The term dream match is thrown around far too casually. It’s become clichéd to the point that it’s becoming the wrestling equivalent of corporate buzzwords like “circle back” or having a “huddle”.

It’s a meeting, Scott, in the same way most “dream matches” are just good matches that make sense.

FTR vs. The Young Guns is a dream match. This is the one.

There’s a reason that Revolution Pro Wrestling led their promotion for the Anniversary show at Wembley Arena with the announcement of Young Guns squaring off with FTR.

Arguably the best tag team of the past ten years versus the best tag team in independent wrestling sells itself. It’s the kind of match that earned RevPro the nickname of “Andy Q’s Dream Factory” in the 2010s.

The run that The Young Guns had put together as Undisputed British Tag Team Champions meant that a match of that magnitude was the only fitting billing for them at Wembley. It wasn’t a case of you deserve it. It was a case of them commanding it.

There is no doubt that it will have sold tickets. It was probably THE marquee match even as the rest of the card was rounded out over the summer months.

When Ethan Allen broke the news of the seriousness of his injury, meaning that he would have to withdraw from active competition, it was a gut punch felt by the entire British wrestling community.

I have never met, spoken to or interacted with either Ethan Allen or Luke Jacobs. I don’t think they’re my friends or anything other than two blokes that I find thoroughly entertaining, but I was fucking gutted for the pair of them so I can’t imagine how they’ve felt.

The mentality that Ethan is showing in interviews and through his vlog series is commendable. It takes a set of stones to broadcast a recovery from anything and to attack disappointment head on.

It’s also commendable that Luke decided to step back from the match with FTR, refusing to go against them with anyone else except his best mate by his side.

For Jacobs, that might have been an incredibly easy decision, a thought that may not have even crossed his mind, but there’s other people who wouldn’t have sacrificed that opportunity.

Ethan’s injury was obviously bad news for both himself and Luke. It was bad news for promoters, fans and those that know Ethan on a personal level.

From a wrestling standpoint, it was bad news for the entire RevPro Heavyweight Division because when one door closes, Luke Jacobs comes to kick another door off its hinges.

The RevPro Heavyweight Division is a shark tank. To commandeer a phrase from the big company running over the road this weekend, it’s where the best wrestle.

The likes of Michael Oku, Connor Mills, Jay Joshua, Leon Slater and Ricky Knight Jr. have been swimming in those waters for years now, desperate to stamp their authority at the top of the food chain.

Over the past eighteen months they’ve been doing that without looking over their shoulders for British wrestling’s apex predator.

When Luke Jacobs has been solely focused on singles competition, he has thrived. He has been the PROGRESS Atlas Champion, the RevPro Undisputed British Cruiserweight Champion, the SAJ Openweight Champion and the Infinite World Champion.

He has won the Natural Progression Series, the PROGRESS Atlas Title Tournament, the Super Strong Style 16 and the Revolution Rumble.

There was a period where Jacobs had the PROGRESS World Championship on one shoulder and the RevPro Undisputed British Heavyweight Championship on the other. Nobody else has done that.

He headlined with, and dethroned, Michael Oku at the Copper Box. He had a trio of classic encounters with Tomohiro Ishii and he’s beaten all comers in RevPro.

Jacobs has always targeted Michael Oku’s legacy and he made it perfectly clear that he was intending to continue that hunt when he laid out his open challenge for Wembley.

By answering that challenge, PAC has handed him an opportunity to take a direct swing at Oku’s legacy and we’ve gone from one dream match to another.

“The Bastard” is a British wrestling legend. PAC saw the glass ceiling that had been placed on British wrestlers in the 90s and 2000s, and thought “aye, I can moonsault through that, nee bother”.

At a time when you needed to be six foot five, crafted from stone, and absolutely drop dead gorgeous to be considered a “star” by international companies, PAC was paving the way for Zack Sabre Jr., Will Ospreay, Pete Dunne and Callum Newman.

Talent is talent and this scene may never produce such a talented athlete as PAC again. He took what Johnny Storm and Jody Fleisch had done and added an extra rotation.

The Geordie daredevil was having headline-grabbing outings before some of the wrestlers he’ll share a locker room with on Saturday were even born.

Leon Cage wasn’t alive when PAC took the 3CW Heavyewight Championship in a match that featured Takeshi Morishima and Kevin Steen or when he first faced AJ Styles or El Generico.

He was the first of the modern generation to truly crack Japan, being an integral part of the Dragongate roster, where his 447 day reign as Open The Brave Gate Champion is still the longest in the title’s history.

He was the first of the “smaller” guys to sign with WWE. Whatever your thoughts on the promotion, he held belts on WWE television. That means something and he’s done the same in AEW.

If there was ever the opportunity to have a British Wrestling Hall of Fame, PAC would be a first-ballot entrant.

Due to the way his career spanned across Japan and America, he doesn’t have an extensive history with RevPro, though he faced a who’s who of international superstars in IPW:UK.

PAC has wrestled just 11 times in RevPro, with the bulk of those coming in a twelve month stretch prior to AEW getting fully up and running with weekly TV. The only person to defeat him in one-on-one competition during that period was Michael Oku at Uprising 2019.

In the kind of underdog heroics that would become synonymous with Oku, he was able to get the knees up as PAC attempted the Black Arrow and rolled him up, after being battered from pillar to post for nearly half an hour.

It was a miracle, as Andy Quildan exclaimed multiple times on commentary. It was the moment that lit the Michael Oku fire in RevPro and set in motion six years of dominance over all three divisions he competed in. That one victory laid the foundations of what Michael Oku is now.

It was a miracle because if that version of Michael Oku wrestled that version of PAC ten times, PAC would have won nine times. He would’ve hit the Black Arrow and scored the pinfall.

That’s where Luke Jacobs comes in.

It’d still be a magnificent result, a stellar scalp to hang atop the mantelpiece, but it wouldn’t be a miracle if Luke Jacobs beats PAC on Saturday night.

Would anybody be truly shocked if Jacobs renders the former WWE Cruiserweight Champion unable to continue with a heavy lariat or chokes him unconscious?

Luke Jacobs is in the prime of his career. He isn’t a young up-and-comer getting the benefit of 15 minutes with a big name. He isn’t “happy to be here”. He is the best that the UK has to offer.

For anyone else, a win or a showstealing performance against PAC would put eyes on them. Everyone’s eyes are already on Luke Jacobs.

What drives Luke Jacobs to beat PAC is greater than simply getting attention from AEW or New Japan. Convincingly beating PAC could be viewed as him taking a sledgehammer to the foundations that Oku laid in 2019.

In doing so, he would immediately jump to the front of the queue for a crack at the Undisputed British Heavyweight Championship, a prize that he has unfinished business with. He could do so with his best friend, his brother, Ethan Allen by his side.

We wanted one dream match. We’re getting another. Two generations of British wrestling colliding. The Pioneer vs. The Present-Day. Death Riders vs. North-West Strong. The Bastard vs. Luke Jacobs.

Andy Quildan said that he wanted to use the Anniversary show and the stage of Wembley Arena to highlight the best that British wrestling has to offer.

He’s certainly delivered on that promise here.

Image Credits: Beyond Gorilla, Revolution Pro Wrestling