man has ever told.

Chuck knows he’s up against it here and rushes in early. Those big shots fall short, and slowly but surely, Zack begins kicking his ass. Chuck perseveres when in real trouble for once though. Maybe my favorite moment of the match is this little ten second burst in the middle, a bit that isn’t talked about a lot or really made a big deal out of, but that did so much for me and people like me probably. Chuck fights out of a hold and tries to go into his old Killer Crab with this real confident look on his face. He’s faced and submitted the Best in the World once before with this hold, only for Zack to immediately counter out and go back in control, a beautiful shorthand for Chuck trying the easy ways and both them not working and him being so out of practice in matches like this, the latter enhanced by Chuck’s big offense being all kind of anachronistic stuff for 2017 PWG like repeated DDTs and a simple Moonsault.

Big Dust has his one magic bullet in the Awful Waffle, but in a rarity, it doesn’t work. In all-time classic slacker fashion, his response is to just try it again, and Zack counters around eventually into the Triangle Choke. Chuck falls sitting in it when he tries the easy powerbomb out, and there’s no way out in that spot. Zack throws elbows to him in the triangle in a rarity for Zack (a fun response to Taylor’s half crab that famously once beat Bryan Danielson), and Our Hero passes out.

Were it a one-off, I’d call it a crushing defeat and write 1500 very angry and hateful words in response.

As it is, it’s the start of a story, and what a beautiful story it is.

Chuck Taylor tried his best after years and years of not doing that, and didn’t have a back up plan. To do it, he’s going to have to do something he hasn’t done in half a decade and maybe hasn’t ever totally done, and that’s try. Not just for a little bit. Not relying on his one killer move and nothing else, not starting hot and petering out, not in bursts here or there, but try hard for an entire match.

It is the most relatable story professional wrestling has told since WrestleMania XXX, a lovable underachiever having to genuinely try hard to achieve a goal and prove he can accomplish something real. It’s here that we have the real and actual successor to something like Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes, rather than any corporately approved would-be heir, somebody that nobody likes against Our Hero, Big Dust, the personification of the American Dream (don’t live up to your potential, make jokes, never try your hardest unless you have to) in that moment.

In this match, Zack Sabre Jr. put hard times on all of the weird perverts in America by issuing Our Hero a momentary setback, the 2017 version of shattering our man’s ankle, and eventually, he will have to deal with The Dealer.

An unbelievable start, and a great foundation laid for what will eventually be maybe 2017’s greatest feel good moment.

When the match is over, Zack’s truest colors are revealed — or rather the veil is entirely torn away — as his pedophile friend helps him attack Chuck Taylor to rub it and the European domination of PWG in. Trent makes the save for Big Dust, and in the ashes of a crushing defeat, the Best Friends finally reunite and hug in a genuinely wonderful and heartwarming moment. PWG lost its way a long time ago, but this is exactly the sort of story, match, and angle that defined its glory years.

PWG is not back, but for twenty five minutes or so here from the intros to the post-match, it sure felt like it was.

***1/4

 

Matt Riddle vs. DUSTIN, EVOLVE 77 (1/28/2017)

This was a No Disqualification Match.

In this match, one of the world’s best wrestlers does his best to carry a totally unlikeable pervert, and is aided in that pursuit by rules beneficial to that cause, a match that doesn’t have to be much more than a collection of big spots so as not to make his opponent uncomfortable and that isn’t so long that said opponent will get lost and become unable to keep up with his superior opponent. A collection of brutal but simple spots with chairs and tables and in front of a really really hot crowd makes it quite the easy ask for both men involved, and the result is one of the year’s most fun matches.

In the end, one of the world’s greatest wrestlers is able to achieve this mission, gifting his opponent with maybe not his best match of 2017, but one of his most memorable ones.

It’s a phenomenal performance by this wrestler.

Matt Riddle is also in this match.

***

Tracy Williams vs. DUSTIN, EVOLVE 68 (9/10/2016)

This was an Anything Goes match, or at least became one after a re-start.

It’s not long and it’s not complex. It doesn’t fit in with almost anything else EVOLVE was doing around this time. What it is though is an absolute god damned HOOT.

Deathmatch Dustin brings his A+ game once again, and it’s made all the more impressive by this sort of thing not exactly being Hot Sauce’s bag. Thumbtacks and ladders and chairs, all used sparingly, but to great effect. Be that the trademark Big Dust ladder back drop, using the chair in fun ways, and especially the finish, which hits that wonderful balance between gross and being deeply deeply unique.

Sauce gets the Tear Drop on the thumbtacks, and goes to a rear naked choke after that. Big Dust rolls him on the tacks in a SUPER gross little bit to escape (credit to Williams here especially, the fear in the eyes as he realizes what’s about to happen but then also refusing to let go is absolutely perfect), only for Williams to suck it up and grab the hold again, back in the thumbtacks and all, for the tap out.

It’s easy, so easy that it feels obvious, but just some classic young babyface booking. Put ’em through hell, show them overcoming something, and that’s what this match excels at. It’s all there in the final thirty seconds of this thing, putting the kid in an entirely new spot only to do the classic babyface thing and decide the pain is worth it to make this mother fucker pay, and achieving. Classical white meat booking, with a little extra added in. Even if the rest of the Williams push in EVOLVE didn’t totally take for any number of reasons, fair and unfair, a match like this clearly shows that there was something there.

Secretly one of the more purely fun EVOLVE matches of the year.

***

Chuck Taylor vs. Trent?, PWG THIRTEEN (7/29/2016)

(photo credit, as with all PWG shows from 2015 on, goes to Mikey Nolan Photography on Facebook)

You either love this on an instinctual bone-deep level and require zero explanation of why this is great, just knowing, or you are some sort of joyless husk who can not experience joy on any sort of real level. I do not know what you derive pleasure from, but it cannot be in any way morally or ideologically correct, nor as beautiful as this match. It’s a modern retelling of a tale as old as time, as the American Dream, Our Hero Big Dust, has finally had enough of his weird friend and former tag team partner and things take a hard left.

It’s perfect.

I have no notes.

Men will literally have a match with their best friend where they powerbomb each other into chairs, hurl each other through ladders, and drop them on their heads on a pile of thumbtacks instead of going to therapy.

One of the greatest ends to a years long argument in recent memory, perhaps professional wrestling’s greatest ever depiction of male friendship.

***1/2

The Young Bucks vs. The Men of Low Moral Fiber, PWG DDT4 2009 (5/22/2009)

Another commission from the boy Eamonn, and the last of the bunch. You can — and should — be like him and head over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and pay me to watch and write about anything you’d like. Most people choose wrestling matches, but you do not have to be most people. The going rate is $5/match, fight, etc., and if you have something more than a simple case of multiplying the amount of matches you want by five, hit the DMs, and I’d be happy to work something out. 

This was a semi-final match in the 2009 DDT4 tournament, and also for the Bucks’ PWG World Tag Team Titles.

Famously, this is the match that gave us what we think of as The Young Bucks, all that came after. It takes them a year or two to REALLY get it right, but this match is the thing that they run into and bounce off of that results in that shift. The shit talking, superkicking, posing, all of that, sort of springs from the reaction they get here, once the crowd has totally fallen in love with Chuck Taylor and his weird little dipshit friend. Mostly, that’s good. I’ll choose to credit Chuckie T with the good stuff (2009-2015ish, maybe 2018), and given the part he paid in it, Kenny Omega with the rest.

Really though, that second part occurs after the match.

It’s in the famous finals where Bryan Danielson and Roderick Strong tear the hell out of these little weirdos while Reseda thunderously shouts its assent. It’s in the other famous Young Bucks match in PWG that summer, at the end of July, when they really lean in for the first time and have a God Damner against El Generico and Human Tornado. It’s in a rematch with the Men of Low Moral Fiber later in 2009 which is too long, too ambitious, and nowhere near as organically fun. This match is all preamble to the ball/car/whatever object you’ve conjured in your mind bouncing off of the thing that does not move. That collision is the result of this match, and so while this is important, most of the stuff we think about in relation to this match is not actually in this match.

History is strange and memory is stranger.

The match we have here is a pretty normal one for The Young Bucks in the years before something really “clicked”. A not-great piece of control either by them or on them, but everything that’s focused on action is spectacular, because these guys are all big offensive ideas at this point.

Chuck and Kenny struggle to fill space in a heel control segment, which isn’t really a problem that ever goes away for either. (It is better here for Omega, arguably, in that he never uses cold spray on his hog or fills up his time with schtick, but it is not good, necessarily.) Their work for about a third of this match is more functional than anything, but the first third of action and ESPECIALLY the last third where the doors fly off the thing are just so much fun that it doesn’t matter. It’s exciting, it’s far more efficient than I remembered, and there’s not really any fat to be found on it.

Reseda loses its mind as Our Hero (and his weird friend) come closer and closer. It’s less excessive than you remember probably, really only focusing on a handful of big nearfalls in a frantic last five minutes or less before a relatively normal More Bang For Your Buck set up does the thing, and sets our object in motion. Reseda only really boos once or twice at the Bucks surviving a big piece of offense or a major combination. It’s the sort of change that I think benefits this a lot, especially given the longer effort later in the year. They weren’t good enough yet to handle too much more than this, but this is almost exactly right.

Good little application of formula with enough cool moves in the back part and a wild enough reception from Post #308 that it gets them over the top. An important match moreso than a really great one, but still just great enough.

***