Jay and Mark Briscoe spent February in Japan with Pro Wrestling NOAH. They capped off their tour with a match against GHC Heavyweight Tag Team Champions Naomichi Marufuji and Takashi Sugiura. The trip away from Ring of Honor was the best thing that could have happened to them at the start of the year, and could only have been better if it were longer.
For one thing, Pro Wrestling NOAH pays really well. It’s a sweet gig for any ROH wrestler that can get it. It lets them experiment front of a different cultural audience, as well as some larger audiences than ROH draws.
Even before they left they were ushered out of the main tag scene, to allow new champions to emerge in Rocky Romero and Davey Richards. The Briscoes actually leaving helped because they’re an amazing act and their presence would distract from establishing the new champions; if the Briscoes tore up the undercard of the Sixth Anniversary Show, Romero & Richards would have had a harder time impressing in their title defense. At the same time, Kevin Steen & El Generico slipped back into title contention as a top team.
The Age of the Fall is simmering. When the Briscoes return, there will be two recently dethroned teams in the title hunt. The Briscoes can rightly return and claim to have beaten Richards and Romero on Pay Per View at Undeniable and demand a title shot. The issue between the Briscoes and the Age of the Fall won’t necessarily be over, and if Romero & Richards do something with the titles in the long run, they can play off that conflict while they define themselves as strong champions.
More important to the aesthetic of ROH, it got the Briscoes out of the tag scene. They dominated 2007, going undefeated on Pay Per View and accelerating their breakneck style to the point of excess. Watching them nearly kill themselves was fun, but it grew dismayingly tiresome. Any time overkill burns people out, not on one show but in a season of shows, something is dearly wrong.
They couldn’t top themselves anymore after their feud with Kevin Steen and El Generico. Fans became conditioned to expect too much action and dangerous offense, and reacted too familiarly when they saw it, resulting in dampened crowd enthusiasm. Necro Butcher smashed chairs over Jay Briscoe’s head and they leapt over the top rope to the floor to some very disappointing reactions, the worst of which was at Glory By Honor 6 Night 2. That night when the Briscoes took the stage the crowd was already burnt out, and nothing in the Briscoes’ high-offense repertoire could revive them. Even their title loss at Final Battle 2007 received a fraction of energy of title defenses in that same building earlier in the year.
My favorite match of 2007 was the Briscoes’ outing with Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin at Good Times, Great Memories. At the time it was unbelievable – a match that was simply beyond anything we could have expected, lasting a half an hour and had them sprinting through an amazing amount of that time. It blew past what we expected out of the Briscoes, and it didn’t necessarily make the DVD audience expect that next time. It was a special thing.
But over their title reign they raised the bar to the point where they would have to put on that kind of match to impress fans that were familiar with them. In particular, their feud with Steen & Generico spilled into excess, with a Lights Out Match, Falls Count Anywhere, Cage Match, Boston Street Fight and Ladder War. Every time they had to try to top themselves. Next came the feud with the Age of the Fall, which was again incredibly violent and forced them to try and top themselves over and over again. And as much as we all like the Briscoes, they couldn’t. After that, getting them out of Ring of Honor to give the fans a breather was necessary.
Hopefully the Briscoes will return with a refined style. They can still be incredible athletes with strong brawling and threatening aerial attacks, but they don’t need to do as much, and they can save the total blow-away performances for special occasions. Their absence will give them the opportunity to start at a lower level, one of the many entertaining levels they operated at before the feud with Steen & Generico put them into perpetual overkill.
Contrary to what their detractors say, the Briscoes can build things and tell stories. We all saw them do it at Fighting Spirit, when Mark Briscoe had a head injury and his brother was defensive. At Driven they played aggressors against Generico and rivals with Steen in a fascinating dynamic that they explored of that long series of matches. At Man Up they built the increasing ladder sizes to the great moment of the maintenance ladder coming into play.
It is not a matter of whether these guys “get it,†but if they can apply “it†more seriously and frequently now. If they wrestle even a slightly more dynamic, thoughtful style, they’ll have a much easier time they go out in front of a tired crowd (and hopefully ROH won’t book too many more shows that create those conditions).
The Briscoes already have an amazing repertoire. They can win with the Spiked Jay Driller, Tandem Cut Throat Driver, their variation on the Doomsday Device, or either of their individual finishers. They have dozens of high-impact moves they can use, including many flashy aerial attacks and dives. A big problem in the winter of their title reign lay in trying to fit too many of them into matches. Necro Butcher was too awkward for that pacing, and it forced their Undeniable title defense into too much of an exhibition.
Bryan Danielson is in a similar position of having established a plethora of offense as dangerous. He doesn’t use everything in every match; you may not see the Crossface Chickenwing, Roaring Elbows or copious mat-work in any given match. That variety makes his matches less predictable, and lets him play with a formula of varied offense where something occurring less frequently makes it more important. After returning from his injury in early 2007, he was able to tighten up his approach to offense, making his familiar offense and innovations more meaningful. Very few ROH wrestlers have been established strongly enough to even have access to that formula, and playing with it could seriously help the Briscoes in 2008.
The Briscoes come back March 14th for ROH’s tripleshot, which is a great time for them to return anyway. That’s the weekend of ROH’s movie shooting, and with three shows the company can use anything that makes the shows feel special. The return of one of ROH’s most popular teams will help.
Their first two matches that weekend are against Tyler Black & Joey Matthews (March 14th) and Brent Albright & BJ Whitmer (March 15th). These are really good choices for them. No insult to those men, but they don’t often wrestle in big ROH main events, so the Briscoes can do shorter, more compact matches against them, and be reintroduced strongly. Matthews works a noticeably slower style, so the Briscoes can pace themselves and still look like the aggressive, energetic team they want to be. Albright and Whitmer are bigger and could easily fall into a story where the Briscoes can overpower them and have to wrestle a smarter game to win. Neither match is a main event, so the Briscoes don’t have to steal the show. Feasibly, this is the weekend the Briscoes can reintroduce themselves and reset their pacing to something that is safer for their bodies and that won’t burn out crowds.
They have a perfect opportunity to change. In two weeks, we’ll see if they take it.
