The Briscoes vs. Kevin Steen & El Generico Boston Street Fight Fucks
The Briscoes vs. Kevin Steen & El Generico Boston Street Fight Fucks
One of the classic tag encounters from ROH!
Before the fireworks, a little scene setting.
The match is loud, flashy, and indulgent in all the best ways. It’s the third in the series between these two teams in ROH, and the first of many stipulations yet to come. As such, it makes sense for them to go so all out in the moment. Not only have they been building to something a little more crazed by working straight two-on-twos up to this point, but it’s also a harbinger of the continued escalation of the feud. After this would come a steel cage match, a two out of three falls match, and the ever famed Ladder War.
There’s another more utilitarian reason for the stipulation too. By sticking an “unsanctioned” label on this, Steen & Generico can get a win without having to switch the titles around and interrupt The Briscoes lengthy championship reign. It’s a trick of booking made necessary but ROH’s continually expanding schedule in 2007 requiring a hot feud like The Briscoes vs. Steenerico to be toured around the company’s circuit in order to ensure strong DVD sales across the board. Steenerico get their win to keep the win hot, but The Briscoes stay champ.
The beauty of these two teams though, is that they don’t wrestle this match like it’s the middle of their feud. They wrestle this match like everything in the world is on the line.
This is a match wrestled in all-caps and exclamation points. It’s the kind of thing that’s almost impossible to write about because the appeal is just so blunt and in your face. This match rocks because it’s four young guys willing to do absolutely insane things to each other and to themselves to create something special.
There’s a ferocity and a recklessness to a lot of the action here that’s just mindboggling to behold. The first half of this is wrestled entirely on the floor, and sees all four men brawl right into the crowd. They bump onto the floor, into tables, crash into chairs, and throw chairs with wild abandon. All of it’s so crazed, but somehow still finds ways to surprise in the small moments. For example, Jay Briscoe takes a truly absurd face-first bump into a steel chair off a flapjack-style maneuver from Generico.
As with a lot of the best tag wrestling, there’s also small elements of humor that come into play without compromising the violence. I can’t help but laugh when Kevin Steen starts attacking Mark Briscoe with a shoe before throwing the weapon away into the crowd. We know it’s not Steen’s shoe, he’s got wrestling boots on for this. So some fan just had their shoe snatched right off their foot so Kevin Steen could have something to hit Mark Briscoe with. Fuck yeah.
Funny as it may be, it still emphasizes the manic nature of the brawling on display here. Steen will grab hold of anything and everything to try to get an advantage in the match. It’s also wonderful how in a match that’s already contested under no rules, Steen finds ways to distinguish himself as the more heelish of the workers in the match.
That comes through in his offense, like when how he repeatedly uses deep eye gouging to cut off the Briscoes at different points, or how he bites at Jay’s open wound in the finishing stretch.
But just as important, is how that comes through in his selling. One spot in particular stands out in this regard. Steen’s mounting the barricade as the action finally starts working its way back toward the ring. He pauses just for a moment, to jawjack with the crowd, and that slight hesitation is all it takes for Mark Briscoe to come launching in behind him and nail a cutter to the floor.
Just as good as the cutter itself is the follow up. Kevin Steen moaning in pain down on the ground, begging for his mother in the middle of one of the most insane fights of his life. It’s just incredibly funny stooging, and it’s touches like that that add even more vibrancy to something already turned up so damn bright.
Perhaps the one flaw is that this gets a little bit too coordinated by the time it gets back into the ring. Even with some nutty bumps like Steen going off the top rope through a table on the floor, it can’t help but feel just a little more structured in the final half of the match. Spots like everyone taking turns hitting a move until they’re all down may impress in the moment but have dimmed a little in hindsight with how overplayed such tropes have become since. That’s a minor complaint though, given just how hard all four guys go throughout the entire runtime.
When writing about a match like this, it’s easy to just become a running list of all the cool shit done between the bells. To try to keep clear of that, I want to emphasize instead just how influential matches like this would come to be in the years to come. In terms of aesthetics and structure, one finds the DNA of the 2010s super indie tag. As qualified as The Young Bucks are on their own, it’s hard not to trace their peak style to something like this—a match built cleverly around increasingly spectacular maneuvers in bumps.
Something that many other teams couldn’t match though? The sheer physicality The Briscoes brought. Not a single thing whiffs. All their punches look solid, their bumps impactful, and their high flying down with a lot of precision and immaculate timing. Many will aspire to this style of match, but few could execute it down to the minituae with as much talent as The Briscoes.
It speaks to their immense talent and longevity that they were wrestling matches this wild (and arguably wilder) into the very last days of their career as a tag team. The violence in this is comparable to the final FTR/Briscoes match, and some of the bumps found in the latter may even trump what we find here. That Jay and Mark could accomplish that fifteen years apart is no small feat, and speaks to the repertoire of one of the greatest tag teams of all time. It’s saddening to think that The Briscoes seemed to have more of this left in them. For all we know, we might even have seen the peak of what they could do as a team yet.
Matches like this make me miss Jay Briscoe, and miss what The Briscoes could do together.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Close call, this one, honestly. Where 6/3/94 builds and grows stronger the further it gets, I feel like the same can not quite be said for this street fight. I think on the whole, this street fight’s just a little more euphoric in its execution, and that seals the deal for them. Man up.
Rating: ****1/2