Mark Briscoe will make his first appearance on AEW TV on Wednesday, in a bittersweet tribute match pitting him against Jay Lethal.
Briscoe’s brother, Jay – real name: Jamin Pugh – passed away on Jan. 17 in a car accident in Laurel, Del.
The Briscoes were the reigning and defending tag team champions in Ring of Honor, where the brothers debuted in 2002, and which they kept as their home base throughout their lengthy run.
Regarded by more than a few as the best tag team of the past 20 years, the Briscoes never did get a shot at working in either WWE or AEW, resulting from the fallout from homophobic tweets that Jay posted in 2013.
Jay had, in the years since, repeatedly apologized for the tweets and tried hard to make amends, but a scheduled tryout with WWE as the controversy over the tweets was scuttled, and Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns TBS and TNT, the broadcast partners of AEW, reportedly blocked AEW founder and booker Tony Khan from using the brothers on TV.
That stance drew WBD immense heat last week when word surfaced that the corporate giant blocked Khan’s plans for a tribute on last week’s “Dynamite,” which aired a day after Jay Briscoe’s passing.
The fact that WBD had no problem using “Dynamite” as a lead-in to the debut of a new show featuring Dana White, the embattled head of UFC, who was recently involved in an incident caught on video slapping his wife, and is now promoting a concussion-lawsuit-waiting-to-happen outfit called the Power Slap League, was particularly galling to many.
So, now, we get Mark Briscoe on AEW TV, on what would have been his brother’s 39th birthday.
It’s a half-assed gesture, but it’s all we’ll ever get, unfortunately.
We’ll never get to see the Briscoe brothers on a stage befitting them, which is a damn shame.
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Chris Graham
