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AEW has one of the most stacked tag team divisions in all of pro wrestling. That comes as no surprise, given that the Young Bucks are EVPs of the company and have vowed to make tag team wrestling a cornerstone of the promotion.
The current champions are Jurassic Express, but there are a number of excellent teams in and around the title scene, including FTR, Lucha Bros, Redragon, Team Taz, The Hardys, the aforementioned Bucks, Best Friends and The Acclaimed, just to name a few.
Beyond that, there are also up-and-coming duos who are trying to make a name for themselves in AEW.These include Top Flight, Private Party, Varsity Blondes and the Gunn Club.
2point0 falls somewhere in the middle. "Daddy Magic" Matt Menard and "Cool Hands" Angelo Parker have been wrestling as a team for nearly 20 years and are veterans of the independent scene. Yet, they are still trying to establish themselves in All Elite Wrestling and stand out amongst a deep roster.
Luckily for them, they have managed to make quite the splash in Tony Khan's promotion since their debut in late 2021 and wrestled excellent matches against Sting, Darby Allin, Santana and Ortiz.
Their chemistry and aggression have attracted the attention of Chris Jericho, who has recruited them for his brand-new stable, the Jericho Appreciation Society. Here are five things AEW fans should know about 2point0.
#5. 2point0 hail from Quebec, Canada and are childhood friends
Matt Menard and Angelo Parker grew up in Quebec, Canada. Both wrestlers were born in 1983. Their friendship goes back over 30 years as they have been childhood friends since elementary school.
Matt and Angelo quickly bonded over pro wrestling and would spend countless hours at the local video store to rent the latest wrestling VHS available. Their shared passion led to the two kids wrestling in the basement and later in the backyard to replicate the moves that they saw on television.
In early 2000s, the two Canadians would finally take their love for pro wrestling to the next level by enrolling themselves in wrestling school. The rest, as they say, is history.
#4. 2point0 are veterans of the independent scene
Menard & Parker started their wrestling careers at the International Wrestling Syndicate, an independent promotion based in Montreal. There they became two-time IWS World Tag Team Champions. Both wrestlers also won singles titles as Parker was a two-time IWS Canadian Champion and IWS World Champion, while Menard also won the IWS World Championship.
But it was in the Philadelphia-based promotion Chikara that 2.0 started to gain notoriety on the independents. They also happened to cross paths with future AEW wrestlers Chuck Taylor and The Young Bucks in the company. Their exploits in Chikara helped them get work in promotions such as Ring of Honor, PWG, CZW and Northern Championship Wrestling.
All the while, 2.0 remained active in the Canadian independent wrestling scene for many years where they would run into the likes of Kevin Steen and El Generico as early as 2004. Those two wrestlers would later become known in WWE as Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn respectively.
Their friendship with KO would pay off years later when the former Universal Champion would help 2.0 get in touch with Chris Jericho, which opened the door for them to get signed by AEW.
This was referenced in the promo The Influencer cut on Dynamite when he formed the Jericho Appreciation Society. Jericho mentioned how Parker and Menard were grateful to him for getting them jobs with AEW, which eventually led to 2point0 becoming part of his new stable.
#3. 2point0 initially appeared on WWE as enhancement talent
While wrestling on the independent circuit, 2.0 still harbored dreams of one day making it to WWE. They would make occasional appearances in the company starting in 2016, when they had an NXT match with the Revival, later known as FTR in AEW.
Later that year, the duo were part of a group of about 40 wrestlers invited to a tryout at the WWE Performance Center. They also acted as EMTs during the first ever Women's Hell In A Cell match between Sasha Banks and Charlotte Flair.
Parker and Menard even made an appearance as enhancement talents, playing two local French-Canadian competitors named Jean-Paul and François on the April 30, 2018 episode of RAW, losing to The Authors of Pain.
#2. 2point0 officially signed full-time with NXT and were renamed Ever-Rise
2.0 would continue grinding away before finally signing a full-time WWE contract in 2019. They were repackaged as Matt Martel and Chase Parker and their tag team was renamed Ever-Rise.
During their run with WWE, they wrestled a number of teams on the NXT brand and became regulars on 205 Live. They even had a match with The OC's Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson on WWE’s Main Event program in 2020 and participated in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic in 2021, before facing elimination in the first round.
Unfortunately, Ever-Rise was released from their WWE contract on June 25, 2021. This was all the more surprising as the team had reportedly just re-signed with the company a few months prior and were poised for a push in NXT. Sadly, their WWE careers ended prematurely before they could make a big enough impact.
#1. 2point0 has helped mentor Daniel Garcia in AEW
Thankfully, 2.0 managed to recover quickly and signed with AEW almost immediately. They linked up with fellow newcomer Daniel Garcia for their AEW debut and have remained associated with each other ever since.
In an interview with Jon Alba, Daniel Garcia spoke about his alliance with the 2.0 tag team. Their immense experience in WWE and in the independents have helped him a lot in his AEW career so far:
"2point0 is great. They’re veterans who have experience at every different level of professional wrestling. Not a lot of people know that about them. They wrestled in Chikara, they did a tour of Japan, and obviously, they worked for WWE. So they have seen every aspect of what professional wrestling is, and I am somebody who has only seen that from the outside looking in."
"They are able to teach me a lot about what the TV audience wants to see. They’re great helpers and I feel like, on paper maybe our characters and personalities wouldn’t mesh together, but I feel like once you see it, you get it and I think we are magic together…..I feel like we are people who can pull out of each other, I can pull the serious side from them a little bit more and they can pull more of a goofy side out of me,” said Daniel Garcia. (H/T 411 Mania)
The trio are set to continue working together as they have aligned with Chris Jericho and Jake Hager to form the Jericho Appreciation Society. They appear to be the next big stable to take over AEW.
