The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels, TNA Impact (7/1/2015)

This was the fifth match in the Best of Five Series for the TNA World Tag Team Titles.

Unfortunately it was a thirty minute Iron Team Match.

This was bad. It’s not to say it’s without positive moments, as Eddie Edwards cared enough to sell a leg throughout the rest of the match after an early attack on it, and the last five to ten minutes had a lot of of exciting action. It is however an iron team match where they don’t score a fall for the first twenty minutes plus and where the action is nowhere near exciting or interesting enough to carry that burden for them. It’s a match that goes as far as possible without doing much of anything, either in story or on a mechanical level.

It’s lazy and boring, and after the previous three matches that have all been pretty good to great, that just isn’t an acceptable outcome.

TNA is reaping the benefit of the last thirteen years of shooting themselves in the foot at every available opportunity so you can’t say any one thing hurts them at this point more than the toxic brand they’ve cultivated, but it says SOMETHING that they followed an exciting gimmick match in Match #4 with this. It’s an unbearably dull attempt to force an epic, but involving talent who didn’t seem to care at all about having one.

Still, they get two or three great matches out of this series, which is more than I ever expected out of TNA in 2015.

 

The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels, TNA Impact (6/24/2015)

This was the fourth match in the Best of Five Series for the TNA World Tag Team Titles, and it was a FULL METAL MAYHEM match.

In this specific case, this is now just an indie style TLC match where the match type is simply a description of the weapons they are encouraged to use. Yes, not even a year prior, this company held a Full Metal Mayhem match where you had to win by bringing down the titles. In the past, a ladder match in a Best of Five Series was also in the middle of the series, so you can’t say anything to the effect of “well what would they be pulling down?” either. It’s just that this is what they were doing this time, and it changes all the time based on situation, the people involved, and maybe just what direction the wind is blowing in. You can call it Impact Wrestling and be on good behavior a lot of the time, but it’s stuff like this that means it will always spiritually be TNA.

The match rocks though.

It’s easy stunt show stuff, with a few nice little offensive innovations from Aries and the Wolves. Roode again sticks out like a sore thumb when they try to move a little faster and get a little more dangerous, but he again knows to stay out until the match asks him to do cheating or one of the set spots he knows how to do. There’s a delightful extended spot near the end in which Aries has a garbage can over his head for a minute or two straight, and they go in some new directions with it. They’re all brutal and violent, but also enhanced by the pure physical comedy of the moment.

A perfect finish follows that, as Roode shoves Richards off the top to block a Powerbomb double team, low blows Eddie Edwards, and lets Aries fall off of him with the trash can still on his head before covering to take it to the obvious and deciding fifth match.

To that point about TNA always being TNA, this is yet another great tag team match that achieves that status independent of every other horrible or embarrassing thing around it.

The same as it ever was.

***

 

The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels, TNA Impact (6/3/2015)

This was the third match in the Best of Five Series for the TNA World Tag Team Titles, with the Wolves up 2-0 and only needing one more to regain the titles.

It’s not great in the way that the second match was, but still an improvement on the first.

They have less time than they did the previous week and work more of a sprint. It’s fun. Not every match that isn’t great is bad, this is the exact sort of a match you watch, enjoy, and forget about in a few days. The Wolves are good. Aries is good. Shorter bursts and less fat does the match a lot of favors. Roode is still out of his depth, but they a.) again use him smartly & b.) make it part of the story at the end. Aries gets him a chair and a distraction when he can’t beat Eddie Edwards himself, and with a low blow and a chair shot (to the back, coward shit), the heel superteam finally gets on the board.

The actual highlight of this episode is something I skimmed past when finding this match — an acapella version of EC3’s notoriously perfect theme song “Trouble”, performed during some kind of heel bragging segment to open the show. There’s a limit to how much I can recommend this match, but no such restriction exists on a flawless musical performance like that.

 

The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels, TNA Impact (5/29/2015)

This was the second match in a Best of Five Series for the TNA World Tag Team Titles.

The first match in this series was very much a first match in a series. All about setting the table and establishing themes to play with. Roode being more out of practice in the style that the other three work. Aries having leaned on being the fastest person in the ring for years and being surprised by old enemies. The Wolves being the best out and out TEAM and winning because of it.

As expected, the second match is where they begin to play with that more and get a greener light and a clearer runway to go wild.

It’s also definitely a weirder match, as for the first time, it strikes me that THE DIRTY HEELS are maybe not heels? The match is fairly even, but it’s Bobby Roode who winds up as the face in peril before the final hot tag that goes into the finishing run. It’s not bad exactly, as the Wolves can get mean with the offense and because Aries is still a pretty solid hot tag at this point. It is, however, unbelievably odd. It’s disorienting because TNA is so confusing sometimes and never clear to more casual viewers about what reality is. Is this the way things are or is this just a weird way this match went? If it’s the way things are, why is that their name?! I remember when they first teamed in 2012-2013, when TNA was still a fairly interesting promotion in some ways, fans online named them The Greatest Team That Ever Lived. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, but it’s better than Dirty Heels, if only because it doesn’t marry them to one individual role (yes, they could work face ironically, but irony is for children).

Role confusion aside, the match is genuinely a lot of fun.

By that, I mean that Aries, Davey, and Eddie do their best to have a proper ROH style tag banger with multiple controls, counters, nearfalls, inventive ideas, and all of that. Richards and Aries both show the unmistakable signs of time’s arrow moving in an uncomfortable direction as two explosivity based guys slowly being robbed of that, but like most great Wolves matches from 2010 on, it’s Eddie that holds it all together. He’s good at everything, never allows a moment when he’s involved that looks phony or isn’t interesting. Even if that just means throwing out a real hard shot to wake everybody up, Eddie always does it. Like many Wolves matches, it’s a far worse match without him. Bobby Roode is still kind of lost, but he knows enough to know he’s the odd man out and to let them cook and add in what he can. He adds in some of his own decent late match offense, but primarily gets out of the way.

They manage a few genuinely great nearfalls, play on the ending of the previous match, and the sort of unpredictability that comes from the second match in a five match series.  Aries and Roode display more teamwork than in the first match and come close, only for Roode to not be able to stop Richards from breaking up the Last Chancery with a double stomp off the top. Roode is again kind of useless in a match like this, and the Wolves go TWO STRAIGHT with the old SD/DR style Powerbomb & Lungblower combination.

A borderline great match made all the more impressive by everything about the setting in which it took place.

***

The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels (Austin Aries & Bobby Roode), TNA Impact (5/15/2015)

This was the first match in a Best of Five Series for the vacant TNA Tag Team Titles.

To get it out of the way:

1. yes, it is a very obvious attempt to go back to what worked in the past, despite The Wolves being a poor substitute for MCMG and being entirely different and despite Aries and Roode having nowhere near the chemistry as a team that Beer Money did. It’s hamfisted and falls short for a reason
2. yes, Dirty Heels is one of the worst tag team names of all time

All the same, this is nice fun television wrestling. The sort of thing that TNA’s largely gotten away from by this point and that is sorely missed in a lot of televised wrestling in the US, outside of Ring of Honor.

Nothing wildly complex, but good formula tag wrestling. Davey Richards can be very very grating, but Eddie is a likeable and steady enough presence to always ground him. Aries is past his prime by now, but always manages to get a little more motivated — be it here or in his WWE run — when he gets to face off against any of his old ROH pals. So he’s feeling it here like he hasn’t in a while. Bobby Roode is also in this match. So while imperfect, it’s good easy formula wrestling, telling a story about teamwork against a superteam. Davey and Eddie aren’t as great one on one, but know each other far better. Davey manages a quick cradle to get up 1-0.

A jumping off point for the rest of the series moreso than a great matcch on its own, but still just good and solid classical pro wrestling. The best thing TNA’s put on television that wasn’t a shortcut filled bloodbath in at least six months.

The American Wolves vs. Fourth Gunn (Biff Busick/Drew Gulak), SMASH Art of War (4/26/2015)

Hell yeah.

There are so few Fourth Gunn tags out there that I will watch any single one of them that comes up across my screen, assuming it’s the Biff Busick and Drew Gulak pairing. They’re a delightful team and while it’s super easy to understand why they weren’t more active as a team (two of the best singles wrestlers alive), I badly wish they could have done more together. Or could do more together now, you know? You can’t tell me this wouldn’t be better than half a decade of Biff hoisting Martin Stone up upon his back, right?

Anyways, this is not one of the better 4G tags.

The immediate comparison is their match against the Dojo Bros from Beyond Wrestling in the fall of 2013, but Davey sure isn’t Roderick Strong and this sure isn’t Beyond. Commentary seems unaware of any of that or anything the Wolves have done outside of TNA, so that’s a shame too, because there could be some real weight behind this. Biff and Eddie are again just electric against each other at every point at which they touch. There’s not a bad pairing in this because Davey is kind of feeling it without any pressure on him, but one of these pairings produced some of the best independent work of the decade and it’s a joy to see it again.

It’s a much lower stakes affair than any of that.

Davey brings out Sleazy Davey aka Team Bandit hip gyrations. Biff shouts “SHOW HIM” when Gulak has Davey in super rudimentary holds. There’s some stooging. In general, it’s a sort of classic b-show formula tag that you might not get out of these guys elsewhere. It’s a fun look at another universe, and they’re pretty good at it. If not the classic that Biff and Drew can deliver in other settings, it turns out that guys who are great at everything are just as great at working this kind of a match. Davey’s not a great hot tag or anything, but Canadians are perpetually five years in the past, so him making the hot tag makes a lot of sense. The finishing run itself is fun.

That’s the operative word here. Fun. It’s not all that serious, nobody here is all that committed to the idea of a Great Match, but it’s just a nice time for twenty or twenty five minutes.

Pure house show nonsense before pure house show formula, but with wrestlers this great (and also Davey Richards), that can be a wonderful time too.

***

The Wolves vs. The Hardy Boyz vs. Team 3D, TNA Impact (10/8/2014)

This was a FULL METAL MAYHEM match for the Wolves’ TNA World Tag Team Titles.

What this means is that it’s about the same as the Ladder Match from three weeks prior, only that now there are more tables and chairs used, and it gets to go fifteen to twenty minutes. It’s not a negligible difference, exactly. The match quality is generally the same because the match is real similar. It’s a stunt show with an incredibly loose story. The stunts rule, and to the credit of Team 3D and the Hardys, it’s incredibly impressive that around fifteen years on from the stuff that put these matches on the map, they still find ways to do new stuff and to change around the old stuff just enough to make it somewhat fresh. It’s still limited in that a lot of it is the same and that some of it is caught being obviously set up, but just enough works. Most importantly, it never comes close to outstaying its welcome or being annoying. Just a nice breezy piece of setpiece wrestlin.

All in all, a really fun series of matches, even if it hardly matches up with prior high points of TNA’s vaunted tag team division. Like most widely praised TNA things in this post-peak period, as long as you watch it with that in mind, there’s a whole lot to like here.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

three way

 

The Wolves vs. The Hardy Boyz, TNA Impact: Destination X 2014 (7/31/2014)

This was for Davey and Eddie’s TNA/Impact World Tag Team Titles.

Being one of those normal brained people who stopped watching TNA just about cold turkey after AJ Styles left, this whole series is one of those often praised TNA things that always gave me pause. I like most of the guys involved (well, not Team 3D so much), but it happened in TNA and good things in TNA always seem to be the victims of a kind of “notice me!” sort of hyperbole. So I never made the time to watch it or the subsequent matches in the series when Team 3D also found their way into the mix.

Maybe I should have earlier though, because this was a lot of fun!

To their benefit, it’s less the epic that it maybe could have been and might still be later in this entire series, and more just a great opening match. It’s not as long and they don’tdo quite as much, but it’s a format that lends itself more towards efficiency and matches of a more compact nature. Given the brain disease of Davey Richards and the unavoidable effects of time on the Hardy brothers, it’s the way to go for a 2v2.

The story told — in the ring, if not quite on commentary — is about the Hardys trying to get back on the tandem bicycle and not having the current experience that the Wolves do. They spend a good chunk of this relying on veteran wiles while getting their tag team sea legs back, while the other team doesn’t have the issue at all. The finishing run is electric and perfectly laid out and then elevated by a hot crowd rarely seen for TNA television since like 2005 or 2006. All the stars align to make this as fun and cool as possible. The Hardys are capable of all their old stuff, but the timing is a little different and the Wolves constantly take advantage. They’re forced more to compete as singles wrestlers, and it doesn’t work. Jeff can hit the Swanton Bomb but he doesn’t even get to cover before it’s cut off. Matt can hit the Twist of Fate, but it’s saved when Jeff isn’t able to cut it off. Jeff Hardy is also punished when he tries to turn back the clock with a big dive, only to eat shit.

Meanwhile, everything the Wolves does works.

They’re there for each other before things ever get dire. Every double team they go for works. They never have to get desperate about anything or take any real risk. They’re definitely not the best tag team in the world, but the match makes a pretty coherent case. They win with a pretty big move, something not in the regular arsenal, but that still isn’t the best and biggest they can do. Matt gets caught on the ropes and they hit the Powerbomb/Lungblower combo, now with Davey coming off the top rope with a Taliban Backpack version of it. Jeff tries the save, but unlike when he failed earlier, Eddie doesn’t fail to cut off the save, and the Wolves hang onto the titles.

It’s a great mission statement for TNA’s new top tag team, as well as a perfect launching point for further matches. The veteran team can hang and looked more than capable of getting it done in a rematch or a series of rematches, but just simply didn’t have the reps yet in the present day.

A whole lot is still left in the tank, but it’s about as good and as satisfying of a start to the program as you could ask for. A real hoot.

***

 

The Wolves vs. Beer Money, TNA One Night Only: Jokers Wild 2 (4/9/2014)

A perfectly good b-show tag team match between two very good tag teams. Properly executed formula, a lot of snap, and even more energy. All while not overstaying their welcome, and in fact, making it the rare American Wolves match that I genuinely wish was longer.

Mostly though, I’m just so happy that Davey Richards finally got to see Beer Money reunite.