Click here to see the Top 100 Tag Teams of All Time list so far.
The next tag team on my list was the Juicy Product, but half of that team is David Starr so it didn’t break my heart when they didn’t have enough matches cataloged on Cagematch’s Matchguide to qualify. In the interest of completionism, here’s a review of their one notable match that was easy to find.
Coming in at number 93 on the list is the number 109-ranked Best Friends. Chuck Taylor & Trent Beretta started teaming in 2013 in PWG. They gained notoriety beginning in 2017 in Ring of Honor and then in New Japan, and then became as well known as they’re probably ever going to be in 2019 when they signed with AEW. They’re still with AEW. So now we look at some of their matches from all of those places (well, not New Japan as they never had a great match there).
January 15, 2020 – Coral Gables, Florida
Adam Page & Kenny Omega def. Chuck Taylor & Trent, Ortiz & Santana and Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson {AEW World Tag Team Championship Number One Contenders Four Way Match}
From AEW Dynamite: Bash at the Beach. Shame that Trent didn’t get his last name back until 2021. This was the show opener, so I caught Jim Ross eulogizing the four (!) wrestlers who’d passed away that week. The chyron helpfully points out that Santana & Ortiz had victories over the Bucks and Friends already. There was some trios offense from the Elite, which Page wasn’t happy about. Santana & Ortiz got to heel it up, leaving the Best Friends something of an afterthought until Orange Cassidy was able to come in and help them. The Young Bucks lost because the Jackson’s couldn’t decide whether or not to attack Page, which is frankly dumb, and Page sent them to the floor and helped Omega hit a Buckshot/V-Trigger combo on Taylor for the win at 16:35. I’m surprised they were able to air this without a commercial break. Beyond the Elite infighting, this was mostly just wild spots and little emotion, plus a bit of comedy from Cassidy. It felt very AEW. ***½
June 23, 2017 – Lowell, Massachusetts
Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson def. Chucky T & Trent and Hanson & Ray Rowe {ROH World Tag Team Championship Triple Threat Tornado Match}
From ROH Best in the World. The Best Friends weren’t originally scheduled for this match, but they crashed and added the stipulation on the strength of pinning the champs in a non-title match the week before. As usual with this generation of indie tag teams, the tornado stipulation saves the match from feeling like an unorganized mess. By the end, I was wishing that this was a straight
War Machine vs. Best Friends
match, as they had all the best exchanges. Young Bucks did their usual thing and they did it well here, I’m just really over it when it doesn’t have any story layered on top of it. Specifically, the finish made War Machine look like dummies, as they lifted up the Best Friends for piledrivers, ate the Bucks’ superkicks, and kept standing dazed until the Bucks helped them hit the piledrivers. Then the Bucks pinned everyone at 12:27. ***¼
December 20, 2013 – Reseda, California
Chuck Taylor & Trent def. Eddie Edwards & Roderick Strong
From PWG All Star Weekend 10. Edwards & Strong were known as the Dojo Bros, and based on their Matchguide it seems like they deserve to be on this list a lot more than a bunch of other teams on here despite only being a team for a year. The Bros do a pre-match shtick to match the Best Friends’ ritual and the crowd goes wild. This match would have benefited a LOT from a tornado stipulation. The Best Friends kind of worked heel, but not really, which means that all four guys were babyfaces and they all buried the referee throughout the match. It got to the point that I couldn’t help but focus on the referee as he meekly suggested to the wrestlers that they get on the apron when illegal only to watch them completely ignore him. Very distracting. That said, Excalibur calls the Sick Kick, and I’ll never get sick of hearing it. I coined the name, you see. Beyond the ref burial, this was another spotty but story-less match. Nothing that happened led to anything that came after it. So much so that when the Best Friends hit Edwards with a double chokeslam for the win at 16:23, it felt like it came out of nowhere. They could have put that move anywhere in the match and it would have felt exactly the same. Points for trying and for the effort and skill involved in doing all the fancy moves, but this kind of tag team wrestling isn’t for me. I feel like the support for this match would sound a lot like the support for Michael Bay’s Transformers movies. Turn your brain off kind of thinking. No thanks. **¾
March 18, 2017 – Reseda, California
Chuck Taylor & Trent def. Marty Scurll & Zack Sabre Jr.
From PWG Nice Boys (Don’t Play Rock N’ Roll). Sabre was the champion of EVOLVE, RevPro, and PWG at this point, but he carried only the PWG title here. Finally we get a match from this team where they have to fight against adversity. The Leaders of the New School cheat like crazy. Sabre is so good. He uses his mat skills to cut the ring in half in a way I haven’t seen in quite a while. Sami Callihan is on commentary, and while I can tune out most of what he says, at one point after Trent hits the Crunchie on Sabre and Sabre sells it oddly, Callihan says, “He might actually be hurt.” Dude, don’t say that on the mic. Like, as opposed to what? You’re awful. They wrestled this like a tornado tag and it wasn’t one, which is annoying, but I was able to get past it because the throughline of the match was very strong. The Best Friends were on fire, bulldozing through the cheating of the Leaders of the New School, and no selling things like thrown chairs at just the right moments. Do I wish they’d sold for the referee? Yes, but this was structured in such a way that the match was satisfying regardless. Trent and Sabre have a dope exchange until Trent catches Sabre with a gnarly cradle piledriver for the win at 23:21. ****
September 16, 2020 – Jacksonville, Florida
Trent & Chuck Taylor def. Santana & Ortiz {Parking Lot Fight}
From AEW Dynamite 50. This one is a cheat, as it’s not related to anything else I was watching but it seemed like a fun hang. As far as outside the ring street fights go, this was very good. Unlike most, the action never fell into a lull and some of the spots were downright wild for a cable TV show. You’d do best to ignore the “fans” on the outskirts, as their overacting can become very distracting if you let them catch your eye too many times. I didn’t like the finish so much, because a comedy character coming out (who to be fair didn’t do anything funny) at the end of a match this violent felt out of place. Trent hit a belly to back piledriver on Ortiz onto a wooden plank in the bed of a truck at 13:03 for the win. I also felt that the Best Friends getting in Trent’s mom’s minivan and his mom flipping the bird to end the show was too cute for this environment as well, but AEW is a cartoon so what can you do? I can look past the minivan mess and the annoying fans to give this thing some credit though. ****
This is a team that overachieved given their collective talent and demeanor. They’re both good, but their (especially Taylor’s) goofy shtick kept them from reaching that upper echelon. And the fact that they came up in the era of ignoring the referee and the tag rope made for matches that were less dramatic than they could have been. Lots of flash, but flash doesn’t always hold up so well. That Dojo Bros match is a perfect example of four guys busting their ass to do not much of note because of a trend that aged like milk. But now they’re on national television, albeit in a lower-tier role, so their whole routine carried them pretty far.