Across the primary seven years of AEW’s existence, the promotion has presented some truly exciting wrestling matches, in each the singles and tag team divisions. Lots of the company’s best matches got here after the primary few years, but one early match stands out as one in every of the best possible: Kenny Omega and “Hangman” Adam Page taking up the Young Bucks over the AEW World Tag Team Championship.
At the top of 2019, just a couple of months after the debut of “AEW Dynamite,” Omega and Page were tag team partners, having each suffered disappointing losses at the primary AEW Full Gear in November. They found loads of initial success together, though, defeating Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian for the tag titles on the episode of “Dynamite” taped during Chris Jericho’s annual cruise.
Naturally, that success brought Omega and Page up against Matt and Nick Jackson, Omega’s fellow EVPs and tag team legends within the making. After a series of successful TV defenses from the champs, and the Young Bucks winning a battle royale to turn out to be number-one contenders, the highly-anticipated bout was booked for the first-ever AEW Revolution, on Leap Day – February 29, 2020.
Tensions inside The Elite boil over
Tensions between the Young Bucks and Omega/Page had been constructing for months, on and off, with a lot of the emphasis on the growing divide between “Hangman” and his friends. That strife grows throughout this match, made ever more serious by the undeniable fact that Omega and Page managed to win the title before the Young Bucks, despite their repute as arguably one of the best tag team of their generation.
Because the bell rings, the gang gives its full support to Omega and Page, while the reception to the Young Bucks is far more mixed. The Jackson brothers play up the heelish side of their personalities throughout the match, especially against Page, who also has his dark side on display at times.
Thankfully, on this case, the in-ring motion rises to (and even surpasses) the extent of the soap opera playing out outside the ring. While all 4 wrestlers are quite obviously gifted in other ways, in my mind, it’s Omega who has immaculate pacing, and it’s on full display here. Knowing full-well that they are going half-hour, the teams avoid setting out too hot, as a substitute opting to re-establish all their interpersonal issues contained in the ring. It’s setup for all of the payoffs to come back in a while within the match.
The pace quickens because the Young Bucks begin to enact violence on Page, with the brothers double-teaming “Hangman” and keeping him away from Omega, until Page is in a position to turn the tables. He targets Matt’s lower back, which the tag specialist had been selling for years (or at the very least what felt like years). Nonetheless, when Page goes to tag Omega in, the 2 get right into a temporary spat, with the camera capturing Omega’s passive aggressive expression as a breadcrumb for their very own eventual schism.
The peerlessly-paced bout continues
Page tags himself back in after only a brief break, with the longer term world champion continuing to ratchet up the extent of violence against his former friends. The Young Bucks get fired up in return, with Nick retaking control of the match and taking up Page and Omega at the identical time. He cannot stick with it eternally, though, and with Matt indisposed, Omega was there to interrupt up a submission on Page.
Across the halfway point, the pace gets faster yet again, with momentum shifting backwards and forwards through tightly-executed sequences of offense. All of the while, the Chicago crowd couldn’t be any more invested in what was going down, heightening every little thing occurring within the ring.
After the pace reaches a brand new high, the Bucks slow things down by taking Omega out of commission and brutalizing Page on the ramp, showing the slightest little bit of remorse in the method. With Page now down, Omega gets back on his feet only to seek out himself alone against each brothers. They take turns hitting Omega with superkicks and a double V-Trigger, but they fail to reap the benefits of the situation, with Omega kicking out of their pinfall attempts.
A turning point within the match takes place when Matt begins ripping the athletic tape off Omega’s body, just for Nick to confront him and query his actions, with Matt becoming regretful. This provides Page with a gap, which he uses to sneak up on Nick to powerbomb him through a table. Then, Omega and Page deliver their Buckshot V-Trigger to Matt, but even this is just not enough.
With Matt fighting out of a One-Winged Angel attempt from Omega, Page tags in and delivers Omega’s finisher himself. Nick breaks up that pin attempt, resulting in Page hitting Nick with a Buckshot Lariant on the ramp. He then lands the identical move on Matt within the ring after which pins him for the three-count, retaining the AEW World Tag Team Championship.
Omega & Page vs. the Young Bucks could also be AEW’s best match
This match stays a high mark in AEW’s catalogue since it was one of the best early example of the heights this roster could reach when firing on all cylinders. There’s just such a robust aligning of planets around this match, from the long-running storylines, the overall engagement of the gang, the carefully-timed pacing, and the sheer athleticism.
A giant reason why the match had such a high degree of investment, beyond involving the corporate’s hottest wrestlers on the time, was since it intertwined a couple of stories that had been brewing for awhile. The match addressed the Young Bucks chasing their first tag title win, the drama going down amongst The Elite, and though we didn’t understand it yet, it was constructing to the world title reigns of each Omega and Page.
Speaking from my very own perspective, this match was an early example of AEW delivering on the promise of its very existence. When AEW first began, mainstream American wrestling was in a reasonably bleak place, with Vince McMahon’s iron grip over WWE resulting in creative stagnation. When Tony Khan created AEW, the unspoken (and sometimes spoken) promise was to deliver a mixture of American independent wrestling and the kind of Latest Japan Pro-Wrestling, and this was (as much as that time, at the very least) one of the best example of that.