THIS Is The Top Heel In Wrestling Today
Harwood and Wheeler only ever teased that match to shatter Hangman's psyche, knowing that his hero's flaw, a desperation to feel "Elite" - one that has manifested in a drinking habit and the self-serving glory of the hot tag - was there for the taking. They were never interested in any "dream match". That would please the fans more than it would benefit them. They're heels, and in a company they perceive to be full of pop-chasing marks, they are wrestlers, and they wanted the gold to prove themselves the best of the lot.
As Tully Blanchard put it so wonderfully on Tag Team Appreciation Night, beating the Young Bucks doesn't really prove anything at all.
Having mystified the Bucks, by subtly conveying the idea that a mutual respect exists between the two teams - anything too obviously buddy-buddy would have exposed the con - FTR established themselves as "babyfaces" in a cracking match against the Butcher and the Blade on June 10. This match also established their physical, strategic, perpetual motion southern style to the audience while deepening the range of the tag division itself.
In a superb spot of visual storytelling, on June 17, FTR and the Bucks once more came together following the Bucks' win over the Superbad Death Squad. Butcher and the Blade emerged to attack both teams, but the uneasy new alliance spiked both men with their own versions of the stereo piledriver. This expert physical storytelling beat put across the idea that, while those two moves could not be any more different in etymological origin - one is named after the old school, the other after the journalist who insists to constant furore that the new school has surpassed it - it's more or less the same move. FTR and the Bucks, philosophically divided, were united by a mutual respect and brilliance. All the while, Hangman Page must have received these developments as an indication that FTR had arrived in AEW with the best of competitive intentions.
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