Daily DDT 2021 Tag Team of the Year: The Young Bucks

Nick and Matt Jackson, collectively known as the Young Bucks, will probably always be a hotly discussed subject until the brothers decide to call it quits as professional wrestlers.

There is no tag team today that can rival the passion the Bucks bring out of both their supporters and detractors.  You will find people that will tell you that they are the best tag team that has ever donned a pair of wrestling boots, and you will find those that can’t stand to watch a single match that they are a part of.

And that is part of the beauty of professional wrestling.  Two people can look at the exact same wrestler, match, promo, etc., and come away with very different thoughts on the subject.

But a look at the landscape of tag team professional wrestling in 2021 paints a picture that even the Young Bucks haters out there cannot argue.  The Young Bucks accomplished more than any other tag team in wrestling in 2021 and are deserving recipients of the Daily DDT choice as Tag Team of the Year.

The Young Bucks were voted 2021 tag team of the year by Daily DDT

The Young Bucks started out 2021 as the AEW Tag Team Champions after defeating FTR at Full Gear in November of 2020.  This was a title reign that would end at All Out of 2021, in a match of the year candidate against the Lucha Bros.

By the time the Bucks’ title reign had ended they were the longest reigning tag team champions in AEW history, at 302 days.

And they did so against a virtual who’s who of the AEW tag team division.  The Bucks had successful title defenses against the likes of The Acclaimed, Santana & Ortiz, SCU, Chris Jericho & MJF, Rey Fenix & Pac, Penta El Zero Miedo & Eddie Kingston, Jurassic Express, and Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston.

And while being the longest reigning tag team champions in the best tag team division in professional wrestling is enough to put the Young Bucks into consideration for the tag team of the year, it wasn’t the only impressive thing about their work in 2021.

The Young Bucks showed great depth of character during 2021.

The Jackson brothers would start 2021 as one of the most over tag teams in AEW, but they were consistently torn between doing the right thing and backing up Kenny Omega, as Omega had started to shift to his memorable heel run as AEW Champion.

A heel turn for the Bucks seemed inevitable and after weeks of being tweeners, it finally happened when Nick and Matt turned on Jon Moxley and sided with fellow Elite member, Kenny Omega during a 6 man tag team match.

From that moment on, the Young Bucks embarked on an epic heel run that was one of the best we’ve seen in AEW’s short history.

As part of the Elite, alongside Omega, Don Callis, and The Good Brothers, the Young Bucks left a wake of destruction in their path for an extended period of time.  It seemed like every episode of Dynamite was ending with the Elite standing over some combination of downed babyfaces as it went off the air for months on end.

The transformation of the Bucks from fan favorites to pompous, materialistic villains was best summed up in their actions towards their former friends.

Not only did the Young Bucks help Kenny Omega destroy the confidence of “Hangman” Adam Page, but they also broke up the popular tag team, SCU, using underhanded tactics to successfully defend their titles at the expense of their longtime friends and in doing so disbanding Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels as a team.

The complete 180-degree turn of character and crowd reaction really proved that not only was the duo capable of putting on match of the year candidates each and every time out, but the Young Bucks were also able to elicit whatever reaction they wanted from the fans at a drop of a hat.  This, coupled with their long run as AEW Tag Team Champions for the majority of the year locked in the Young Bucks as the most successful and well-rounded tag team of the past year.

2021 was a year of a lot of fantastic storylines, promotional debuts, and great performances.  But flying under the radar, putting on excellent matches, and excelling at the babyface, heel, and tweener roles, was the 2021 tag team of the year, Nick and Matt Jackson, the Young Bucks.