Kazuchika Okada/Trent Baretta vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi/Juice Robinson, NJPW Road to Destruction 2018 Day Three (9/8/2018)

While not on the level of the Golden Lovers match the day before, it’s again something of a surprise for New Japan at any point and not just in 2018, seeing the second great build up tag in as many days.

It’s functional and all of the ways a build up tag would be, and great in one way I didn’t expect going in.

This one is entirely about Tanahashi and Okada, and all they really have to do here is maintain what’s already been constructed. Not just in terms of the equity they’ve built over the last six and a half years against each other, but their 2018 work specifically. Everything they do here maintains all of that. Okada being kind of a dickhead now, sneaking in a low blow on Juice at a point, and generally reverting back to the aloof casually rude little monster that all of his best work has tended to spring from. Tanahashi being Tanahashi, the old gunslinger just having fun out there, but outmatched and with Okada two weeks away from trying to take back the year’s most uplifting miracle. All of that works, it’s been one of the best things in wrestling all year, and everyone is smart enough to get that this is not like their spring tags that had to re-ignite and reframe the issue, and you just need to sprinkle in some here and there.

As such, Tanahashi and Okada get to instead spend much more of their time fighting the American on the opposing side. For Okada and Juice, it’s not a brand new match, having a great little match a year ago in the G1. For Tanahashi and Trent, it’s real real new, and while they don’t get a ton of runway here because of how different they seem to approach wrestling, it’s also really good. Above all, it’s just different, and that’s a feeling so many New Japan build up tags or tags in general feel like they lack, and it makes such a difference here.

That is also not the best thing about this match, nor what really drives it forward.

What actually works so well about this match has nothing to do with Tanahashi and Okada though, and it’s actually that Trent and Juice are genuinely great opponents.

Something just clicks here.

It’s hard to know if it would translate to a singles match, and the way Trent tends to go in non-gimmick singles with rare exceptions, I think we are maybe better off having never found out when Juice was at his peak in 2017-2019, but it’s spectacular. Big and dumb and wonderful bumps and offense, real hard shots, and always mixed around well with the others floating in and out and providing them the structure and crowd buy-in that they might not immediately have had one on one. Juice being where he is on the card and only recently having been elevated also allows for some more believable nearfalls from Trent than against maybe others in a similar spot, resulting in a run that’s not only better than I would have imagined upon hearing that Tanahashi and Okada basically gave them the last third of the match, but also far more dramatic.

Juice not only has an easier cut off before his big move in the big left, but he has the one thing Trent doesn’t, which is a move he can count on. Trent throws everything he’s got at the wall, but lacks the one thing to keep going to, and after Trent’s finally stunned enough by the left, Juice reels off the Pulp Friction to win.

A less traditional build up tag, really one in name only, but probably all the better for it.

***1/4

Kenny Omega vs. Trent Beretta, NJPW Power Struggle (11/5/2017)

This was for Omega’s IWGP U.S. Heavyweight Title.

2017 is a magical year for Kenny Omega.

I don’t so much mean that it was this all-time great year, or some example of Kenny Omega briefly figuring it out and then forgetting it (although.), but more in the sense that no matter what happens, most things just sort of work out just right for him. I mean, literally, I suspect some kind of intervention, be it divine or using magicks from the other direction. Sometimes it does come down to cleaning his act up just a little bit, but a lot of the times, it just kind of seems like situations casually break exactly right, and thinks work out in the best way that they possibly could, almost in defiance of what he actually does.

Just take this match for example.

Ostensibly, the goal here is to try and elevate Trent in defeat now that he’s a heavyweight. He clearly poses no real threat to dethrone Kenny, this match is happening to get Omega a big singles defense on a bigger New Japan show (this ain’t exactly WK or Dominion, but it’s it’s own thing, you know?) so that they can do a Chris Jericho angle after to further build up the Wrestle Kingdom semi main event, but you can do more than one thing at a time.

The way Kenny Omega’s brain INITIALLY goes about that is, again, fascinating. Rather than the more genuine upper level babyface vs. babyface work that Omega did against Naito in the G1 final or against Okada in the G1 semi-final, Omega’s brain collapses in the way it also did against Juice Robinson. Which is to say that he, for some reason reverts back into the pure heel sort of Cleaner act, at least for a chunk of this match. Not the full on cold spray to the dick, broom prop, sort of eye-rolling cheating schtick, but the bones of the thing. The attempts at arrogant heel taunting that always seem like the fakest “guy playing a character” shit in the entire world, big phony bumps for basic pieces of offense, that sort of a thing. Beyond that it’s embarrassing to watch, it also fails Trent in a way, because it makes the match all about Omega’s antics. Combined with the nature of the match itself — a foregone conclusion that no amount of nearfalls will ever totally be able to overcome — it’s a lot that this match has to overcome.

Despite these very valid reasons that the match could have been bad or simply just decidedly less than great, it actually mostly rocked.

Omega’s baffling decision goes away after the first quarter or first third of the match, and it is mostly just a big stupid wonderful bombfest, the exact sort of a match that these two particular wrestlers should have together, rather than what the match teased turning into. While it’s true that Omega doesn’t really help Trent out like the match might suggest on paper, but given that such a thing is not something Omega does well (or that history would suggest he even knows how to do), when the match redirects and becomes this sort of a classical Omega NJPW singles match, it does more in that direction than any of Omega’s grander overtures do. Trent isn’t assisted by the booking of the thing, so much as that he’s able to thrive in a Kenny Omega fireworks show on a mechanical and on a performance level. He takes a bunch of real wild bumps, works with a lot of energy, and although not a naturally super emotive guy, he works as this kind of vaguely likeable underdog. If he doesn’t come out looking like an equal, he at least leaves the match looking like a guy who can hold up his end of matches like this, and someone who belongs in the ring with one of NJPW’s big four.

Given that that’s more than he was — or at least more than he had proven himself to be — coming into the match, it’s a match that winds up accomplishing its goal, even if that’s a journey that begins with a massive stumble and comical pratfall.

The other big thing that helps out Omega and Beretta though, and maybe what makes this work more than anything else outside of raw performance (and, again, maybe just magical interference), is simply that this is a twenty one or twenty two minute version of the thing.

When not asked to carry it on for half an hour, such as September’s not great Omega/Juice US Title match or others in that vein, they are so much freer. There’s no kind of performative time killing attempt to go to a limb because this is a Great Match, no real part of this that feels overlong and tacked on to fill up that space, none of that. It is simply a match that gets to develop, its greatness coming from the fact that they simply do a bunch of spectacularly dumb moves and really really cool offense for something like eighty percent of the match’s runtime. It’s both deeply refreshing and totally frustrating, this clear artistic success born out of one clear institutional decision that is rarely ever made again.

Kenny holds onto the title with the One Winged Angel after a hundred other moves in a row, in no surprise, but again, it’s about everything that comes before it.

Not only is this match a success in a situation where it easily could not have been, but it’s a success on a scale that I would not have imagined for these two at all, let alone in this spot. In spite of its flaws, and everything it isn’t, once again for Omega this year, the result is something that just works and a match that I genuinely had a whole lot of fun with.

***1/4

The Young Bucks vs. Roppongi Vice, NJPW G1 Special in the USA Night Two (7/2/2017)

This was for the Bucks’ IWGP Junior Tag Team Titles.

In classic New Japan fashion, this is the Big One. The match that it feels like all of their matches in 2017 have been building towards, and that they’ve probably bookmarked at least since those initial matches in 2015 when just about everyone who laid eyes on them agreed that these teams had a whole lot of chemistry. As always, the classic estimation and the classic pro wrestling booking philosophy proves correct. Find a pairing that works entirely on its own, cool it off for a little bit, and then come back with some real material to help them out. Give them a story like 2017’s, a few matches to build some themes up, and throw the Big One out there. It works, it works for the millionth time, and provided the talent and story and feeling is there, this is the sort of thing that will probably always work.

Naturally, there are some issues here. A Young Bucks match is probably never going to be what I’d consider perfect.

There’s a few too many kickouts, and I specifically mean kickouts, not nearfalls. People kick out of some stuff that shouldn’t be kicked out of, forgetting that the utility of the save in a tag team match is to allow for big awesome moves like a Piledriver on the apron or the Inverted More Bang For Your Buck or the Strong Zero without having to hurt the move or the match’s credibility by having anyone survive that under their own power. The finish is also not THE BEST, as they go to the Sharpshooter bit after a Meltzer Driver in the ring, only without Romero having a hurt back now, so it’s simply a lesser move following up a gigantic one and doesn’t make half as much narrative sense as it did the month before.

Really though, the largest one is simply a matter of setting. While the Bucks wrestle this match correctly for the most part, leaning into how naturally unlikeable they are and working as the shit-eating goons they are in New Japan rather than totally embracing the stomach churning heroics of their other U.S. work, it is still a match wrestled in front of an American crowd that loves them. The Bucks never totally embrace that, unlike in ROH or PWG, this would be a much worse match than it is, but it’s still odd, and it leads to odder reactions, and a very strange feeling, a different flavor of that disconcerting feeling at seeing the widespread embrace of The Elite act on their spring ’17 European tour, or something similar.

It’s still very much a match about injuries to the opponents and the underdog story of Rocky Romero, but it’s reacted to in the building as if this is a pure face vs. face contest. It’s a kind of willful ignorance not only of the stories told in the promotion they’ve paid to see, but of the reality taking place in front of their eyes. It’s one thing in PWG or ROH when the Bucks play into this, but it’s a hundred times more bizarre when they do nearly everything right, save a few big kickouts, and the crowd simply refuses to do what, to me and most people with good brains, seems like the clear and obvious right thing.

Beyond the moral rot of these California sickos though, the match is as good as it possibly can be.

What works before between these two works once again here, only now there’s significantly more of it and it gets to be significantly bigger.

Speaking in a mechanical sense and talking about the construction of the thing itself, that goes for every part of the match. The “more” here is distributed pretty evenly across the terrain of the match. More means a longer shine for the challengers at the start, a longer control segment, a longer finishing run. The “bigger” part is something they make so much out of, not only going at it in the dumb fun way, doing the biggest spots that they possibly can when given the time and stage to make the most of them, but also leaning on the history of this match up recently to create moments in the match that feel bigger, independent of the level of fireworks that the match puts forward, such as Rocky’s last stand or Trent continuing to level up.

In terms of the story told, it’s their biggest effort yet too, using the larger platform to tell a more grandiose version of the story told in the last two matches, bringing this to a pretty satisfying conclusion, if not the best possible one.

The Bucks do what they always do at the start, and try to go after Rocky. They’re a little too obvious and/or confident about it now though, and with their hand on full display, Trent helps out and it doesn’t work. They still have to earn their control, but this time, they take the story to its logical conclusion. Rather than hurting Trent slightly and working Rocky over to take out the weak link, or focusing entirely on Rocky to cut out the middle man, they instead focus entirely on Trent’s back. His hot tag falls short because of it, and it’s now Rocky who has to save the day not only late in the match, but for the entire back half, again taking the familiar match up in a fun new direction.

Not only is it a newer approach to the match, but in the Big One here, they have more time with which to work on it and have the room to get a lot more brutal with it. On an individual performance level, Trent’s selling is genuinely stellar, far beyond what I thought he had in him, working both in a mechanical and emotional sense. Everything he does to express the pain is good, but he’s also SO likeable while he’s doing it. It’s a really great performance that ticks off almost every box I’d want a singles babyface to be able to tick off, on top of how well it serves the story of the match, and also the story coming out of it. The Rocky underdog story of the match was something, but with Trent’s incoming move to heavyweight, this match is so great at making Trent’s growth feel like such a big deal, not only fighting through this, but nearly pulling it off, and never actually losing the match.

The fireworks show eventually begins, and it is a spectacular one. Both in terms of what they’re doing, but in classic Bucks in California fashion, in terms of how well it’s laid out. It’s not totally seamless, but things generally build and move from thing to thing really well, and the escalation is just about perfect. Teases and cut offs, different and bigger versions of the moves we see all the time.

Most notably, in the later stages, the Bucks level up the Meltzer Driver into a La Escalera version, the HERB MELTZER DRIVER, and as the biggest possible spot, the match effectively ends there.

Romero is done inside the ring, and although Trent again tries to defend him, he no longer can. It’s a beautiful end to this nearly year long story about Rocky Romero being the weak link, coming full circle to Romero having now wrestled his heart out, but the Bucks having wrestled a perfect match, and so it didn’t work, only for Trent to stand up for him anyways. The transition from the Wrestle Kingdom match showing it wasn’t just Trent’s team when they seemed on the verge of a split to, in the final match of the 2017 trilogy, showing that Romero was the weaker link, but the emphasis was on the “-er” there, and that Trent stood up for him when he counted anyways, which is a heartwarming ending to a team that was initially founded on the back of Trent being a bad friend to somebody else. A real gross double superkick to the back takes our hero out, and the Meltzer Driver into the Sharpshooter wins again.

It’s the best regular Young Bucks tag in a few years, and at a time when it looked like the old machine might not ever work like it did in its prime, the mechanics having forgotten exactly how to run it. A phenomenal show of what is still there and what can still be achieved when most other environmental factors were right, and looking into an arguable career year for the Bucks in 2018, a show of how this can work again moving forward, with these gigantic feeling Bucks matches combining big themes and these sorts of unbelievable fireworks displays.

***1/2

Roppongi Vice vs. The Young Bucks, NJPW DOMINION 6.11 (6/11/2017)

This was for Trent and Rocky’s IWGP Junior Tag Team Titles.

It’s great again.

Speaking in terms of what these matches have always done well, going back to some of the initial 2015 matches, there is against just a fantastic chemistry that exists between these teams. Something has to go wrong in order for a Young Bucks vs. RPG Vice match to miss at this point in time (that is to say, not counting the AEW work), and on big New Japan shows like this when limited to fifteen minutes or less, these teams do not miss. I mean that in a metaphorical way, but also in a mechanical way as well. Everything about this match, in senses both vague and concrete, does what you would want it to.

This match is tight and efficient, packing in a ton of nasty bumps and cool spots, managing not only to live up to what this match’s role is on the card (fireworks) on a show like this, but delivering something a little juicier than just that as yet another installment into the genuinely and shockingly good Rocky Romero story that New Japan’s been telling since the end of 2016.

After their match in the Tokyo Dome, it became apparent that simply relying on Rocky Romero to be the weak link and let Roppongi Vice down, even forcing Rocky in at the end by hurting Baretta, would no longer work. It’s not that Rocky rose up and kicked their asses exactly, but the plan of making it so Trent couldn’t bail Rocky out again fell short when Trent was tougher than they thought and when Rocky still had just enough to grab a flash cradle at the end. A narrow loss, but for a match they seemed so sure about, a loss is a loss is a loss all the same.

A shift in thinking is required, and what’s what this match displays

Following an early run where Trent shows further growth by kicking ass, and succeeding in the double dive where he got hurt horribly in a miss in their last match, the Bucks grow up a little, top waiting for a mistake, and get proactive about the thing. Rather than simply rely on Rocky Romero to be weaker, they instead make him the weak link through force and action, attacking Romero’s back and forcing Trent to go it alone as the legal men. It’s an inversion of what they tried at the Tokyo Dome, now making it so that Rocky will be unable to help Trent rather than trying to make it so big strong Trent can’t help Rocky Romero when it counts the most.

Nobody will want to hear this, and I am sure not suggesting The Young Bucks are the fucking Holy Demon Army out here or anything, but it’s the exact sort of big brain deep strategy shit everyone goes absolutely wild for when talking about those mid 1990s All Japan tag epics. I’m not saying this match is exactly as great, but talking about this specific sort of a thing, it’s done just as well here.

(If not better! Rocky Romero sure isn’t out there in Osaka Jo weeping his ass off instead of trying to fight through it! Stop throwing rocks at me and tying my limbs to four different horses!)

The finishing third or so of the match is about as great as you’d expect, given that this is still a match that, in classic New Japan fashion, is building to the one where they go absolutely stupid nuts. Trent’s got some great stuff, but he’s unable to help Rocky like he was before now that Rocky’s actually hurt. The roll up that worked in January fails in June, and after the Indietaker, Romero gives up to the Sharpshooter, and the bad guys ruin the dream.

It’s another hit from these two.

Unlike so much of the Young Bucks work on American soil, it’s yet another one of these New Japan matches where the routine works like it’s supposed to and like it used to. Arrogant little shitheels, cast in the right position for their skills and talents, and delivering the exact sort of match they’re great at. Despicable and so talented, against an overmatched team, succeeding mostly fairly but in a wholly unlikeable way. This still isn’t the peak of the Bucks in 2017, but another example of how much better they are here — in New Japan, on a New Japan undercard, and against Roppongi Vice — than they are anywhere else at this point.

Still not the best they can do, but as this series turns into one of those classical New Japan Series, it’s a hell of a set up for the upcoming Big One.

***

 

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

ACH/Taiji Ishimori vs. Roppongi Vice, NJPW Power Struggle 2016 (11/5/2016)

This was the final of the 2016 Super Junior Tag Tournament.

It’s a wonderful thing that ACH got the chance to have this spot. He completely lives up the stage provided and delivers yet another tremendous performance under a somewhat big New Japan spotlight.

Sadly, this match is not really about him, or his partner.

The story throughout the tournament and the lead up shows is that Rocky Romero is the weak link of Roppongi Vice, and that Trent is getting tired of it. Personally, I think it’s a wonderful thing to happen to Trent after he turned his back on his best friend to form the team, a classic example of buying the ticket and having to take the ride. However, as a story, the resurgence of Rocky Romero is not the worst one in the world. The only real issue with it is that ACH, who takes something like 60% of the match and is the central opposition in the last five minutes, is a lot more naturally likeable than either Romero or Trent, and so it doesn’t work quite as well as (a) it could, or (b) as it would for a large part of 2017 when running a variation of this story against The Young Bucks.

Still, this is one of those times in which they sort of shove all the jigsaw pieces into place.

Is it as great as it could be with a narrative that fit the talents of everyone involved a little better? No.

Probably not, at least.

There’s still a real joy to it. Some real spectacular stuff happening for fifteen or twenty minutes, all constructed remarkably well, and carried off by some real talented guys, be that in a physical or mental sense (or in ACH’s case, both). The Romero stuff at the end is very good, weaknesses of the match up in that case aside, and they manage to strike the perfect balance for the beginning of a longer story with this idea. Romero hangs on long enough to not let the team down like he had been doing, but it’s still Trent who bails him out, and it’s through the Strong Zero that Romero wins, and not really anything he’s done by himself.

Sort of a weird fit as a match, give the story told, but another one of those victories via pure force of talent in the end.

***

 

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

Kazuchika Okada/Tomohiro Ishii/Roppongi Vice vs. Meiyu Tag/reDRagon, NJPW New Years Dash (1/5/2016)

A hoot.

Ostensibly to set up a few things in Goto’s ten thousandth failed IWGP Heavyweight Title challenge and Shibata/Ishii again, so as to avoid doing something new with the NEVER Title just yet, it’s way more about all of the fun stuff underneath that. reDRagon mixing it up with Big Tom and Little Kazu. Trent getting to fight the heavyweights in Shibata and Goto. Sadly, New Japan is a little too rigid to REALLY dig into every bit that those new match ups have to offer, but it’s a delicious little sampler platter. Get your hungry little mouths around some stuffed peppers and mini pretzel dogs while supplies last.

When the match gets back into the old familiar bits to build these next match ups, it also helps that every single one of them rocks, and that everyone is really really really feeling it. Everyone simply either deciding that tonight is a night to kill it or being swept up and pushed forward by a great wind, some larger spirit deciding that this match was simply going to rule, and nobody being powerful enough to push back against the current and make that not the case.

It’s that feeling that really serves the match well, just being a great night for everyone. This is exactly the sort of a thing that could easily fade back into “good little thing, **1/2” territory on any random ROAD TO show in Korakuen at other points in the year, but with the effort, energy, and heat all brought to the match by everyone with a part in it (including the way it’s booked and the reactions of the crowd), it rises far far above that, despite not breaking much new ground.

Shibata vs. Ishii is a guaranteed hit in a match like this when all they have to do is string together two to four great minutes, that’s not impressive. What is impressive is the urgency that reDRagon and Roppongi Vice go after each other with, creating their best work against each other yet. What’s impressive is not so much Okada and Goto feeling it, but the way the match kind of knows that there’s a lower roof on that one (if this match is a house, Okada vs. Goto is the porch), and limiting them and letting Goto fight the other people in the match a little more.

Goto getting yet another IWGP Title match isn’t interesting, but the end-of-the-match run against Trent? that gets him there sure is.

You can say that about so much of this match, and that’s why it’s such an easy watch all these years later.

A perfect kind of New Year’s Dash tag.

***+

The Briscoes vs. Roppongi Vice, ROH Death Before Dishonor XIII (7/24/2015)

The highlight of Roppongi Vice’s ROH excursion.

While it’s been fun to see Roppongi Vice in ROH, they’ve somewhat disappointingly just had a lot of retread match ups. It’s been nice to see RPG Vice against The Young Bucks or reDRagon in ROH length match ups and in front of ROH crowds. They’re not all the same as they are in New Japan and the matches can provide some nice differences. However, they’re not new matches, and this is a new match.

It’s treated exactly like you treat a new match that probably only happens the once, which is to say they go a little wild and do everything they can.

Needless to say, it absolutely rules.

Once more, it’s a great ROH midcard match without a shred of complexity and with a refreshing honesty in its place. Beyond that, there’s time for a little schtick and comedy, but with it fitting perfectly into the match and most importantly, done in a way that never undercuts the seriousness of the match. It’s not a skill that everyone has, particularly some other tag teams around ROH in 2015, and it’s maybe the most impressive thing Mark Briscoe is able to do is walking that incredibly thin tight rope and balance the two in his hands. There’s also a lot of the old Briscoes to it, and it’s a match that wouldn’t feel horribly out of place a half decade or more prior. They don’t have the speed that they did in those first years and especially not the stunning explosivity of that 2006-2008 run, but they’re a lot smarter and can hit with something close to the same rate now. It’s a match that doesn’t aim as high, but because it’s much more intelligently assembled and perfectly executed at all times, it’s a match that I got as much out of as a lot of those old classics. They’re able to escalate and bring the pace up without it ever feeling like they were stalling, double control work without it ever feeling formulaic or routine, and one of the better finishing runs in a tag match like this all year.

An unbelievably fun match comes to an end when The Briscoes block the Strong Zero, leaving RPG Vice without another thing to go to. Rocky gets taken out by Mark Briscoe outside, and neither is any match for Jay Briscoe one on one. Trent eats the Jay Driller and just to make sure, Mark follows up with the Froggy Bow for the win.

Secretly, 2015 has seen the Briscoes continue what started in 2014, with them once again among the two or three best tag teams in the world. This is another feather in that cap, and the sort of thing I think about compared to other tag teams. Especially ones in similar positions, who don’t craft matches with nearly as much precision or effort.

***1/4

 

The Young Bucks vs. Roppongi Vice, ROH Aftershock Tour: Las Vegas (7/17/2015)

ROH makes a debut in a new building in Las Vegas, Sam’s Town, and it’s not great. It’s a smaller casino venue than where they ran on pay-per-view four months prior, and the walls are all tinsel and cheap looking curtains. There’s an early 1990s WCW feeling to it, and while there isn’t a real correlation or causation here, it is fitting that ROH runs the venue more and more frequently in 2016 and beyond once the quality of the promotion slips back to those pre-2014 levels.

The match itself is a lot of fun.

Not all that much changes between this and their matches in New Japan, but it’s in front of a different crowd and they have both more time to work with and nobody putting a ceiling on what they get to do.

It’s to both the detriment and benefit of the match.

To the detriment because more time on a house show level event means the Bucks riff around a little much. The setting is also to the detriment of the match because it’s not all that different from the formula of their New Japan work, but now with the entire crowd being pro-Bucks. It’s always weird to see the crowd react in the opposite way the match asks of them, especially when there’s nothing wrong with the performances of Rocky and Trent and doubly so when there’s nothing the Young Bucks do that’s worth cheering for. They’re still annoying and preening little shits with no positive qualities beyond athleticism, but I suppose if you’re going to an ROH house show, you would be exactly the sort of gormless reprobate who wants to actually cheer for the Bucks instead of just watching them and having a more natural human response to the mere sight of them.

More time is to the benefit of the match though simply because it’s a really good pairing. Trent gets to show off more with more time, and they’re able to get a more prolonged control segment and finishing run in as a result. The Bucks stop fucking around so much when the match gets Serious, and they put together something a little more substantive than any of their New Japan tag matches up until this point.

There’s nothing all new here, but we’re still at a point where the stock Young Bucks match is still a fun little time had by all and not one of the most annoying things in the world, so there’s a lot to like.

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