Reading between the lines of the EVPs

The Young Bucks recently named a WWE duo as the best tag team in the world outside of AEW. WrestleTalk covered the acknowledgment, noting the Bucks' litany of championships and their willingness to look across the promotional divide. While the snippet didn't explicitly drop the name, anyone paying attention to modern tag team geometry knows exactly who Matthew and Nicholas Jackson are watching.

It is the Motor City Machine Guns.

Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin recently crossed the divide into Paul Levesque's WWE. Their arrival fundamentally altered the structural reality of Friday nights. The Bucks praising them isn't just professional courtesy. It is a subtle admission of where the Jackson brothers are currently failing in their own matches.

The problem with the 2026 Young Bucks

Let's look at the tape from the last six months of AEW television. The Bucks have transitioned into a slower, character-heavy style. They walk to the ring as corporate executives. They stall.

That stalling used to be a heat mechanism. Now, it is a crutch. In their recent title defenses, the middle ten minutes of their matches routinely fall apart. They rely on referee distractions and slow-walked double-team setups that give their opponents too much recovery time. The snap is gone.

Compare that to Sabin and Shelley. The Machine Guns operate on a terrifyingly efficient axis. When Shelley isolates a left arm, he doesn't pause to pose for the hard camera. He transitions immediately into a Border City Stretch setup. Every movement has a cascading effect.

Why WWE's tag style is suddenly outpacing AEW

AEW built its entire identity on tag team wrestling. For years, the division was untouchable. Lucha Bros, FTR, the Bucks, Santana and Ortiz. But the tactical focus has shifted.

WWE is currently running a masterclass in classic ring-cutting. DIY (Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa) and the Machine Guns are working matches that belong in a textbook. They utilize the blind tag better than anyone in the business right now.

Watch a recent DIY match. Gargano gets caught in the wrong corner. Ciampa doesn't just reach for a tag; he actively repositions himself on the apron to shorten the distance Gargano has to crawl. It is a tiny, brilliant adjustment. The Bucks used to do this in 2018. They stopped doing it in 2024.

The structural flaws in a hypothetical matchup

If the forbidden door blows open and we get the Bucks against the Machine Guns in a modern WWE ring, the tactical clash would be jarring. The Bucks want to run the ropes and set up the Meltzer Driver. The Guns want to ground you and strip your base away.

Here is the flaw in the Bucks' current offensive sequence: they need too much space. The Meltzer Driver requires a clean runway on the apron. The BTE Trigger requires the opponent to be static on their knees in the dead center of the ring.

Shelley does not stay static. If you put him on his knees, he is already shifting his weight to grab an ankle lock. Sabin is constantly disrupting the apron runway. He pulls the rope down. He intercepts the springboard.

Predicting the inevitable collapse

This brings us to the prediction. The Bucks are praising WWE's tag division because they recognize a superior tactical framework. But if they actually stepped into the ring with Sabin and Shelley tomorrow, the Bucks would lose. Cleanly.

The current iteration of Matthew and Nicholas simply gives up too much mat control. They surrender the center of the ring to play to the crowd. You cannot do that against the Machine Guns. If you give Alex Shelley three seconds of dead time, he will disassemble your knee.

My official read on this? The Bucks are smart enough to see the writing on the wall. They are acknowledging the Guns because game recognizes game. But tactically, the EVPs are completely ill-equipped to handle that match right now.