WINC Watchlist: FTR Vs. Young Bucks For The AEW, ROH & AAA Tag Team Championships

The most famous tag team rivalry in the history of AEW will add another chapter to its already eventful story at AEW Revolution 2026 when FTR defend the AEW World Tag Team Championships against The Young Bucks. 

It was a rivalry born out of competitiveness as much as it was pettiness, with the FTR name itself coming from Matt and Nick Jackson's "Being The Elite" series where the letters used to stand for "F*** The Revival." Why did they hate The Revival so much? Because The Young Bucks had been called the greatest tag team in the world until Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood came along, and that best in the world title wasn't as certain as it once was. That was all the way back in 2016, and in the decade that has since passed, these two duos are both on course to being Hall of Fame caliber tag teams.

Both teams have held the AEW World Tag Team Championships on three occasions, they have both held gold in companies like AAA, ROH, and New Japan Pro Wrestling, and even after all these years are still trying to one up each other. While some people would like to believe that AEW Revolution 2026 will be the final team these two teams mix it up, they have so much shared history and built up animosity that they could probably fight every week until they retire and not get sick of it.

To celebrate the fifth instalment of this feud, we have decided to take a trip down memory lane in preparation for the upcoming pay-per-view by re-watching every two-on-two encounter between FTR and The Young Bucks. For context, we aren't going to list every time they shared a ring together, but just know that the Anarchy In The Arena match from AEW Double or Nothing 2024, and the Mile High Madness match from the February 25 episode of "AEW Dynamite" are must-see matches that feature these two teams.

So without further ado, let's take a look back at every tag team encounter between FTR and The Young Bucks!

A match four years in the making finally went down at AEW Full Gear 2020 as FTR and The Young Bucks were finally going to meet in the center of the ring. Their initial meeting had the extra stipulation that if Matt and Nick Jackson couldn't get the job done against Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler, they would never challenge for the AEW World Tag Team Championships again. That stipulation did worry some people since Cody Rhodes ended up never challenging for the AEW World Championship due to a stipulation very much like that, but The Young Bucks did have one thing going for them as Tully Blanchard was banned from ringside, meaning FTR had no one in their corner.

The most obvious thing to note when going back and watching this match is the time in which it took place. The fact that a genuine tag team dream match that fans had wanted to see for years ended up happening in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic is a real disappointment. Sure, the AEW locker room was at ringside as the makeshift crowd, and some actual fans got seats in the bleachers in their own socially approved bubbles, so it wasn't like Daily's Place was dead silent or anything. That being said, this is a match that deserved to have a capacity crowd behind it because it lived up to the dream match label placed upon it.

A lot of fans at the time expected a classic high-flying babyface team taking on a no-nonsense old school heel team, and those fans got what they paid for, but this actually becomes a tale of two injuries. Matt Jackson had his ankle injured in the weeks leading up the match, but The Young Bucks would get revenge by nearly breaking Dax Harwood's hand in the early going. The selling of Matt's ankle isn't always consistent, after all most of The Bucks' offense is designed around kicking people and flying all over the place, but he does a good enough job for it to play into major moments in the match like not being able to base himself during a Sharpshooter.

What this match is at its core is a love letter to tag team wrestling. Various teams get referenced on both sides, with FTR pulling inspiration from The Steiner Brothers, The Road Warriors, and The Hart Foundation, while The Young Bucks take a page out of the book of The Hardy Boyz and The Dudley Boyz. FTR even roll back the years and give a shout out to DIY at one point, both teams just throw everything at each other in this epic of a match. The ending being Wheeler straying from the path and going for a flip rather than a fist, only for it to backfire, is the kind of detail that warms your heart and rewards you for paying attention. It might be nearly 30 minutes long, but it absolutely flies by.

Around 17 months after their initial meeting, FTR and The Young Bucks finally crossed paths once again in April 2022 on an episode of "AEW Dynamite," and so much had changed in that time.

After beating FTR for the AEW World Tag Team Championships at Full Gear 2020, The Young Bucks would hold onto the belts until All Out 2021 where they were beaten by The Lucha Brothers. However, it was during this reign where Matt and Nick Jackson turned heel once Kenny Omega and Don Callis aligned to steal the AEW World Championship from Jon Moxley. They spent all most of 2021 sporting the absolute worst facial hair combinations you've ever seen, but they backed up all of their trash talk and underhanded tactics as 2022 rolled around, where they wanted some more gold around their waists.

FTR on the other hand had a mixed 2021 as they spent half of their time feuding with The Inner Circle as part of The Pinnacle, and the other half feuding with The Lucha Brothers over both the AAA and AEW World Tag Team Championships, eventually emerging with the AAA belts. In early 2022, Tony Khan became the new owner of Ring of Honor and immediately booked another dream match, that being FTR vs. The Briscoes, but when Dax and Cash unseated Mark and Jay Briscoe to win the ROH World Tag Team Championships, Matt and Nick Jackson spoiled their party and vowed to make themselves double champions at FTR's expense.

I'm not just saying this because there's a crowd on hand, but in my honest opinion, this is the best FTR/Young Bucks match that there has been so far. Both teams are in their ideal roles, with Matt and Nick being always punchable duo that you want to see get what's coming to them, and FTR just being at the top of their game. Dax and Cash walk into this one with all of the momentum in the world behind them and the crowd couldn't be more on their side if they tried. This makes The Bucks ham up their heelish antics, but it also makes them slow down in places giving them time to revel in the heat.

All that heat builds to a Dax Harwood hot tag who was on fire in this match, 2022 was a banner year for FTR but Dax really had a year to remember by himself. The Bucks hit the Big Rig, we get a Dusty Finish as well as Cash gets his foot on the rope after a BTE Trigger. Belt shots, big moves, FTR kiss Matt and hit him with BTE Trigger and a Big Rig, everything in the final act of the match moves so quick and it's a joy to watch. Shorter than the first match by just under 10 minutes, but that arguably makes it better, and FTR getting the feel good win to even the series makes it that much sweeter.

It was a match that was originally intended to be the rubber match, the bout to put a neat bow on the trilogy between FTR and The Young Bucks. However, the AEW World Tag Team Championship match from AEW All In London 2023 is now the halfway mark of the series between the two teams, and there was a lot of time between this match and their "AEW Dynamite" encounter in 2022.

Almost another 17 months passed between the second and third matches, and in that time FTR had one of the best years that any tag team has ever had. They held the IWGP, AAA, and ROH Tag Team Titles until the end of 2022 and start of 2023, and after a little time off, they secured their second AEW World Tag Team Championships, and became one of the focal points of "AEW Collision" that debuted in June 2023. As for The Young Bucks, that same period was very eventful. They actually became the first team ever to win the AEW World Tag Team Championships twice, with their second reign happening in the summer of 2022, but they turned their attention to the newly introduced AEW World Trios Championships later that year, and had been fully focused on having another run at the top with Kenny Omega as part of The Elite. 

The general consensus by many is that this match, despite its grand stage and high stakes, is actually the weakest of the FTR/Young Bucks series, and I can see why some people think that. The London crowd were already in need of a break after the first two matches on the show, leading to the first half of this match not really connecting with the live crowd outside of a few high spots. Cash Wheeler did get a "Wheeler's got a gun" chant given his legal situation heading into the event, but that was really the height of enthusiasm in the first half. When you watch this series of matches back-to-back, you can see what the two teams are going for as they are trying to build and escalate the action from the last match, and it's in the second half of this one where things really get going.

The finishes of the first two matches are both replicated but result in near falls. The BTE Trigger and the Shatter Machine are both kicked of, the latter of which getting a genuine jump-out-of-your-seat response from the crowd, finishing moves are stolen by each side, the entire match was effectively building to the final five minutes, and what a final five minutes it was. FTR counter the Meltzer Driver into another Shatter Machine for the win to a standing ovation from the crowd. Expectations were obscenely high for this match and I think they just about got there in the end. A lot better on a rewatch, and maybe even a little underrated depending on who you ask.

Fans didn't have to wait another 17 months for the next meeting between FTR and The Young Bucks as the two teams would cross paths once again eight months later at the inaugural AEW Dynasty pay-per-view in April 2024. However, both teams had shown us everything that there was to show us at the time, so they needed to shake things up and the solution was a Ladder Match.

Neither team walked into Dynasty as champions as the AEW World Tag Team Championships were vacated following AEW Revolution. Sting and Darby Allin, who defeated The Young Bucks in the main event of that show, relinquished the titles due to Sting retiring from wrestling, and with both teams having two title reigns in the bag already, the winners of the match were also going to become the first-ever three-time AEW World Tag Team Champions. FTR had been chasing the belts since losing them to Ricky Starks and Big Bill shortly after All In London, and hadn't really changed much in the eight months since they last wrestled the Jackson brothers.

The Young Bucks on the other hand were wildly different, now going by Matthew and Nicholas Jackson, they had fully embraced the fact that they were Executive Vice-Presidents of the company and were willing to abuse that power to the furthest possible degree. They even aired the backstage footage from All In London of CM Punk fighting with Jack Perry just to get in FTR's heads, which we can all agree was a terrible idea.

What wasn't a terrible idea was this match. Hats off to all four men willingly putting themselves out there after the now iconic match between Will Ospreay and Bryan Danielson, and they all knew that the only way to wake up this exhausted crowd was to borderline kill each other. We've seen every conceivable trope in a Ladder Match by now, to the point where some of them don't really feel dangerous. This match however was dangerous. Some of the bumps that these guys took in this one looked ugly in the best kind of way. Sloppy and careless, but genuinely impossible to not watch. Cash Wheeler darting around the match like he'd been shot out of a cannon, the Piledriver on the bridged ladder from Dax Harwood on to Matthew Jackson looked horrifying, Matthew also being catapulted off the apron only for his head to his the guardrail as he goes through a table, Nicholas Jackson being one of the best high flyers in the business. It's the definition of a car crash where even the fans are telling the guys in the ring to be careful.

The return of Jack Perry in the closing moments was to be expected at the time, but it doesn't take anything away from the match, and The Young Bucks walk away with the win. One of the most fun Ladder Match's in AEW history.