AEW: The Young Bucks continue to prove their detractors wrong

For the past decade, there has been one tag team that has never been signed to WWE that continuously keeps fans worldwide talking. That team, of course, is The Young Bucks. The reigning AEW World Tag Team Champions have done it all in their careers while managing to remain in the headlines and being a major part of professional wrestling year after year. Not only is that something that should be appreciated, but even more so seeing that they are a tag team. Few have been able to do that. As we sit here in 2021, The Young Bucks are not only on top of AEW but proving their detractors wrong time and time again.

Since the moment Matt and Nick Jackson reformed The Elite with AEW World Champion Kenny Omega and fully embraced his new heelish attitude, they have become the team that so many were missing from their days in Ring of Honor, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and even Pro Wrestling Guerrilla. The diehard fans are seeing the team that had made themselves the rebels of professional wrestling and perhaps the best tag team in the world.

If you read their book, the understanding of their new characters makes a whole lot of sense after all. What fans saw happen in AEW really is what happened in PWG a decade prior that changed the way The Young Bucks ran themselves for years to come. Both Matt and Nick went into detail about how the fans turned on them for being the plain old babyfaces. So, they changed themselves up to be the confident team that we have seen them be in every promotion since.

When they got to AEW, they settled back into their “happy to be there” attitudes that would wear off after a while. It was happening even before they defeated FTR to become the new tag team champions. It looked like those detractors who had detested and cheered against their success for so long were going to be right again. Their stories were stale and nothing felt as though it should of for the so-called best tag team in the world. So rather, they flipped the switch and it has been their greatness all over again.

As their in-ring style felt flat and at times same old, same old, their new heel perspective has reached into the bag of the likes of Shawn Michaels’ former self in the 1990s while taking from their own time from being in the Bullet Club. They have been playing off of their world champion and Elite partner in crime, Kenny Omega, every single week. Even when trying to hate them, it’s impressive as to how good they can be on any night.

Their match with Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston at Double or Nothing was what finally pushed them from this heel, cowardly team to one that does whatever they want and does not worry about the consequences. The closing sequence where they smashed Jon Moxley in the skull numerous times without any care in the world using the BTE Trigger was exactly what they need to put themselves over the top.

A live crowd that would once cheer these same acting Young Bucks in ROH now booed them with every part of their being as they watched their hero fall in Moxley. It was the level that they had never fully gotten to in the United States. No longer being the cool heels that people cheered but the version that thought the world of themselves and the crowd really wanted to boo out of the building and see them get destroyed. That’s what makes this current Young Bucks run one of their best.

When they aided Omega in his IMPACT World Championship match against Moose screaming into the camera, “it’s Jeremy and Max Buck,” you can feel that energy of trying to prove everyone wrong was still there.

No longer is it about being the most popular no matter where they showed up. They have become everything professional wrestling needs today. A commodity that people want to see lose. A team that people will pay money for in hopes of seeing them get their comeuppance after all this time. And whatever team does accomplish that for the fans will become massive stars in their own right.

The Young Bucks, a that many believed could not tell a story and was “killing the business,” is now not only dominating the business but doing everything the detractors thought they could not do –Telling stories, bringing interest, and still being one of the absolute best tag teams in the world.