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

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

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

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

Really, I do.

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

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

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

And yet it also kind of just fucking rules.

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

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

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

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

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

Quaint, in its own way.

***1/4

Mount Rushmore (Adam Cole/The Young Bucks) vs. Men of Low Moral Fiber/Zack Sabre Jr., PWG Battle of Los Angeles 2014 Stage One (8/29/2014)

It’s one of the most fun matches of the year, in the careers of many of these men, and of the decade.

For one last time, Omega returns to his career role as Big Dust’s sidekick, hoping to finally get one over the Young Bucks five years later. Joking aside, this is the sort of thing he’s best at and outside of major singles matches, it’s where he shines the most. He’s there, he’s having fun, but hidden enough so that none of his weaknesses (any sort of basics) are well well hidden. He’s also a thousand times better against the Bucks as he is at teaming with them. They’ve never been a natural trio, but they are natural opponents. On the other end, Cole and the Bucks absolutely are. It’s the same sort of energy, this amazing feedback loop where they all make each other worse human beings, but also better wrestlers. The Bucks slow it down a little to match Cole so things breathe a little easier, and Cole has to bring it up a little to keep up. The teams with Big Kev and with AJ Styles are better, but this one was a lot of fun the first time around too.

It’s also not an unimportant match as, by and large (no disrespect to his brief 2011 tour), it’s the first time a larger U.S. independent audience saw Zack Sabre Jr.. In this moment, it’s a good thing. The whole mat wizard thing eventually became very VERY played out, he never really seemed to become as great as it seemed like he would, and his success opened some doors that should have remained closed, but he’s also one of the defining wrestlers of the second half of the decade and it begins here. As this weird lanky import getting the best of the three stooges and doing all this funky stuff, which never goes overboard like some of his later work. And that’s the thing, really, both with Zack and Kenny, the act works a thousand times better in this sort of environment. It’s no serious title match, neither has to fill a lot of space entirely on their own or think all that hard about things. They’re incredibly unique and stand out in major ways, but a little always goes a long way with those two. There’s maybe no better example of that than here.

The match itself is a standard kind of super lively Mount Rushmore tag. There’s always another thing to do, it always keeps moving, and never really gets repetitive. The stooging is a blast, the control work is rock solid, and everything in the last third is a hoot and a half. Big Dust isn’t the athlete the others are, but he once again proves invaluable as the heart of the match and company. An injured Trent? tries to help out against the cheating before being re-injured, leading to a lovely comeback spot in the end following a ref bump. Cole is hit with the Croyt’s Wrath followed by the Awful Waffle, and after Trent? lends a hand with a referee shirt and a three count, the Men of Low Moral Fiber finally have their moment in the sun.

It’s a miraculous sort of a match, with five different people who later lean heavily into different kinds of overbearing and frustrating wrestling all manage to tie it together at once and deliver something this well proportioned and joyous. As the one of six who doesn’t fall into these bad habits later on, does that mean I credit Chuck Taylor alone for this?

Yeah. Obviously.

If I had to recommend one Kenny Omega or Zack Sabre Jr. match to somebody, I’m not sure this wouldn’t be the one. It’s not their best, but it’s something they rarely touched on much again, the sort of match you can throw on and watch over and over and over again. The PWG version of a great ECW fancam main event, minus Sandman getting drunk, nude, and trying to kidnap a fan.

***1/4

 

Mount Rushmore (Kevin Steen & The Young Bucks) vs. Johnny Gargano/Trevor Lee/Cedric Alexander, PWG Sold Our Souls For Rock & Roll (5/23/2014)

It’s a little too long and too big to be a genuine HOOT, but it’s one of the most fun matches of the year and of the entire decade.

The final Mount Rushmore match stands here as a monument to all that was and all that could have been with this team, given even just six more months.

As great as Steen’s been and will be in other teams and as much fun as the Bucks can be with other third partners (or in the case of The Elite, as unbearable), neither side of this trio has ever had the chemistry with another part of the equation as they do here. And that doesn’t even begin to cover the raw energy on display here, with everyone involved making their partners into the most manic, deranged, and most magnetic versions of themselves that have ever existed. Beyond just the shit talking and general mugging, it’s the way they’re always stringing things together in a perfect way, but also in a way that feels somewhat organic. With AJ or Cole or Omega, it always feels like they come to these matches with set ideas, but with Steen, they’re so different that it simply feels like the Bucks reacting to and then going with the wreckage that Steen creates.

It’s also one of the best examples of the thing that makes the team so interesting, which is how different Steen is from the Bucks. Not only are the matches not every “samey” to the point where things all blend together, but it’s this parade of cool stuff that’s all wildly different from guy to guy. It’s exciting to watch, and then on an analytical level, it makes it so hard for anyone against them to combat, always making it feel like that much more of a mountain to climb.

That especially matters here as beyond just being fun as hell, it’s an important step for some really talented kids.

Gargano is replacing the recently injured Andrew Everett, but because this isn’t about him and was never supposed to involve him in the first place, he does well enough to stay away. A few bits here and there to pop the crowd, but it’s not about him. It’s about Cedric and Trevor. Cedric, again, is a more known quantity and is treated like it. He gets the first big hot tag, a run against Big Kev that’s really wonderful, all of that stuff. None of it is a surprise. He’s incredible, one of the snappiest and most consistent wrestlers in the entire country if not the world at this point, but none of it is really a surprise anymore.

Trevor Lee though, man. He wasn’t THE STAR of the three way two months prior, but he’s the star of the back half of this. Explosive offense, incredible babyface fire, and he comes off as this unbelievable ball of energy in a match with four other wrestlers who, at their best, are unbelievable balls of energy (and also Johnny Gargano). Mount Rushmore does their thing and gradually picks people off, but Lee’s the one who stands and fights at the end. It’s not quite as heroic as something like Candice’s Last Stand at the 2013 BOLA, but it’s enough to open eyes for real in a way that they weren’t earlier.

Eventually, the wunderkind gets steamrolled too, especially with nobody around to help him. Superkicked out of the air in mid backflip. The Package Piledriver, and then the triple team Cutler Driver for the win.

It’s another insane sprint from an all-time great trio, but perhaps the most meaningful and important because it winds up actually helping someone out, even moreso than the Candice stuff. It’s a crazy enough match that the result doesn’t matter all that much, especially with guys like these. It especially doesn’t matter with Trevor Lee. I tend to think “stronger in defeat” is bullshit a lot of the time, but with someone as young and new to this crowd as Trevor Lee, it’s one of the times where it is very concretely true. He came in as a talented kid and he left as someone genuinely likeable. It’s far from a complete elevation, but it’s as fun of a first step as you’re going to get.

Kevin Steen isn’t long for the independents, but if there’s one thing he seemingly set his mind to before leaving, it was making Trevor Lee. It’s about as good of a first half to that as you can get.

***1/2

 

Cole Steen Cole (Adam Cole & Kevin Steen) vs. Best Friends, PWG DDT4 2014 (1/31/2014)

This was a semi-final match in the 2014 DDT4 tournament.

A wonderful pure sprint. Almost all fighting in the crowd. People being hurled through steel chairs and into walls. Dives off of the stage. A few big huge moves inside of the ring. Holding hands with your best pal and fighting off bullies who try to mock you because they don’t understand the beauty of male friendships. Candice LeRae runs out to distract Adam Cole and Kevin Steen, and Big Dust can roll up Big Kev for the win. Sometimes girls are dudes too.

Also there’s an alleged rapist on commentary so I can’t full throatedly tell you to watch it.

three boy

Kevin Steen/The Young Bucks vs. Drake Younger/World’s Cutest Tag Team, PWG All Star Weekend X Night Two (12/21/2013)

An incredibly canceled match.

For whatever reason, I find it much easier to draw the line with a guy like Younger who sucks as a human being still, but never crossed quite THAT line, so all praise of his professional work still feels acceptable to me. With the other guy on this team though, yeah, no, it’s incredibly distasteful. Spreading Q-Anon and similarly minded conspiracy theories and being a MAGA dipshit is bad. It’s real bad, full stop, but I’m of the opinion that bad thoughts are worse than bad actions and the third member of the team is much more in the camp of the latter, so to continue a similar trend, we’re just not going to bring him up.

Or, I was going to do that. This is a little harder now, because he’s a much bigger part of this than he was of the October tag title match, getting isolated for the match’s big face-in-peril run for some reason, and getting an equal share of big offense. If I wrote this in March 2020 and not March 2021, I likely would have talked for more than a sentence (this one) about how it’s one of his best performances ever and how he held up his end until the two better wrestlers could get in. Fuck doing more than that.

For whatever reason, this one really really bothered me.

It might be that he had a bigger part and that the match asked way more of him and that the relative success in that role makes me feel incredibly gross in the moments watching this when I’m like, “oh wow, that was good!” It might be the combination of said alleged rapist and also Drake Younger’s issues in the same match, even when I’m usually much more able to separate Drake from those things, because again I find words different than deeds. If I had to really try and nail it down, I would say that the reason the Tag Title match in October didn’t make me feel so weird for praising it is because it’s all Candice in that match. It’s about further legitimizing her whereas this is about the entire act. A more equal focus hammers home how gross it all is. I think I’m This serial rapist using an all-time great female wrestler in the history of independent wrestling to get himself back over again while carrying on the way he has, and using this act to really re-launch his career after he failed on his own merits before the few months preceding this. It’s one of the grossest things in the last decade. It always made me feel weird at the time because it was so obviously this sub-mediocre talent taking advantage of a potential superstar, and it’s a thousand times grosser in retrospect.

The major failing of this match on rewatch isn’t just not being as airtight as other Mt. Rushmore six man tags before it, but it’s also that it relies more heavily on emotional connection, which has been destroyed forever for two-thirds of the people in this match. The reason the BOLA six man stood out so much to me is the same reason that this one falls short, that I simply don’t want to see two-thirds of the people on the winning side of this succeed, and the match devotes itself to that goal.

That all being said, there’s still SO MUCH to love here. The Mount Rushmore side of this is flawless. Kevin Steen is a force of nature. The Young Bucks are psychotic and are a perfect match up for Candice and a great one for Drake. The babyface side is pretty good too, especially mechanically. Beyond that, Drake is a lunatic in the best ways and Candice continues to be the third or fourth best babyface throughout all of professional wrestling at this point. There’s a big dramatic finishing run that’s laid out perfectly given that the two most beloved figures in the company are in this match trying to combat Mount Rushmore. We get pitifully little of Kevin Steen vs. Candice LeRae, but it’s probably a smart political maneuver by Steen there. In the end, after Candice takes the Bucks out, and Steen runs through the other two, Drake is able to roll up Steen for his biggest victory in PWG yet.

I could never tell anyone to watch this, and for a match that I was head over heels for once upon a time, it’s a significant drop off. But I still can’t tell you that this isn’t a really great match.

At a certain point though, fuck that. The next one of these that I put time and energy into writing about is the famous blood one.

***1/4

 

 

Kevin Steen/The Young Bucks vs. Inner City Machine Guns/AR Fox, PWG All Star Weekend X Night One (12/20/2013)

As you can see, Kevin Steen has brought gear to match the Young Bucks for their weekend of six man tags, only replacing the word “SUPERKICK” on the back of the vest with simply the word “FUCK”, which is the perfect summary of Kevin Steen in PWG.

God, look at it.

Anyways, this is a blast.

It’s a perfect synthesis of the perfect heel/face structure of the Mount Rushmore six man from the second night of BOLA against Fox, Swann, and Candice LeRae and the outlandish manic energy of the Machine Guns vs. Fox/Del Sol tag from March. Without LeRae, this lacks the emotional core, so they make the right call and go in the entire opposite direction. You have the framework and the enduring sleaziness but now also some of the most brazen and insane stuff ever compiled into one match in the American Legion #308. If you lose the heart and soul that Candice gets you, you also lose a piece of the match that couldn’t quite go at the same pace and with the same obscene athleticism as the others. It’s a trade off. The match isn’t quite as great, because I’m drawn to that emotional centerpiece, but it’s wilder.

To shorten it, if the two matches happened years later when a newsletter writer began going to PWG shows, this would be the one that would be as famous as a far less interesting 2016 six man tag is instead.

What really makes this tick though is the performance of Kevin Steen as the one guy in the match that’s different. He’s working Andre the Giant style spots against the little guys here, but he’s also hurling them around and constantly encouraging the Bucks to become even more psychotic. The way they string together combinations and sequences here is perfect, because Big Kev always throws in some of his shit too, like following an apron superkick by recklessly hurling AR Fox into the crowd or the Bucks doing one of their usual set ups for some big fancy spot only for Steen to throw a punch or bite instead. It’s the simplest idea in the world, but adding another element to this beyond it being a pure spotfest (even with a great structure and stellar heel performances) is what takes this to the next level, even before they all begin going completely insane.

When the switch flips, it flips like in few other matches of the era. It’s near flawlessly laid out, with maybe only one or two more superkick spots than necessary. Beyond that, very little repetition. Things are teased, paid off later, done in different ways, etc. It feels wrong to call this a match with substance because it really is just a ton of stuff, but it’s laid out well enough that there’s never a dull moment. A really well rounded match, considering. In the end, the shifts in attack between how to fight Steen and how to fight the Bucks is too much. They catch them in two very different ways, and the team seems unbeatable. A Package Piledriver on Swann is then fed back into an assisted Cutler Driver aka Indietaker on Swann for the win.

This is a pure showcase for the new trio, but in a testament to how great of a team it is, that absolutely does not matter. One of the most insane displays of the year and of the decade.

One of the greatest crimes in wrestling in the last decade — even more than the AJ/Bucks trio only lasting a year and a half — is that we have five years of The Elite six man tag matches and only like ten or fifteen Steen & Bucks trios matches tops. It’s one of the most electric six man combinations in the history of professional wrestling, and this is them at their absolute best.

If you’re not sold already, this is also the match where on commentary, Chuck Taylor and Excalibur first come up with the 15% bit.

***1/2

 

Adam Cole/The Young Bucks vs. Rich Swann/AR Fox/Candice LeRae, PWG Battle of Los Angeles 2013 Night Two (8/31/2013)

Mount Rushmore is here, and gives PWG another necessary shot in the arm.

This is a blast, one of the most fun and manic Bucks matches of the year. It’s also a nice treat, as it’s one of the only Candice matches of the era that I can review without having to also promote the work of a serial rapist, which has been something of a detriment. There’s a certain tag in 2014 that I don’t feel I can credibly just ignore, but otherwise, that’s sort of the policy. So it’s a delight when Candice gets to have partners who aren’t so much that or gets to be on her own.

There’s no real reason this one works out quite as well as it does.

With these six at this point in time, it was almost always going to be a great match, but this is one of those times when everything goes right for them that can possibly go right. All the stars align, some light shines upon them from above, and they are pushed forward by some great wind. Four absolute maniacs go wild, buoyed by the most detestable heel on the US indies and one of the most likeable and talented underdog babyfaces to add some emotional lifeforce to the proceedings too.

In so much as any theme exists, the big deal here is that Adam Cole and The Young Bucks fit together like a glove, with virtually no effort. Same attitude, same outlook, a similar combination of a total lack of scruples and willingness to do pretty much anything. A perfect dipshit trio, up there with Bucks/Steen and Bucks/Styles as the best Bucks trios by miles and miles. They manage to trade out three different control segments, but the pace moves along so briskly that nothing ever lingers past its expiration date. One of our heroes is always a move or two away from blowing the lid off of this thing, and the villains are trying to plug a leak in a canoe trying to slow this down in any way, which is how this should be done. The sort of match that people should be looking at, in terms of how to do a match like this in the best possible way, and that also includes the people in it who have maybe forgotten about how efficient and short and intense these sorts of matches are at their best.

The fireworks show, when it happens, is one of the best of the year.

Again, the Bucks and Cole make a better team and it matters. Specifically the Young Bucks specifically as a unit are better than any two person pairing on the other side. They always cut them off in some way or do a thing, but the other person will have some ultra-explosive moment out of absolutely nowhere that puts them back to square one. Cole can do the same thing one on one, the World Champion rightfully being presented as individually better than each opponent when all things are fair.

The highlight of this comes when Adam Cole does his whole schtick to Candice, only for her to fight back and shout at him to suck her dick, and Reseda EXPLODES. Candice is suddenly the #1 hero in the company and the match seems to suddenly adjust to this new fact of life. Candice is the one making the big save at the end, and has her big moment when she dodges a double basement superkick as she’s holding Cole, resulting in Cole getting the double superkick into his shitty little hog, opening the Bucks up for the first? ever Double Ballplex. Magical stuff that’s also extremely silly and goofy. It’s fucking pro wrestling. Everyone has their own line, it’s hard to ever know where it is, but this is just on the right side for me that it works perfectly. She later pulls off one of the best hot tags in PWG history by someone not named El Generico. Flawless stuff, maybe the career Candice performance that doesn’t involve the crimson mask.

In the end, the tide shifts when Adam Cole can finally work in perfect synchronicity with the Bucks. Two people working in unison always leaves an opening for the third in a match like this. Three people in perfect harmony is a real stern thing to go up against, it should be nearly impossible to do, and they nail it here. Fox is taken out first when Cole catches the Lo Mein Pain from behind into his grossest German Suplex ever. Swann gets taken out with a three on one after that. Candice is the only one left, and gets this wonderful heroic final stand, crawling back into the ring to face it all by herself, but not backing down an inch. The difference between a good hero and a great hero usually has to do with the odds they’re up against and how possible the challenge seems. Standing up for a fight you absolutely won’t win, and going for it anyways, because someone has to is the all-time babyface hero sweet spot, and for this year or so when PWG actually gave Candice real opportunities like this, there were few better babyfaces in the world.

A triple superkick leads into a double superkick/Florida Key combination move, and the team of champions finally closes it out.

Later in the night, Kevin Steen will turn heel to join them, creating PWG’s greatest stable, Mount Rushmore. The tragedy is that they had less than a year together, and that later Cole/Bucks team ups under another banner never had quite the same sort of magic as they tapped into here.

One of the best PWG matches of the year, one of those examples of Reseda Magic you always hear about.

***3/4