10 Best Tag Teams In Wrestling Right Now
2. The Young Bucks
It's hard to not veer into the first person when discussing Messrs. Nick and Matt Jackson. Perhaps unlike any wrestling act on the planet, they demand a personal introspection.
For years, I was never a fan of them. I like my wrestling to make sense as an emulation of sport, which has led to more existential crises than is probably healthy, and the Young Bucks never made sense to me. The Bucks kick their opponents in the face so often that Rocky Romero et al. really should resemble John Merrick at this point. That they don't exposed to me a failure to grasp an understanding of traditional wrestling psychology - but I was judging them by a paradigm they don't behold themselves to.
There are still plot holes. Theirs isn't a full CHIKARA act; when the bell rings, they wrestle with a steeper degree of seriousness. But isn't all wrestling - even Steamboat/Flair, Misawa/Kobashi - erected on sand? The very notion of an Irish whip is pantomime. The act of protractedly teasing a submission finish has been rendered flimsy through the advent of UFC. Those who don't tap immediately suffer broken limbs almost as quickly. The Bucks have located a too sweet spot between making sense and deranging the senses of traditionalists, generating heat through peeling back the curtain of the business just so.
Their Dominion match with Romero and Beretta proved that they can do the divide and conquer trope as well as anybody, too. They just know there's a different source of heat to mine in the post-kayfabe age.