Top 7 Jay Briscoe Moments

The wrestling world was saddened on Tuesday by the death of Jay Briscoe in an automobile accident. While Jay never made it to “New York” and didn’t get to work on the Turner stations, he still made a great impact on professional wrestling during his years in the business. Jay & his brother Mark were one of the best tag teams of the 21st century. No history of Ring of Honor would be complete without telling the story of the Briscoes, who were there from Day One.

MURPHY REC!

As the kids say, IYKYK. Jay was born one day after my best friend since kindergarden, who I traveled with to Dayton, Ohio to see Ring of Honor shows for many years. It’s weird how these wrestling deaths touch you. I have to admit that Jay’s is hitting me a bit harder than most in recent years, as I was able to follow most of his career and was one of those goofballs that whenever a WWE tag team would actually get over & pushed as the best in the business would say “what about the Briscoes?”

Today, we look back at seven of Jay Briscoe’s most magnificent moments.

7. Terry Funk & Bruiser Brody Ain’t Wear No Mouthpiece

Ring of Honor made its debut in Cincinnati on February 17, 2012. I’d been traveling to Dayton, Ohio for years to attend ROH shows, so theoretically this should have been a big deal for me. Unfortunately, the ROH product had gone downhill during the early 2010s, to the point where my best friend & I could no longer justify the money & the miles. The card for the Cincinnati debut didn’t exactly do much for me either…until I saw this promo from Jay & Mark Briscoe.

Once I saw this, I was hooked. I wasn’t too high on Davey or Kyle at this point, which was a large part of why I wasn’t interested in them taking on the Briscoes. Once Jay buried “Johnny MMA” and talked about mouthpieces, I was intrigued. The Briscoes at least drew one fan to that Cincinnati show. Maybe some of y’all didn’t understand everything Jay said, but you believed it. Jay & Mark were Jay & Mark. They did a ton of promos during this time period & after that accomplished the same goals, but this was the one that spoke to me.

6. Fight on the Farm

The Briscoes went through a bit of a struggle during Pandemic Era ROH. Mark wanted to focus on getting the ROH World Tag Team Championship back, but Jay was all wrapped up in his issue with EC3. Mark even teamed with other people because Jay’s head wasn’t in the game. The brothers went through these phases throughout their careers, and the best way to handle things was to fight it out of their system.

Papa Briscoe served as the “referee” during the Fight on the Farm, which took place at the chicken farm in Sandy Fork, Delaware. This was towards the end of the Cinematic Match Era…I’d grown tired of the concept but Jay & Mark put a new spin on it. My favorite part was the ending. It wasn’t decided by a pinfall or submission, instead we had Papa Briscoe asking Jay & Mark if they were good yet. There didn’t need to be a winner, there just needed to be a fight to air everything out. Once Jay & Mark did that, they could press forward and become Tag Team Champions again. Which they did, defeating Matt Taven & Mike Bennett at Final Battle 2022, which became ROH’s last show of the Sinclair Broadcasting Group era.

5. The First Ring of Honor Singles Match

Technically, there was a match before Jay took on the Amazing Red. Da Hit Squad squashed the Christopher Street Connection in a match & segment that people that have seen Ring of Honor’s first show try to forget. Jay vs. Red is what we prefer to remember as ROH’s first match, as it set the stage for what would follow and featured two of ROH’s earliest stars. Red was a phenomenon at this point, joining up with Joel & Jose Maximo as the SAT and eventually winning the ROH Tag Team Championship with AJ Styles. Red also became one of TNA’s early X Division stars, and the late, great Don West’s favorite wrestler.

Jay would of course become one of ROH’s featured players throughout the history of the promotion. One would have expected Mark to join him in some tag team action on this night, but there was one problem: Mark was 17 years old, not old enough to compete in Pennsylvania. He could go in surrounding states where the age limit was lower, but in Philly he would have to settle for being in Jay’s corner. Jay would lose to Red that night, and go through a losing streak while Mark would insist that he was the better brother. Eventually they’d fight, make up, and become a force in ROH’s Tag Team Division.

4. Best of the Best

Before Jay & Mark made their way to ROH and got branded as ROH Originals & Hall of Famers, they worked different places in the Northeastern United States. One of their most notable stops was at Combat Zone Wrestling, which was trying to fill Extreme Championship Wrestling’s shoes in the Northeast and doing a pretty darn good job back in 2001. When CZW made their way to Delaware in January 2001, Jay & Mark were available to wrestle. Of course they were green as all hell, but they still stood out enough in a handicap match against Trent Acid to get booked on future shows, and to get a bit of a push in CZW’s tag team division.

CZW typically featured ultraviolent matches that lived up to everything Jim Cornette would say about them in later years. However, CZW also featured some damn fine non-deathmatch wrestlers, and had the idea of featuring them in an annual tournament. Best of the Best was intended to feature the best light heavyweights in America. It had an interesting format, as the first round had three-way matches where one person would be eliminated, and the remaining two would face off in the second round. Jay & Mark took care of Nick Mondo in the first round, so they faced each other in the second round. What ensued was the best match of that tournament, and a match that people still rate as one of the best in CZW’s history. It established Jay & Mark as among the best in Northeast independent wrestling and ensured their spots when Ring of Honor opened.

3. The FTR Trilogy

I’m doing ok. Thanks everyone for checking on me.

I love you, Jay. pic.twitter.com/ijE09akNeT

— Uncle Dax FTR (@DaxFTR) January 18, 2023

Jay Briscoe never got to wrestle on worldwide television for a major wrestling company on a regular basis. I don’t wish to re-litigate the reasons why that happened, other than to say that from all accounts I’ve seen & heard, Jay changed his perspective on things as he got more mature and became a man that respected & supported all of his fellow humans. Unfortunately, not everybody recognized a change in Jay Briscoe over a decade. Jay & Mark were signed by Tony Khan for his Ring of Honor project, but they weren’t allowed to appear on All Elite Wrestling’s broadcasts on TBS or TNT. Network executives that had heard about wayward tweets wanted nothing to do with the man that had made them. Hence, the Briscoes were limited to appearing on ROH pay-per-view events throughout 2022.

Fortunately, Jay & Mark got the chance to do their thing against a team many consider to be the best in the business. As good as Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler are, those of us familiar with the Briscoe Brothers had Jay & Mark rated right on FTR’s level. #DemBoys vs. #TopGuys was all that needed to be said. Each ROH PPV event in 2022 featured the Briscoes & FTR going at it. There was the straight up one fall to a finish match at Supercard of Honor. The second match at Death Before Dishonor went two out of three falls. The Final Battle match? A dog collar match. Perhaps the most violent stipulation in wrestling, one that rarely fails to live up to its billing. It definitely lived up to it on that night, and the Briscoes became thirteen-time ROH World Tag Team Champions.

I regret missing the second match, as I rated the first & third match five stars in my live reviews. As a big fan of both tag teams I expected greatness when they got in the ring together, and that’s exactly what we got. For all of the complaints AEW fans had about that damn ROH stuff muddying up their Dynamites & Rampages, I’m just happy we got to see #DemBoys vs. #TopGuys.

2. At Our Best (vs. Samoa Joe in a STEEL CAGE)

Watching Jay Briscoe vs Samoa Joe from the front row at ROH At Our Best was a life changing experience for me at the time. His blood spattering all over us. RIP, thank you for the two decades of entertainment. https://t.co/aso63JdEwB

— IVPvideos (@IVPvideos) January 18, 2023

Here’s the thing. Samoa Joe is still a bad mammajamma in 2023. He’s the Champion of Television, a man you don’t want to mess with. But 2004 Samoa Joe? He was making his bones as the most dominant World Champion we’d seen since the days of Big Van Vader in WCW. Ring of Honor went through some trouble in 2004, with one of the founders getting booted because “lol I’ll pretend u said 18” became a meme before memes were a thing. The company was in danger of getting cancelled before getting cancelled was a thing, but several folks strapped the company on their backs and carried it through the valley of the shadow of death. One of those men was Samoa Joe, who made the ROH World Championship one of the most prestigious prizes in wrestling with a dominant title reign that ended up lasting 645 days. (This was more impressive back in 2004. Now everybody holds a belt forever and a day, back in the early 2000s people were lucky if they held one for a few months.)

However, Joe did drop a fall to both Jay & Mark in tag team matches, which entitled them to shots at Joe’s strap. I wan’t as much into ROH at this point that I became later, so I don’t recall what led to Jay’s shot at Joe being in a steel cage. What I do recall is Jay getting the bejeezus beaten out of him by Joe, and gaining everybody’s respect in the process. The Top 7 column before this one mentioned the Muta Scale and how it’d been surpassed in later years…this was one of those occasions. Jay ended up losing the match, but it was an important step in making him one of ROH’s icons.

Honorable Mention: Gimme Back My Bullets

From their return to ROH in 2006 up until the company got on television and had to stop using licensed music, Jay & Mark came out to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Back My Bullets”. It was one of the top ROH themes to me, as the song fit the Briscoe aesthetic to a tee. I have to say it was a sad day for me when the Briscoes had to stop using it.

Before I would podcast with Larry Csonka, typically on a Friday night, I would get ready by taking a few sips from an alcoholic beverage and listening to music. I don’t remember why “Gimme Back My Bullets” became my go-to song before the 411 on Wrestling began, but I played it before nearly every podcast with Larry, and will always associate that song with him. Maybe it was because my offtheteam.com friends said that Larry & I sounded like rednecks, hence I made the association with the Briscoes. Whatever it was, it was a good time.

Honorable Mention: The Time The Briscoes Broke My Chair With Kevin Steen’s Body

It was April 23, 2010 in Dayton, Ohio. The gimmick behind ROH Pick Your Poison involved Kevin Steen & El Generico booking opponents for each other, as they were in the middle of a blood feud. Steen fed Generico to the remorseless Roderick Strong, while Generico looked to the past. His idea was having Steen team with Steve Corino to face Jay & Mark Briscoe, who had given Steen & Generico a large amount of trouble in previous years.

As it turned out, it backfired on Generico. He lost to Roddy while Steen & Corino scored a victory over the Briscoes. However, Steen & Corino definitely took some punishment in the process. As you’d expect from the four men involved, the brawl took place all across the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. One spot involved my section clearing out while the Briscoes bealed Kevin Steen into a row of chairs. Once the wrestlers cleared out and the fans started retaking their spots, I realized that my chair had been the one that was broken by Steen’s fall. I raised the chair in celebration and was handed another one. Had I been thinking on my feet, I would have kept the chair for my personal collection.

1. Winning the ROH World Championship From Kevin Steen

While Jay & Mark had dominated ROH’s Tag Team Division for years, there was always one title that eluded them. While Mark was a talented singles competitor in his own right, he always deferred to his older brother in that division. Jay was the one that would become World Champion if either of them did. Jay had shots against Xavier, Samoa Joe, Takeshi Morishima, Nigel McGuinness, Jerry Lynn & Roderick Strong. He came up short each time. It was fair to wonder if Jay would ever break through and get his moment on top of the mountain.

It finally happened on April 4, 2013. That year’s Supercard of Honor culminated with Jay challenging Kevin Steen for the World Championship. Jay & Mark had a memorable feud with Steen & El Generico that put Steen on the map in ROH. It was only right for Steen to end up doing the honors for Jay Briscoe and give him the biggest singles win of his career.

Jay ended up being a two-time ROH World Champion & a thirteen-time ROH World Tag Team Champion, along with being a one-time Six-Man Tag Team Champion with Mark & Bully Ray. More importantly than all that, he was a loving father, husband, son & brother to a family that has to be in all kinds of pain right now. 2 of Jay’s daughters were injured in the accident as well, and could definitely use any thoughts or prayers that could be given.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to chime in down in that comment section with your favorite Jay Briscoe memories.