The Bouncers Are At A Crossroads, But They Haven’t Wavered From Their Quest For ROH Tag Team Gold
The Bouncers’ Brian Milonas and Beer City Bruiser haven’t seen eye-to-eye recently, but one thing they can agree on is they can put their feelings aside and still coexist in the ring.
The Bouncers recently spoke with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard ahead of their tag team match against “Hot Sauce” Tracy Williams & Rhett Titus of The Foundation and the Soldiers of Savagery. Several weeks ago, Bruiser smashed a beer bottle over Matt Taven’s head and the act caused some tension between the two. Bruiser explained that people want to say he’s at odds with Milonas, but he says they are still friends and he’s doing whatever it takes to win.
Bruiser: “Everyone keeps saying [we’re at odds]. That’s the thing that’s really making me upset is they’re saying the ‘Bouncers are over, the Bouncers this, the Bouncers that…’ No, no. I never once—I didn’t hit Brian [Milonas] over the head with a beer bottle. I didn’t turn my back on Brian. I haven’t said anything negative about Brian. Brian is my brother, he is my best friend, we’re just at a crossroads right now where we see differently. And hopefully Brian comes around, but this match that’s gonna be airing, we’re gonna show everybody that hey, even though we’re arguing behind the scenes and stuff, when we get in front of that camera, when it comes down to it, we’re gonna punch people in the mouth. We’re gonna fight and we’re gonna win. We’re gonna do whatever it takes to win.”
Milonas: “I mean, I look at it like we’re gonna do whatever it takes that’s not gonna get us disqualified. Because if we’re gonna get disqualified, there’s really no sense in doing what we’re doing. I mean, I think the real problem here is, we’re just frustrated, you know. We are just at a point of frustration, things haven’t been going the way that we wanted them to and we feel like the pandemic really put a halt on everything we were doing, and then we came back, we had a tough loss. We’ve had a couple tough losses to really good teams, but a couple of tough losses that could have really propelled us to a title shot. And I think the tough thing for me to accept with Bruiser is the fact that, you know, Matt Taven and Mike Bennett have been my friends for 15 years and have been a friend to Bruiser, so I get being frustrated. I was pretty frustrated and mad that we lost to them but I think there’s a certain way to do things and we got away from Silas Young for a reason. I don’t want to slip back into that.”
Bruiser: “The thing that makes me mad and the reason that the bottle to Taven’s head has to happen was when the pandemic started, who stepped up? The Bouncers did, we created Happy Hour, we were one of the most-watched things on ROH social media and yet, all everyone could talk about was Mike Bennett coming back from five years and Taven coming back and all that. It’s like wait a minute, we’re the guys that are working hard and all that. So I made a statement. Brian, you just gotta see that. I made a statement, it worked, but that’s the past. Let’s focus on the future, which is this match coming up and let’s punch people in the face.”
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Milonas went on to say that he’s going to agree to disagree with how Bruiser handled things and they’ve had disagreements before, but it’s commonplace between best friends and brothers. Milonas added that it’s not a case of putting friendships over The Bouncers’ priority of winning, he just doesn’t thinking using a beer bottle to win was the right call, no matter who was on the receiving end.
Milonas: “I’m just as frustrated as Bruiser. I’m just as upset. I don’t think my focus has been any less. I’m just not gonna, I mean, the focus is put on the friendships because it just happens to be guys who, by the way, they are my friends and I’ve known them longer. But they’re Bruiser’s friends, too. These guys have been friends with Bruiser behind the scenes, too. But I don’t think I put that friendship ahead of it. I just don’t agree with whether it’s OGK, whether it’s SoS, whether it’s The Foundation, I don’t agree with taking a beer bottle and smashing it over their head because we lost a match. You know, you put us in a bar room brawl, that’s where beer bottles get smashed. But a match where we lost, we lost fair and square, I’m man enough to sit here and tell you that they are just better than us. They were three seconds better than us on that match. And that is what it is and that’s for us to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to be better. But I’ve never put friendships ahead of the team. I just don’t agree with wrapping a beer bottle around somebody’s head who has done nothing wrong to us.
Bruiser: “Wrapping the beer bottle around somebody’s head got us in the conversation. You know, where before it was always oh, the Bouncers, they’re fun to drink with, they’re guys where oh, this guy can’t make the tag team thing so let’s throw the Bouncers in there. The Bouncers have always been the go-to. You know but then when it comes to conversations about great stuff, you talk about tag teams in Ring of Honor, you mentioned the Briscoes, you mentioned OGK, Mike Bennett hasn’t been here for five years but they’re still included in the conversation. But the Bouncers are always kinda left off. They’re always, oh yeah, this is that. And a beer bottle over Matt Taven’s head, all of a sudden now everybody’s talking about Beer City Bruiser. All of a sudden now everybody’s talking about the Bouncers. We’re in that conversation. Friendships end when you walk out. When you walk out, you go in there, friendships end.”
Despite not seeing eye-to-eye on the beer bottle incident, both agree that they are in a “must-win situation” with the three-way tag match. Bruiser said a win over The Foundation, arguably one of the most popular teams in ROH all year, would make them the ‘talk of the town’ and move The Bouncers back up the rankings.
Bruiser: “The way I look at it is, beating either one of these teams is gonna move up anywhere because SoS, getting with Shane Taylor was the best thing they could have done. Shane Taylor led them to the six-man tag championships, that’s something there. The Foundation, now, [after] the reset, they are the talk of the town. Us beating them makes us [the] talk of the town. Look what happened with RUSH and his crew. They come out during the Foundation thing, they start messing with them, and now everyone’s talking about [Los Faccion Ingobernables] against the Foundation. Well, now picture this—The Bouncers beat the Foundation, we pin them, we hurt them. We do whatever it takes to win, now the Bouncers are in that conversation. It’s all about making everybody talk about the Bouncers. They start talking about us, we start getting the opportunities that we deserve.”
Milonas: “I mean, those guys are kinda pretentious anyway, I’ll say that. I think the pure wrestling thing has been great, but those guys walk around with a certain air about them, kinda with their noses in the air, they kinda think their crap doesn’t stink. So I don’t like that, I don’t like when people just think they’re better than me. And that’s the way those guys walk around now, so I don’t want to speak for Bruiser on this one but there’s something a little extra there. I’m gonna feel good hitting those guys in the mouth. Professional wrestling at some point, like I get the pure stuff, just because that’s not our forte doesn’t mean we can’t do it. But I like hitting people in the mouth, I’m not gonna lie.”
Check out the full three-way tag team match featuring “Hot Sauce” Tracy Williams & Rhett Titus of The Foundation, the Soldiers of Savagery and The Bouncers on this week’s episode of ROH Week By Week below: