Click here to see the Top 100 Tag Teams of All Time list so far.
The number 94-ranked (by Cagematch) Inner City Machine Guns come in at number 82 on this list. Rich Swann and Ricochet started orbiting each other in Dragon Gate and DGUSA in 2011, first as part of the feud between Ronin (Swann’s team with Johnny Gargano and Chuck Taylor) and the Spiked Mohicans (Ricochet’s team with CIMA), and then as part of the larger Junction Three (which Swann joined during his solo tour in Japan) vs. Blood Warriors (which the Spiked Mohicans were already a part of) feud. After Junction Three disbanded and the Blood Warriors were taken over by Akira Tozawa’s Mad Blankey stable, Swann and Ricochet both joined Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino’s World-1 International unit and formed a tag team within it.
May 22, 2015 – Reseda, California
Andrew Everett & Trevor Lee def. Ricochet & Rich Swann {Semifinal Match}
From PWG DDT4. I do not like seeing Everett in this pre-son of Andre the Giant phase. Excalibur on commentary said that it was already 11:18pm when this match began, and there were still three matches to come after this. I would have been so pissed had I been there live. I forgot that Ricochet was a frequent practitioner of indie bullshit before he signed with WWE. Though somewhat ironically, the indie bullshit that bothered me the most in this match is something that WWE has adopted in its big gimmick matches like War Games and the Royal Rumble: guys who lay around on the mat doing nothing while blatantly waiting for your cue to jump up (without any kind of transition from being totally unconscious to totally fine) and hit a spot. Ricochet did a lot of that here. The match was filled with exciting spots, especially at the beginning and the very end, but I don’t understand why it couldn’t have featured the illegal man standing on the apron waiting for a tag rather than just laying on the apron waiting to arbitrarily pop up and region the action without a tag. It makes the whole match blur together when the structure is so loose. It was novel when ROH brought this style to the States in 2004, but at this point it was over a decade later and there was nothing left to differentiate the spotty matches, no matter how well executed. Lee hit Swann with a cool powerbomb and rolled him into a gnarly hurricanrana from Everett to get the win at 14:31. ***¼
March 28, 2014 – Reseda, California
Brian Cage & Michael Elgin def. Rich Swann & Ricochet and ACH & AR Fox {Triple Threat Match}
From PWG Mystery Vortex II. I kind of wish Elgin & Cage weren’t in this so it could just be a match between two teams who have parody names for themselves (ACH & Fox are the African American Wolves). Or maybe we could have thrown the Motor City Machine Guns and the American Wolves into this to make things a bit more meta. That’s something PWG fans like, right? The match starts with only two guys in the ring, but I have a feeling it will take less than five minutes for the tag rules to be thrown out completely. And that’s exactly what happens, which is kind of a bummer because those first few minutes were filled with a bunch of interesting stories pitting the Unbreakable F’n Machines’ strength against everyone else’s speed and agility. To their credit however, after the first ridiculous interlude during which everyone comes in to hit a spot, the correct legal men are the two who are left in the ring. Swann gets stuck in the ring with the Machines for a while, and wouldn’t you know it, it makes the eventual tag out to Fox get a really big pop. Who’da thunk?! But right after that the tag rules get a lot more loose. They lasted ten minutes longer than I expected them to, at least. And at least the snarky commentators call it out. Despite all that, I found myself getting engrossed by the action in this much more than by the DDT4 match. I liked that the big guys would occasionally slow things down, and that every time they entered the ring it, at least slightly and sometimes drastically, changed the pace of the match. I’m not sure why we never saw the two faster teams try to align against the Machines, but I’m not marking this match for what was missing from it as much as I am for what was in it. They went about a couple of minutes past their peak on this one, but it was still mostly thrilling. Cage & Elgin hit Fox & ACH with a powerbomb and a discus lariat for the win at 29:05. ****
August 9, 2013 – Reseda, California
Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson def. Ricochet & Rich Swann and Eddie Edwards & Roderick Strong {PWG Tag Team Championship Ladder Match}
From PWG TEN. The bright side here is I’m not going into this hoping for tag rules to be enforced. Why doesn’t PWG just say that tag rules aren’t a thing there? The downside is that this is a ladder match and I’ve seen everything that can be done in a ladder match already. This was little more than a comedy match. Early on, Nick was comfortably able to retrieve the belts, but deliberately knocked the ladder over instead. Not sure how to reinvest in the match after that. A bunch of stuff happens, some of it well done, but none of it felt like stuff that only the ICMG or the Bucks could do. Some of the Dojo Boys’ offense was unique to them, but they were in maybe one-fifth of the match. Nick retrieved the belts at 17:42, but I was long past caring at that point. **¾
March 15, 2014 – Tower Hamlets, London
Rich Swann & Ricochet def. Will Ospreay & Paul Robinson {RevPro British Tag Team Championship Match}
From RevPro High Stakes. RevPro isn’t PWG, so the tag rules might be enforced. But this is early Ospreay so who knows what kind of nonsense will be on display. The cute dynamic here is that Ospreay’s admiration of the more experienced Ricochet is being called out over and over. It’s odd to see a version of Ospreay that isn’t the cocky dude at the top of the card. People love this match, but it has glaring flaws that held me back. One of them was Ricochet failing twice to get Robinson on his back for a stretch that ultimately didn’t mean anything for the match when he was successful on this third try. But my main issue with this match wasn’t that it was made up of blatantly choreographed stretches, but rather than after a team got a near fall, they’d just stand around and then slowly get into position for the next blatantly choreographed stretch to begin. That killed the flow for me. And more often than not, the opposing team would quickly take over. So there was little drama. In fact, this series of ICMG matches is showing me a bunch of different ways that a match can be flashy without having much in the way of drama. My favorite bit of the match came from commentary, when one of them said, “Both teams deserve to win, don’t they; it’s been so good,” and the other replied, “No, no they don’t. The team that wins deserves to win.” Thank you for cutting through some of the bullshit. Of course, just seconds later, Robinson kicks Swann in the back and the commentary makes a big deal of that aggravating a back injury from earlier in the match (one that I don’t recall happening at all), only for Swann to immediately get up and hit a gamengiri on Ospreay to wrap up a perfunctory everyone-hits-everyone-in-succession bit. Ricochet hit Robinson with the Benadryller to win the titles about a minute later at 24:21. Points for hard work, but this doesn’t stand the test of time. The ICMG lost the titles the following night, as one does after winning a championship on a foreign tour. ***
March 22, 2013 – Reseda, California
Rich Swann & Ricochet def. AR Fox & Samuray del Sol
From PWG All Star Weekend 9. This was the first of two matches in which the very random team of Fox and SdS paired up. No rhyme or reason to it that I can gather aside from PWG thinking it’d be fun for their big weekend. I spent a good portion of last week watching Beard vs. Food videos on YouTube. They’re quite fun. If you’re not familiar (I wasn’t before last week), he’s a fairly typical but very likable competitive eater who wins the vast majority of the challenges he attempts. So it’s interesting to watch him on the rare occasion he loses. Most of the losses come from challenges that are made mostly of sugar. These are giant versions of foods that are probably incredible in their original form. But the pain on his face when he tries to consume them in insane quantities is palpable. That’s even more true after watching five of these spotfests in a row. Give me one, from the early aughts, when the best ones were set around a story. But five in a row, in which the spots admittedly are performed mostly excellently, but have nothing stringing those spots together, and it’s a misery. By the time I got to this match I had no more patience for any of this shit.
Even worse, this reminded me of something Jimmy Jacobs once said to me that really bummed me out. I can’t remember what match we were watching, but it was probably something during which people were doing stuff like this. Maybe it was Dragon Gate guys, but maybe it was Bryan Danielson having a bonkers match. But I think it was more of an acrobatic match, and he said, “Am I even a wrestler?” He was kidding, but he must have felt some level of inadequacy when saying it. Excalibur says something very similar on commentary here. And frankly, I’d rather watch a match with some nuance from either of them than another Ricochet match for quite some time. Anyway, this match, ranked by Cagematch as the ICMG’s match, was even more annoying because Ricochet teased a bit of heel work, but then immediately abandoned it and Swann played to the crowd like a babyface. Remember when everyone complained that all the heels on the indies were cool heels and not dirtbag heels? I miss that time, because the mid-teens was clearly an era where there were zero heels. I want to really dog this with a bad rating, but the last few minutes featured a few spots I’d never seen before (and thus technically, since), so I have to give it it’s due for that and the fact that they moved like total pros out there. If only they were pro storytellers. Ricochet hit SdS with the 630 Senton for the win at 19:33. ***½
I wonder if the few big matches that this duo had in Dragon Gate are better than the ones I watched for this post, but missed the cut because they’re underseen. I’m too turned off at the prospect of watching more super spotty matches to check, though.
The Inner City Machine Guns teamed regularly until mid-2015 when Swann got signed to a WWE contract. Ricochet made his way to WWE three years later, but at this point Swann had been fired over a domestic violence issue. Ricochet is still in WWE and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, while Swann is probably not going to be able to make it back to the big time. So this team is unlikely to reunite for a long time, if ever.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
