That Was Then, Is This Too? 09.22.09: More Bang For Your Buck

Posted by Jasper Gerretsen on 09.22.2009

Welcome to another episode of That Was Then, Is This Too?, where we take a look at one of the fastest rising tag teams of the American independent scene.

Welcome to yet another installment of That Was Then, Is This Too?, the column that looks for parallel lines in all the right places. As usual, we have comments:

I'm sorry but the Knockouts division is hardly floundering. It's still pulling some of the better ratings for Impact. Keep in mind that the Deaner crap was the remnants of Dutch Mantel's booking carried over just before he was released. Now they have Scott D'amore back in charge!

The division is literally stacked with talent. The loss of Angelina Love was a big one, but unlike when Gail Kim left, now there's a much bigger pool of talent to take over that top heel spot.

With Gail in WWE we've all been exposed to her weaknesses. TNA booked her so strongly that we didn't see this. Also Awesome Kong CARRIED her ass through that feud. Gail is not the carrying type despite her talents. The newer girls are proving to be much better than her - Sarita, Tara, Hamada, Alissa Flash.

The division is and will survive without Gail.

Posted By: Guest#3063 (Guest) on September 15, 2009 at 04:00 PM

Like I said, I still have hope for the division, and I've never denied that they don't have a great talent pool. My main concern is with how they're being used.

The Knockouts division is better than ever. You've got talent like Tara, Awesome Kong, Sarita, Alissa Flash, Daffney, Taylor Wilde, The Beautiful People, etc and they've put on some good matches during the Knockouts Tag Team Tournament. The only thing bad about it is Cody Deaner and he shouldn't even be in the Knockout's Division. The hard thing is to balance out both divisions.

Posted By: Chris (Guest) on September 15, 2009 at 05:15 PM

That balance will be a huge problem in the future. TNA already has a very annoying habit of completely overstuffing their PPV cards, and I really doubt their ability to give both the singles and tag Knockouts titles the time they need.

Think Gail Kim regrets jumping ship yet?
I'd be if I was jobbing to Alicia every week and looking terrible while doing it.

Posted By: joemark0 (Guest) on September 15, 2009 at 05:53 PM

Gail knew exactly what to expect when she decided to jump back to WWE, and with the way WWE books their divas she'll eventually get to the top of the division by process of elimination. Her decision was probably based on finances on

ODB is gonna kill Deaner dead at the PPV, righting whatever idiocy was left over from the last booking team. If not ODB then definitely Kong. The Knockouts Tag Titles will add another prop for the female wrestlers to fight over, allowing the Beautiful People to have a division to themselves while the better singles wrestlers go for the bigger strap. That means we'll get mostly Tara and Kong wrestling for the Knockouts Title, which isn't a bad thing at all.

This is probably as close as we'll ever get to a legit North American women's promotion on TV. So I wouldn't say the Knockouts division is floundering at all.

And Lenny Lane winning the Cruiserweight Title wasn't bad. The West Hollywood Blondes were awesome. It was a shame they had to get killed off because they were as over as anyone on the roster. That said, Madusa winning the belt is what officially killed it.

Posted By: Guest#0642 (Guest) on September 15, 2009 at 08:26 PM

I'm extremely glad to see that your prediction for the PPV has come true. As for Lenny Lane, I won't deny that the West Hollywood Blondes were an interesting team (although at the same time a pathetic attempt to poke fun at Austin's success in the WWF), but he simply didn't fit in the cruiserweight division.

No way man. Had you written this article back in Febraury and March when the division was in dires straits then it would have made sense. But now the division is back to business. Sarita, Ayako Hamada, the use of Melissa Anderson as Alissa Flash, Tara/Victoria, the awesomeness of The Beautiful People (though Love has now gone but hopefully will be back when her visa issues are sorted out) and Daffney have made the division 1000x more interesting than when it was basically The Gail Kim Show. Not taking away from Gail but now there's a load more variety.

It's the best US women's division of any time period, with some degree of national exposure. It is still head and shoulders above WWE Divas division. The Knockouts matches are generally very strong and you can tell the difference between all of them. Unlike WWE where you struggle to tell one from the other.

Posted By: Whitley Gilbert (Guest) on September 16, 2009 at 12:26 PM

Like I said, I'm not denying that TNA has a great talent pool (and not just in the Knockouts division), but as always, it all comes down to how they're used, and TNA's track record there is spotty at best.

"After losing her hair in a Russo-esque clusterfuck involving a reverse battle royal into a steel cage into a ladder match, Roxxi would be rebranded as the hardcore knockout..."

That's not actually true, you're getting two matches confused. The one where Roxxi lost her hair was a reverse battle royal, which then became a regular battle royal, and ended with the last two competitors having a ladder match where the loser got their head shaved. At another PPV (I think it was Lockdown), they held the reverse battle royal steel cage match, where the first two competitors who climbed into the cage had a standard cage match for the number 1 contender's spot.

On a side note, when it comes to reverse battle royals, I always found it strange that it took longer to get into the ring when there WASN'T a cage set up around it. lol.

Posted By: Guy (Guest) on September 16, 2009 at 01:13 PM

Wow, I guess it's easy to get gimmick matches mixed up when they have five or six gimmicks going on at once. Still, thanks for the correction.

Um...look at the division when it started and look at it now. There's no doubt in my mind that it is better right now. When it started in 2007 the only stand-out workers were Gail, Kong and Roxxi. There was also Miss Jackie Moore who was a very good veteran but she was never pushed as a threat. The rest of them were either crap (Traci, Christy, Shelly Martinez) or hadn't established a gimmick yet (Love, Sky, ODB).

Now it is in the best shape possible. Sorry don't agree with this one at all dude. The few crap workers like Traci, Sojo and Christy aren't prominent or in the title picture. Velvet's not that good in the ring but at least she's got some purpose as a good talker. The rest of the women vary from excellent to good in the ring. The matches have shown too.

Posted By: diamond (Guest) on September 19, 2009 at 01:19 PM

Again, I'm mainly worried about the booking of the Knockouts division. They haven't featured the Knockouts in a serious slot on the card since the Kim/Kong feud.

And with that out of the way... Banner! 2.0!



The term "spotfest" is thrown around a lot. It generally refers to a type of match in which the wrestlers use high-flying moves and high speed grapples to get the crowd excited. At its best, a spotfest features amazing displays of athleticism and death-defying leaps of faith. At its worst, a spotfest features contrived flippy moves and real near-death moments of head landing and face planting. Spotfests are often derided because they feature very little storytelling and psychology, and more often than not it is true. Being able to tell a story while still diving around and adding flips to basic moves is what turns a spotmonkey into an athletic superstar that's a true joy to watch.

It's always seemed to me that spotfest matches become just a little more spectacular when they involve more than two wrestlers. This is mostly due to the fact that with three or more wrestlers, there is more room for wrestlers to rest off-camera while others keep the action going in the ring. Some of the best spotfests I have ever seen have been put on by tag teams such as the Briscoe Brothers, the Murder City Machine Guns, Speed Muscle, and today's subject, the Young Bucks.

The Young Bucks, consisting of real-life brothers Nick and Matt Jackson, have been setting the independent wrestling world on fire for the past five years. Originally working up and down the west coast, they have since been picked up by promotions all over the world, appearing in CHIKARA, Ring of Honor and both Dragon Gate and its American sister promotion. They've made a name for themselves with their arsenal of high flying moves and sickening bumps. What sets them apart from the many other high-flying teams on the independent scene is the incredible crispness and accuracy with which they execute their moves. I have literally never seen them truly botch a move.

Nick and Matt started their wrestling career at 16, building their own wrestling ring in their back yard and flying around it. They received their first professional training at the Rudos Dojo, the training school for local wrestling promotion for Revolution Pro Wrestling. Besides training from PWG owners Disco Machine, Super Dragon and Scorpio Sky, they also received training from Marty Jannety, the lesser half of the Rockers tag team that first brought high flying to the American mainstream.

They would wrestle their first match for Pro Wrestling Guerilla in June of 2007 in a losing effort against the Arrogance team of PWG mainstays Chris Bosh and Scott Lost. They would continue to wrestle for PWG throughout the year, and they got their biggest match yet at All-Star Weekend 6. In an incredibly fast-paced match they beat the Dragon Gate team of Speed Muscle (Naruki Doi and Masato Yoshino). They would continue to rise up the ranks until they captured the PWG Tag Team Championship, a title they hold to this day and recently defended in three consecutive matches during the PWG DDT4 2009 tournament.

Their match with Speed Muscle caught the eye of Dragon Gate star CIMA, and it eventually led to the team being brought in on several Dragon Gate tours. Their matches included succesful defenses of their PWG tag team titles, as well as a PPV appearance in a six man tag match. They were received extremely well by the Dragon Gate audience, and when the company opened up an American sister promotion, they were immediately signed on for a high profile match. On the inaugural Enter the Dragon show they scored what can only be considered an upset victory over the WARRIORS-5 team of Cima and Susumu Yokosuka. At the next PPV taping in Chicago they lost to then-Open the Twin Gate Champions Real Hazard (Ryo Saito and Genki Horiguchi).

Over the past year they have also become more active on the east coast, making their CHIKARA debut at the promotion's annual King of Trios tournament, teaming up with El Generico as Team PWG on night one, participating in the Rey de Voladores tournament on night two and a ten team tag team gauntlet on night three. They've also been appearing on both Ring of Honor DVD releases and their weekly TV shows, slowly working their way up the ranks. All the while, the brothers have also kept their High Risk Wrestling promotion going. HWR was originally started by Matt Jackson, but has over the years been run by his brothers Nick and Malachi and close personal friends Dustin and Brandon Cutler and Sonny Sampson. They have been running shows up and down California, with cards numerous local stars.



That Was Then...

Ten years earlier, on the other side of the country, another pair of brothers, wrestling fans for as long as they could remember, built their own wrestling ring in their back yard. It was an unsightly construction, a trampoline mat with wooden logs for ringposts and garden hose for ropes, but the Trampoline Wrestling Federation was born and Matt and Jeff Hardy learned to fly.

The Trampoline Wrestling Federation, later renamed OMEGA (Organisation of Modern Extreme Grappling Arts) travelled up and down the Carolinas, appearing on carnivals and state fairs. For a small promotion initially started as a hobby, the list of alumni is incredibly impressive. Besides the Hardys, other OMEGA alumni to have made it to WCW or WWE include Lita, Shannon Moore, Gregory Helms, Joey Abs and Joey Mercury. Over the years, several other OMEGA wrestlers have established themselves on the independent scene and the original ECW, including C.W. Anderson, Steve Corino and Christian York.

While working in their own promotion, the brothers also frequently made appearances on WWF programming, both as singles wrestlers and as a team, as jobbers. They were extremely popular for their ability to take incredible bumps that would make any wrestler look good. They wouldn't sign a WWF contract until 1998, when they were sent to Dory Funk's Funkin' Dojo to receive training. They soon gained the attention of the fans with their unique high flying style, and in June of 1999, with Michael Hayes as their manager, captured their first tag team gold in the WWF by defeating the Acolytes.

They would lose the titles in less than a month, and soon after ditch Hayes as their manager, teaming up in stead with Gangrel as the New Brood. It was during this time that they started their extended rivalry with Edge and Christian, and first established themselves as ladder match specialists. At the 1999 No Mercy PPV, they defeated Edge and Christian in the first-ever tag team ladder match.

When the Dudley Boyz came over from ECW, the top of the WWF tag team division consisted of a team of ladder specialists, a team of chair specialists and a team of table specialists. The TLC match was the only logical conclusion, and both versions of the match involving these three teams have been instant classics, featuring countless absolutely amazing spots and sick bumps, such as Edge spearing Jeff Hardy while he was hanging from the belts and a Bubba Bomb off the ladder.

Eventually Matt and Jeff would part ways, both persuing singles careers on separate brands, and both eventually being forced to take time off due to backstage drama. They would have a brief run as tag champions during Jeff's big return to WWE in 2007. They would continue to team sporadically until Jeff started on the path to the WWE Championship. Matt would turn on Jeff out of jealousy and frustration at the 2009 Royal Rumble, and the two would spend most of early 2009 feuding until Jeff went after the World Heavyweight Championship until his release.

...Is This Too?

The parallels between the early careers of the two teams are all too obvious. They both started watching wrestling in their early age, eventually building their own ring and teaching themselves a high-flying style. They eventually took their show on the road, running their own promotion with the help of friends and family to establish themselves on the local wrestling scene and attract the attention of larger companies.

Their wrestling styles are incredibly similar too, with both teams relying on high flying, strong bumping and spectacular double-team moves. Of course the Young Bucks fly higher and wrestle faster, but they are the product of the growing influence of Mexican lucha libre and Japanese junior heavyweights that started to become popular in the mid-nineties, when Paul Heyman brought in talent from these countries as special attractions for the original ECW.

But at the same time I have to wonder if the Young Bucks will be able to ever reach the big time in the same way the Hardys have. Matt and Jeff captured the attention of WWF officials as part of the company's large collection of touring jobbers, a system that WWE hasn't used for years, relying in stead of local independent talent for their squash match needs. Furthermore, Nick and Matt are just a touch smaller than the Hardy Boys which, even with WWE shifting more towards smaller wrestlers, will still be a drawback.

One option for the Young Bucks to reach a national audience would be TNA. They are taylor-made for the company's X-Division, and the Young Bucks vs. the Motor City Machine Guns would be a true dream match, even if it probably wouldn't reach the level of their match earlier this year at the PWG Ninety-Nine show. At the very least, I wouldn't be surprised to see them pop up in one of the company's future X-cup tournaments. Still, the amount of independent talent recruited in the company over the past two years has slowed down to a trickle, but if any independent talent deserves a shot at national fame it's the Young Bucks.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of oppertunities for a talented young team like the Young Bucks to make a living outside of the American big two, and I don't see any reason why these two can't make a big name for themselves in Japan and Mexico, where their style fits perfectly. Thanks to the internet and DVD era, a team like the Young Bucks can work all over the world, wrestling at the peak of their ability without ever having to comprimise. Even without ever setting foot in a WWE or TNA ring, I'm still sure that the Young Bucks will eventually establish themselves as one of the best teams of the decade.