Fire Ant/Jigsaw/Nick Jackson/Player Dos/Helios/Green Ant/Frightmare/Cloudy vs. Soldier Ant/Mike Quackenbush/Matt Jackson/Player Uno/Lince Dorado/Carpenter Ant/Hallowicked/Cheech, CHIKARA Cibernético Increible (10/18/2009)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent contributor YB. 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. 

This was the annual Torneo Cibernetico match.

For the uninitiated or simply less initiated, this is an eight vs. eight tag team match with a set entry order or batting order to make it more easily understood, but since many of you are less American and/or big nerds, it means you can only tag out to the person next in line (or they have to come in next if, under lucha tag rules, you leave the ring). There are eliminations through the usual methods, and should one team have more than one man left at the very end, the will have to fight until one is left.

It can — in that it has in the past and will in the future — result in some of the better and more memorable CHIKARA matches ever, such as 2005’s one-hundred plus minute one (loved it at the time, plan on never ever watching it again so present me can never find what I’m sure are a thousand flaws), 2010’s all-time CHIKARA bullshit masterpiece of the CHIKARA team vs. the BDK which was one of the best of that year, and 2012’s similarly great CHIKARA vs. ROH edition.

That is not entirely the case here.

More often than not, these matches have some unifying story, if not tying together most of the major ones in the company. Usually team captains who are feuding and a month away from meeting in a blow-off match at the end of the season. It doesn’t always lead to the greatest combinations at the end or winners, CHIKARA being CHIKARA and all, but there’s usually a guiding concept and a focus behind everything.

Except in 2009, when — as CHIKARA seemed to do most of the year, likely sensing the chance afforded by the sudden change in Ring of Honor — the match became more about simply delivering a great match.

There were two major problems with this.

Firstly, a little less impactfully, was the choice to split eight tag teams up in a parejas increibles style, which is both a novelty that wears off after about half the match, and also something that doesn’t feel explored nearly enough (the two might be related). I’m not really sure how it would work with the batting order unless the got a little boring with it, at least at the start, but I think that might have solved some of the issues this had with repetition, if the company was always so inclined to make this edition of the match a lighter and faster fireworks-based display.

Secondly, and more obviously, it’s a little long and not everyone is all that great in it. There’s a longer Lince Dorado vs. Frightmare section in the middle that’s real real average where the match first begins to lose momentum, but in general, they go too fast from the start for a near fifty minute thing, eliminations or not. That first third or first half or so is a lot of fun, a million moving parts and them all mostly working crisply, but when nothing develops out of that and it never really escalates into a higher level fireworks show, combined with some more flubs and miscues coming later in the match, something gets lost. There’s a moment when the go to a mini dive train when the pace and intensity begins to mount, only to then go back to a lighter medium-grade back and forth, and it feels like it never totally finds its footing on such a high level again. The match, again in a CHIKARA Cibernetico, also misuses its assets, opting to showcase the Pinkie Sanchez in disguise fraud Carpenter Ant as its winner, and never quite becomes all it can be as a result of these choices.

Peak CHIKARA (07-11) being what it was though, something about it still works.

Between the pace, the gimmick always keeping things somewhat fresh, a line up this good (at the time), and a construction that at least keeps enough quality pieces around until the end even if a loser idea is the focal point, there’s something entertaining happening far more often than there isn’t. The combinations of guys like the original ants, Hallowicked, Quack, Jigsaw, the Bucks when they were just fun little flip dealers, the same for a masked Ricochet, etc., are all really good, and if underachieving, it’s a match that is almost always offering up good wrestling, and that very often drifts into great wrestling, as poorly organized as it all is.

Essentially, a fireworks show that never really builds and lacks the grand finale of the great ones, but that still offers up enough bright lights in enough interesting patterns to be worth my while.

The match isn’t perfect. Above all, it might be an example that in a match like this, you have to turn it up or go somewhere at some point. All the same, there are no major infuriating sins, it’s a forty to fifty minute long match that never becomes excruciatingly long, and there’s just too much breezy and good wrestling in it.

It’s just a little too much fun not to like.

***1/5

Motor City Machine Guns vs. Generation Me, TNA Final Resolution (12/5/2010)

This was a Full Metal Mayhem (TNA speak for TLC) match for the Guns’ TNA World Tag Team Titles.

A little over a year and a half before their first relatively famous one, the Young Bucks have their first great ladder match, unsurprisingly against the team that they’ve had their most reliable success with yet to this point.

You know how this goes.

The combination of the phrases “Young Bucks” and “ladder/TLC match”, especially when used as a combination together, ought to have told you, for the most part, if this could be for you. For the most part, you would be correct. If you’re maybe a little like me though — which is to say if you haven’t enjoyed the Bucks much in the last five years (basically from AEW on) but have a certain fondness for their earlier work — this might be something you could enjoy.

I certainly did.

This isn’t to say it’s their best match with the Guns. It isn’t even their best match with the Guns this year, or their second best really. Honestly, it isn’t even their best pay-per-view ladder match involving the Guns, although you have to wait almost six years for that. It does, however work for a lot of the same reasons as that Ultimate X match, combined with a lot of the reasons for the Bucks’ later artistic successes in the years following this TNA run.

Firstly, there is a ton of cool shit here.

All four have some great ideas to put on display here, often hitting that wonderful area in between cool and terrifying that can make for such an exciting feeling. The match doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but they find a lot of novel ways to use that ground. It’s a match that, in smaller ways, still feels really modern thirteen years later. Not so much that cliché about still being a few steps ahead of its time, but like, kind of just barely still ahead of its time. If it happened tomorrow — September 9th, 2023 — I would still call a lot of what happens in this match inventive.

Secondly, it’s really mean.

Like so much of the Bucks’ best work in the first half of the decade, there’s a real meanness of spirit to this. All the big shots and moments where a chair is swung or a ladder is thrown feel like they come with parenthesis containing some kind of shouted insult. It’s not a big brawl, but it manages to feel hostile in its own way.

The other major thing the Bucks got so right in the first half of the decade in these big brawls, beyond still getting that they are unlikeable freaks who should always be built up to be punished in big blowoff smoke & mirrors gimmick matches, was the design of the matches. The craft and construction. For the most part, save one single moment of setting up a table for no reason near the end, this is almost always a match where it feels like someone is either (a) trying to win, or (b) trying to punish the opposing team. Even the big piece of construction, a table bridge on top of three ladders to create a scaffold in a janky ass TNA fashion, is properly set up. The first half of the match is filled with moments where one of the guys tries to climb, but the belts are a little too high unless you stand on the very very top of the ladder. It’s maybe counterproductive of the match — and commentary with it — to point out that these are not tall guys, but it leads somewhere in the match, to a finish set up that might have otherwise felt a little hokey.

Another thing I liked a lot about this match was that, like the Ultimate X match and like the big gimmick matches (Ladder, Cage, & Ultimate X) against Beer Money over the summer, the gimmick and a familiarity with it really does matter in the end.

Generation Me is not as behind as they were in Ultimate X, this is not the Guns’ environment in quite the same way, but they are still behind, in a way more in line with the overall theme of the feud that sees ambitious kids overreach against the best in the world. They know how to use the ladders and succeed with big spots using them, but are always a little less successful in setting up moments to climb than Shelley and Sabin are, and more often than not, are the ones who pay the price for big set ups, as opposed to the Guns, whose big idea (table scaffold) pays off in the end.

Sabin and one of the Bucks wind up on the scaffold at the end, but true to the idea of the match and the series, the Jackson is nowhere near as comfortable up there. Sabin dodges a chair shot, hits his own to the back to send the kid off through a table below, and brings the titles down to win.

Not their best, but an impressive match, and one that I had personally forgotten all about. Maybe you have too. That’s not so much me saying to go watch it immediately or anything, but you know, if you come across it and are the sort of person who might like this or you saw one of their matches and just want to see more of these teams together, you can do a lot worse.

One of the better big stipulation matches the Bucks have ever had on semi-major pay-per-view.

***+

Motor City Machine Guns vs. Generation Me, TNA Destination X (3/21/2010)

This was an Ultimate X match.

For fifteen minutes tops, the Guns and the Bucks break out every flashy, silly, implausible, and wonderful thing that they can think up.

It absolutely whips ass.

When I go around and write things like “quality fireworks show” or find myself defending the idea of matches like these from some of you water brained freaks, this is the sort of thing I really mean to defend. This is what it ought to look like. Yeah, it’s 2010 TNA, you aren’t getting this with a great world of build or institutional support (although by even doing it and giving them half-decent time, TNA provides more than a lot of other companies might, could, or have before), but they get the mix pretty much perfect here.

Not only is there no attempt to disguise what this match is about, to lie about its intention before the bright lights and loud noises begun to erupt, but they manage to both structure the match very very well while also offering some genuinely spectacular sights to behold. Not only in terms of what they do with the trussing and the high wire act, but offensively in general. Even by their later standards, the Guns and Bucks’ work against each other here feels a decade (and counting, realistically) ahead of its time. 

Alternately, if you’re the type who needs a little narrative meat on bones this colorful, this match kind of slyly has you covered too, provided you have any sort of wrestling literacy whatsoever.

Most obviously, the point here is that experience in a new style of match matters. Mike Tenay is helpful enough to point out that this will be Sabin’s fourteenth Ultimate X match as well as Shelley’s fifth, while the kids are brand new. They never seem to quite get the right times to climb, and frequently lose any advantage when they do. They get it a little later on, but still really struggle, while the Guns always seem to know both when to climb, but also how to stop either Buck before too long. The match also makes a little something out of basic numbers too, with the Guns splitting the Bucks apart so they would always win the one on one matchups, but primarily, it’s a great display of how to make the stipulation really matter in a match like this, even if the clear goal of the match is much more about showing off as much cool stuff as possible. Even when it doesn’t matter, it always matters, which is a big component of every great Ultimate X match.

It even matters in the end, as one of the Buck tries to echo Chris Sabin’s strategy of getting all four limbs up on the wire and army crawling, but Sabin is a thousand times more comfortable, and stomps them in the chest from that same position, until they fall down. Sabin comes down with the X yet again, with the match doing nearly as much to illustrate how to win matches like this and that experience matters as it does to offer up a lovely little time watching some explosions.

The key, as always, is that the fireworks have to stand out. Go too long, throw too many of the same kind or color up there, and it stops feeling special. Get it totally right — or even just as right as a match like this manages to, even under these circumstances — and you have a real hard time forgetting it.

Even if, again to the credit of these team and somehow, this promotion, it’s only like the third best MCMG/Bucks match of the year.

***1/5

The Briscoes vs. The Young Bucks, ROH Wrestling (11/24/2018)

This was a number one contenders match.

For the final time ever, the two best tag teams of this century (to date) face each other two on two. There are a bunch of these matches, they first met in 2009 to maybe the surprise of some reading this, and yet it never quite has ever felt like enough, given the individual, collective, and all-time level skills of everyone involved. I would almost rather they never met again after they had their best match together at BEST IN THE WORLD 2018 in June, but show me something new from something I loved and that cannot produce new content, and I am almost always going to like it.

It’s as great as it always is, mostly.

To be sure, the Bucks and Briscoes do not quite lay it all out there like they did five months earlier on pay-per-view in one of the best matches of the year. but these four riffing it out is always going to be really really good. They’re a natural stylistic fit, rough housing against the fireworks display, power against flying, all of that.

I fear that between this match’s lower ambitions of simply having a low level great television main event before the booking comes in and the abundance of words written about these two over the last four plus years, I have run out of things to say about the Briscoes vs. Bucks match up, but truly, I do love it. I think it brings out the best in both teams. Jay and Mark can occasionally be less active in older age when confronted with the lesser teams in Ring of Honor, and the Jackson brothers can occasionally be a little too active in their attempts to make everything great in terms of their very specific definition of that, and at least within Ring of Honor, I find them better off wrestling each other than wrestling any other tag team. It’s not quite natural, but it does feel like the next best thing.

Both teams get chairs and throw them at each other, leading to a double disqualification, and a three way at the upcoming pay-per-view.

Not the best of the year or the best that they can do, but given that it is not a match I’m ever going to see a new-in-real-time version of, every single version of it is a gift, and this is not a gift I regret receiving.

***

Kota Ibushi/The Young Bucks vs. Rey Mysterio/Rey Fenix/Bandido, ALL IN (9/1/2018)

ALL IN, famous landmark theoretically self funded wrestling show that eventually led to AEW, was a real big deal as everybody knows at this point, but the secret behind every “spirit of ALL IN” post is that, as a wrestling show, ALL IN kind of sucked. Constructed more around Youtube vlog bits, highlighting at least two sexual predators in big spots, and generally, just not creating a show with a lot of good wrestling matches on it. It valued moments over everything else, with little behind them in terms of the actual wrestling meat and potatoes part of the equation, which is maybe a point about that fanbase best expanded on at another time. The end result is a show that I (a) missed at the time, and after having now finally watched the big stuff on it (NWA Title, Hanger/Janela with the dick spot rapist resurrection angle with cock druids, Kenny/Penta, and even Okada against the bird pervert), (b) I am not exactly sad that I waited this long to see.

This is the exception, because this fucking rocked.

I know what you’re thinking, and as always, I also imagine what you have to say to me.

“Wait, isn’t this the match that got cut down to like twelve minutes because the match before it needlessly went twenty-six minutes/because they were clearly laying out a show for the first time?”

YOU’RE GOD DAMNED RIGHT.

This is not a great match that unfortunately got cut down to twelve minutes, forcing them to only hit the biggest and wildest spots that they had planned and cutting out much of the material in between those high points.

It is a great match because it got cut down to twelve minutes, and they were forced to cut so much out of it.

Now, it’s not to say a fifteen or even twenty minute version of this is not also great. It probably is. Maybe the connective tissue here that got shredded to pieces would have been really really good. The thing is though, this is not a match with a ton of narrative weight to it, and it is not a match where I am positive what we lost was anything with preserving. What we lose is, seemingly, the least essential stuff, leaving us with a pure highlight reel from six of the best highlight reel wrestlers in the world. The only real problem with what happened is (a) someone being caught saying to go home and then the pace rapidly increasing & (b) some clear communication at points, clearly about what gets cut out. Otherwise, it’s a ton of unbelievably spectacular things in a row, and because of their need to fit this into a rapidly closing window, the match accidentally has a real sense of urgency to it at a few moments near the end.

Everything about ALL IN, to me, exists in the greatness of this match. An incredibly cool line up that found itself in the most slam dunk can’t miss format possible because of the rank amateurism on display in virtually every other spot on the card.

The happiest accident possible, cutting down a main event epic that could have been either just barely great or not great at all, and turning it into a Nitro or 1997 WCW PPV opener style display of only the wildest stuff they had to offer, with no room for anything else.

***

The Briscoes vs. The Young Bucks, ROH Best in the World 2018 (6/29/2018)

This was for Jay and Mark’s ROH World Tag Team Titles.

It is not a new match, by any means.

The Briscoes and Bucks have been having matches together for nearly a decade at this point. Virtually all of them are good and the wide majority great. Like with any match up that’s been run this much, I like some more than others. The early ones are not as great as later ones, with the Bucks either not having found themselves just yet or being restricted more in their Cornette era ROH meeting. The sweet spot, previously, had been those 2014 and 2015 meetings in tags and the big ROH vs. Bullet Club ten man tag, catching the Bucks at the intersection of their physical and artistic primes, while also capturing each team in their natural roles.

“Previously” is a word I specifically used there because this is, somewhat easily, the best they’ve ever done together.

My initial take here was to say it was The Big One. The Young Bucks had adapted a Tanahashi-style dress rehearsal strategy with the Roppongi Vice series leading to the big payoff in that series last year, and after the great build up tags and their 2016 & 2017 outings feeling somewhat held back, it would have appeared on paper that such was the case here, saving it for the time they got to do it on a major pay-per-view.

That’s not really what happened.

It’s not to say this didn’t have bigger stuff than these two have broken out in three or four years against each other, because it did. It also isn’t to say this isn’t a match with some payoffs, as they absolutely play off of some of the bits in those recent build up tags. It is, however, to say that I think we all know what it looks like when the Young Bucks are having a big occasion match, and this felt a whole lot less like that (although given that there is at least one moment with a Jay Driller on a chair kickout where I threw my hands up and went “oh, fuck you!”, it is still clearly one they did care a lot about), and moreso something a little less ambitious that simply happened to turn out really really really great.

While perhaps not entirely perfect (see above, see a few other Bucks style sequences) nor the absolute best case scenario for these teams — ideally some Reseda brawl in 2014-15, catching them at that same magic period, but with a real focus on having the nuttiest and most violent match possible, rather than simply having a great normal match as they did in those ROH matches then — it is, I think, the closest they ever came to a match in which both (a) they wrestled as big as possible & (b) where everything that could have gone right did go right. Not just in terms of them hitting everything perfectly or the construction being among their best in recent memory, but the fact that this iteration of the match up has its weakness (the Bucks are not likeable people) covered up by the match being in Baltimore, not far removed from the Briscoes’ home, resulting in not only a more split crowd, but one of the hottest Ring of Honor crowds in recent memory.

Perhaps the biggest key is that despite the significant amount of DNA both share with each other, this feels far more like a great Briscoes match than it does a great Young Bucks match. 

There’s more of a simplicity and directness to it. It sure isn’t bare bones, but it feels cut away from virtually all excess that often plagues other matches (and that arguably has plagued these matches previously). The Bucks are capable of matches with these qualities on their own, but it is far more the natural province of Jay and Mark, and when combined with an increase in general hostility and the way the Bucks fight with a lot more urgency, especially in the big hot tag run, it’s a lot easier to put it in this category, rather than the other.

Above all, this match’s greatest strength is that virtually everything — save maybe two percent of the match — feels so correct. Everything feels like it’s not only in a good place when looking at the match from far away, but that it might just be in the best and most unique places possible. Every big thing that happens here, and many smaller ones as well, all feel like they achieve maximum impact and really matter.

What the match chooses to do — and this again feels more Briscoes than Bucks — is not to tell some operatic tale of friendship or individual injury, but instead tell a simple story about style and attack that feels more like genuine athletics than most Bucks work does. Despite the similar rhythms to the attacks of both teams, it is power against speed, brawling against flying, grit and grind against pace and space, and above all, violence against extravagance.

The Briscoes have a more direct, more focused, and more dominant attack than ever on the Bucks, from the start. There are not only cut offs where there hadn’t been in every previous match, but more of them too. To their credit, the Bucks look like they have more heart here than they’ve ever showed outside of the Lovers epic, and in a far less in-your-face obvious kind of way. Not only hard fighting against the meaner heavyweight attack, but adapting to the Briscoes’ routines and forcing openings through guts and will for once. Between how mean Jay and Mark can get and the coolness of the offense, maybe the most impressive thing here is that, for brief moments, I am not opposed to the Bucks as babyfaces. It works, not just because of the performances, but because of how well the match is assembled, and the natural effect of seeing someone fight hard and overcome something through hard and intelligent work.

Slowly but surely, the Bucks gut their way back into it, using big moves in more strategic and urgent feeling ways than usual, and putting on the sort of semi-underdog performance that I did not imagine they had in them (which is to say, any at all). It feels like there’s a real shot here, until suddenly and violently, there isn’t anymore.

At the end, the Briscoes simply crowd them until something finally breaks.

Nick and Matt can keep up in a fireworks show, but lack the toughness to hang when Jay and Mark begin bending the rules a little and throwing chairs around. Their skullduggery requires numbers, whereas the Briscoes’ is about pure brute force. To again hit the great heel bit of stealing the chance for success away, rather than simply cheating to win, Mark elbow drops the referee to save from More Bang For Your Buck, the one time they break the match open enough to succeed, and the Bucks can never quite get it right like that ever again. They get separated and mowed down, Jay and Mark reasserting themselves in the style of tag team closing run that they perfected long before the Bucks adapted it, and following Matt’s silly little aforementioned kickout, the boys break out a rare top rope Redneck Boogie for the win.

Not quite the grandiose statement victory I might have wanted as a true Hater, but still one with a real statement to make. The pro wrestling version of a classic sports game between a flashy celebrated offense and a world beater defense with some real attitude behind it. The coolest and most impressive things in the world cannot survive real honest teamwork, everything collapses when the frontrunners get punched in the mouth a little, and to use one of the great examples of this in the last few decades, the Young Bucks simply have no answer when Jay and Mark start Goin’ To Work.

One of the best matches of the year, no qualifiers, and given that it both came out of 2018 Ring of Honor and happened in a year with a maybe equally great and far more grandiose Young Bucks epic, one of the year’s most underrated as well.

***1/2

 

 

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

EVIL/SANADA vs. The Young Bucks, NJPW Dominion 6.9 (6/9/2018)

This was for EVIL and SANADA’s IWGP Tag Team Titles.

Really and truly, I think this rules.

I have spent the majority of the time I have known about them (their PWG debut in 2007 to present day) as a Young Bucks hater. This is not to say I am some weirdo who thinks they have had five to ten good matches ever or something like that, but I mean that I have never once found them likeable. Even before the turn in 2009, I never found myself rooting for the success of these weird little psycho kids. I have been watching wrestling for nearly their entire careers as name wrestlers, and through all of it, I have constantly rooted for, and on occasion, been truly delighted to see them on occasion be brought low, punished, and absolutely beaten into dust.

I say all of that to say that, in this match, I found myself rooting for The Young Bucks.

Part of that, I would like to reassure myself, is because they were against SANADA and EVIL. For whatever flaws the Bucks have, they are energetic and present. The LIJ boys often are the opposite of that, wrestling for long stretches of time while seeming almost vacant at times in like ninety percent of their other matches, and that is a generous figure. Put against spiritual non-entities, the Bucks’ psychotic manic energy can become a virtue on occasion, and here, it does.

However, part of that is also because the entire package here — individual performances and broader narrative — genuinely does a spectacular job of putting them in that role in a way that actually works, and that allows all facets of the thing to work together like hand in glove like never before (aided strongly by their opposition being what it is, of course).

The usual thing in 2018 happens here in the first half, as Matt Jackson’s bad back becomes an issue. He is once again shockingly good at selling it, managing to be occasionally sympathetic, but never ever forgetting it. He always feels like someone in pain, even when the champions rarely work it over.

What really makes this interesting though is when Nick Jackson hurts his ankle off of an errant kick against the ringpost during his hot tag.

Like the work on Matt’s back and Matt’s selling of it for the last five months, Nick’s selling of the leg is this wonderful intersection between quality narrative and shockingly great mechanical strength.

Nick gets the selling just right, and conducts his offense as well as possible considering. He flies and on occasion runs, but there is always a cost to it, one paid in key moments when he tries more than he can handle, such as collapsing off the top rope when trying the springboard for the Meltzer Driver. It is never what a lot of matches like this threaten to devolve into, all the spots hitting and then lip service to selling, so much as it feels like Nick tempting fate and occasionally getting brought down to Earth very severely for his hubris. More importantly, it never feels as if he is trying to show off, so much as that this is simply what they do. This feeling is helped in large part by how SANADA and EVIL approach the injury, not doing a whole lot to it outside of it being an opening to unload their heavier artillery, and allowing it to exist as a hindrance, rather than a point of focus. Nick gets exactly what he can handle as a seller, and the match is so much better for it, whereas it might have been doomed if the champions really zeroed in on it.

The real kicker though is that after all these months of Nick having to carry the burden and showing signs of real frustration when Matt’s hurt back has cost them big important matches, everything gets reversed in their biggest career opportunity so far. It’s not something they go extremely far with, but for once, restraint is a friend to the Young Bucks. Even small moments of Matt now knowing how it feels adds so much to the match, especially in the later moments, where Nick is able to muster up some strength, and contribute in spite of it all.

Nick is able to summon it up for two (2) double superkicks at the end to first cut off EVIL and then SANADA, making them actually mean something and have some genuine weight for once, before the Bucks hit More Bang For Your Buck to capture their biggest singles prize yet.

Really and truly, an actual miracle.

If not the level of match as their best work of the year, the sort of deeply impressive and unbelievably surprising thing that makes it a near lock that the Young Bucks are the 2018 tag team of the year. It’s not to say nobody else could have gotten this out of guys like EVIL and SANADA, but only The Young Bucks ever did.

***1/4

The Briscoes vs. The Young Bucks, ROH Wrestling (5/12/2018)

This was for the Briscoes’ ROH World Tag Team Titles.

Again in May 2018, a very welcome retread with just enough slight modifications to keep it fresh and interesting.

2018’s big change isn’t just that the Young Bucks are officially babyfaces in Ring of Honor (as opposed to simply being treated like faces for years and often wrestling like them anyways) or the Matt Jackson back injury, which has been discussed a lot before on this blog already, but that for the first time in seven years since the unbelievable 2011 run that gave us Violent People (JOHN KRONUS) and Ain’t Even Bleeding and Cosmetically Pleasing, The Briscoes get to work heel again.

It is a god damned BLAST.

Jay and Mark are clearly having the time of their lives with something to really sink their teeth into for the first time in years. Jay is middle fingering up a storm constantly, spitting venom, frothing at the mouth, and just pissed as all god damned hell. Mark Briscoe does not — and cannot, really — reach this level in terms of pure violent aggression, but he is the perfect backup here for Jay once again. They’re still The Briscoes at the end of the day and do a ton of really cool moves, sticking with their 2010s blend of old brawling and a select few pieces of tremendous offense to punctuate it, but they seem so so so much more energized than usual, especially in a sprint against one of their more reliable opposing team ever.

Of course, underneath the great performances and even underneath the Bucks again being shockingly good as babyfaces when all they have to do is react and do their cool moves, there is what has always worked between these teams, through all different iterations. It was there in 2009 when the Bucks were pretty boys and the Briscoes were still cool moves babyfaces, in 2010 in PWG, in 2012 when the Bucks were first figuring the heel act out but handcuffed by Cornette ROH, and especially in 2014 and 2015 when the Bucks hit their prime and the Briscoes had become the best brawling tag team in the world.

Here, they have an entirely new foundation to build up from, and it comes as easy as always. For whatever differences there are in ideology and style, in a broader sense, they are totally on the same page in terms of how their tag team wrestling is paced and structured, and it always just seems to effortlessly come together.

Even in a match like this, a ten minute television match with a fuck finish, designed to set up a pay-per-view rematch, it all feels so easy. Not only the way it’s built and assembled and executed, but the kind of casual greatness on display in a match that likely would not have been great at all if either team had this with any other Ring of Honor tag team. It’s not only a ten minute TV match, but one that purposely holds back on a lot of the bigger things they can do and have done to each other in the past, but one that is still just so so great. Not a capital-s Statement in the way we often think of them, but a deeply impressive thing all the same.

Jay breaks up the Meltzer Driver with a chair shot for the disqualification, and the Briscoes then re-injure the bad back of Matt Jackson that had been slowly improving, before also laying out Cody Rhodes, Hangman Page, and Flip Gordon when they try to save, ending the show holding up the belts.

You hesitate to ever say ROH is Back at any point from like 2015 through 2022, when it actually was Back, but this match, segment, and feud as a whole is a real bright spot and a show of what still could be accomplished, so long as Ring of Honor did sensible pro wrestling things like throwing hot heels and faces at each other, running cool simple angles, and booking great  matches at the end. ROH would not be Back for a very long time, but with all the most annoying people (and Hanger) writhing around in pain after being taken out in a two on five by Our Heroes, it is very very easy to believe.

Not the big one, but as good of a set up for it as you’ll find, and a great feeling piece of pro wrestling television on top of that.

***

 

The Young Bucks vs. Super Smash Bros., ROH War of the Worlds 2018 Night Two (5/11/2018)

It’s very cool to see again.

To continue the theme of the month, it is not what it was six years ago. Setting aside the simple fact that father time is undefeated and nobody here is physically what they were during their famous series six years prior, the third or fourth match on a Ring of Honor b-show in 2018 is not a heavily featured stunt show in PWG in 2012. To continue the theme of the month, again, it does not matter all that much.

For whatever’s been lost for whatever reason, enough remains and enough has grown in its place that still allows a real fun little thing to come out of the soil.

What’s new between these teams is the far more interesting part, so we can cover that first.

Obviously, the big thing here is the Bucks in 2018.

Matt Jackson once again devotes a match to his lingering back injury, but unlike a lot of other matches like it before and after, it’s also a match that displays the knowledge the Bucks possess and occasionally showed at their peak of time and place. This is not a place for a teary body selling epic so the back work isn’t that so much as it is for a little light work to be used in transition, something to fill up some space with, but never a thing that feels forgotten either, to Matt’s credit. The offense is as sharp as it often was in 2018, and while I could never personally sink so low as to cheer for the Young Bucks, their hot tag babyface stuff here (and throughout the year) is as great as it ever was. They are not likeable people, but there’s a balancce they strike sometimes in matches like these. Things move fast enough and the opponents aren’t all that likeable, so you can get swept up in it and just enjoy the fireworks for a little bit.

Said balance might not be possible if not for the change in Player Uno and, now, Stu Grayson as well.

With them, the change is not quite so severe. They didn’t magically become really good at individual body part selling or improve individual performance all that much. They are, however, in a totally different role as the antagonists of a Young Bucks match rather than the form all other meetings took, and do a very good job of it. Their work on top isn’t flashy or showy, that’s saved for the last third of the match, but it’s simple and effective, the sort of work I wish that they had been able to show at any point after this, and that maybe only really works here in a smaller room. It’s not quite bullying heel work and it isn’t quite some old-school attack, but it’s mean and relatively spartan, not only helping the match flow a lot easier when it isn’t 1000 miles an hour for fifteen minutes, but providing a contrast that helped the Bucks out a whole lot.

There’s then the old stuff here. Two tag teams with a ton of cool moves and ideas, who also have a ton of natural chemistry together. It occasionally gets a little convoluted and you could lob off two or three minutes. It’s not perfect. But there’s a spark or a magic here or whatever other metaphysical terminology you would like to use to explain why somethings just happen to work out. The execution is as crisp as possible, the construction and escalation is pristine, and thanks to all the ways everyone’s grown and the switch of how this match usually goes, it’s also a match that feels new enough to impress and comfortable enough to please.

Following a bunch of cool stuff, the Bucks win with the Meltzer Driver.

A real nice feeling return to form for an old match up, before it would unfortunately become a pretty bad one once it hit national TV. 

***