This review was commissioned by Hippoboy281 over on my Ko-fi account.
For better and worse, a harbinger for what modern tag team wrestling would become.
First, the positives. At this time in 2003, what all four guys really had going for them was that they were completely fucking freaks. There are some intangibles there that I’ll discuss, but first and foremost is the fact that the physicality all these dudes brought is intense. It’s easy to draw a throughline from this to some of the worse modern tags, but what these four have in spades is just a pure dedication to fucking people and getting fucked up in return. There’s about a dozen different throws or suplexes in this and basically every single one of them looks like absolute murder. My god, one of the first big spots of the match sees AJ deliver a pair of really great Germans to each Briscoe before he and Red go for a double tope to the outside. Somehow, the bumps only get more gruesome from there for everyone involved.
It’s not even just the big bumps either, it’s the strikes. They’re not quite yet what they will be, but Jay and Mark make their cut offs in this feel devastating. When they nail a big boot to drop Red, it feels like the latter may just be completely knocked out. That speaks to Red’s ability to bump and sell throughout this whole thing as well, but we all know that Red’s great contribution to this is the speed and ferocity of his high flying. All this combined with AJ Styles, one of pro wrestling’s greatest freak athletes, and every single move in this match feels deadly.
That’s the real key to all of this too. Cooperation can still be felt, anything this intricate always brings that to mind, but there’s a constant underlying danger to everything here. There’s no soft landings or whiffed strikes, everything lands. It looks like it fucking hurts and that’s more than one can say for a lot of the poor imitators matches like this would influence.
There’s even hints of something smarter lying beneath all the cool moves too. After a fairly even opening half, I was shocked to find the Briscoes start working an honest to God heat segment in this. They go about it real smartly too, with Jay striking Red from the apron which allows Mark to take Red down in the ring. It’s a nice little touch to show the divide of morality in the ring, the Briscoes took that one little shortcut to try and press an advantage.
As is typical of tags of this genre though, the heat doesn’t last nearly as long as I’d like and does give way to just a big ole bombfest. Again, the bombs look great, but this is where the match veers a little into the worse tropes of its time. Will I sound like JR griping about how the legal man is totally forgotten? I don’t give a fuck, JR is pretty much right about that every time it happens. It sucks that it happens here too when that brief heat segment in the middle makes it feel like they’re so close to getting it on a fundamental level before letting it all go. On the one hand, the heat segment functions as a denial of the big bombfest this would become, but on the other, it does feel like something from a totally different match by the time this is all over.
It lacks focus, but there’s real creativity and nastiness to all of it nonetheless. A fireworks show at the end of the day, but a lot more dazzling than many others to come.
Rating: ****
