The build was weird at best and misguided at worst. The teams are two of the most annoying presences outside of the ring, with FTR being gung-ho about aging into the kind of men who talk about “the good ol’ days” while The Young Bucks are … The Young Bucks. Everything going into this match said it was very much not going to be “for me.”

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“That’s ok,” I told myself as the teams made their entrances. “Not every match has to be ‘for me,’ and I can enjoy a good Young Bucks ladder match, even if they tend to be a little too graceful for my taste.”

Reader, I have never been more wrong.

The ladder match between FTR and The Young Bucks at AEW Dynasty was an absolute car crash in all of the best ways. Blood poured out of Dax Harwood’s face. The Bucks were more hard-hitting than usual. Not a single person landed flush on a table — not once — instead careening at odd angles, leading to wreckage and carnage that I simply hadn’t seen before. In what I thought was well-trod ground, this was something relatively fresh for the ladder match. No one built a convoluted sculpture of ladders to bounce off of; instead, two teams tried to legitimately murder each other for 20 minutes or so. The crowd, initially dead from the scary finish of Danielson vs. Ospreay, was hooked, losing their minds at every human disaster that unfolded.

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Then f***ing Jungle Boy showed up and the place came unglued. The two teams were fighting so fiercly that even my cynical, jaded media brain forgot that Perry was all but telegraphed to be returning Sunday night. There really isn’t any higher accolade you can give a match. Star ratings, letter ratings, even a carefully worded review — all of those are just pseudoscientific ways to say “Someone made me forget that I knew what was going to happen,” something that applies to more than just wrestling.

FTR and The Young Bucks made me forget that I knew what was going to happen. Simple as that.

Written by Ross Berman