Bobby Fish Explains That The Way Briscoe Family Handles Loss Is ‘Inspiring’
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Bobby Fish, formerly of ROH, “WWE NXT,” and AEW, has talked about the legacy of the Briscoe Brothers as a tag team, as well as how the family is coping with the death of Jay Briscoe.
Fish was a recent guest on the “Going Broadway Podcast,” where one of the obvious topics of discussion was the recent death of one-half of one of the greatest tag teams in ROH history, Jay Briscoe of the Briscoe Brothers. Fish spent 2013 to 2017 as a key part of ROH’s tag team division (as half of reDRagon with Kyle O’Reilly), and he spoke of the Briscoes’ impact in establishing him and O’Reilly as players in ROH, as well as the inspiration he’s taken from the Pugh family’s response to Jay’s death.
“There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said,” Fish explained. “Obviously, I’m not gonna belabor the point about how talented they were from a wrestling standpoint. They were certainly huge parts of helping to make Kyle and I legitimate. To win the tag titles from them … they were more Ring of Honor than the name ‘Ring of Honor,’ y’know? They are synonymous there, the quintessential Ring of Honor guys.”
He added that early in his career, he rode with ROH veteran Tony DeVito, so he got a glimpse of the teenaged Briscoes a decade before going to ROH full-time and feuded with them after they became the promotion’s signature tag team.
“Going to the services for Jay and even seeing the way Mark has handled himself since the tragedy, watching the faith and watching that family walk out their faith — it’s one thing to talk about it, but they truly are it,” Bobby Fish continued, pivoting to the aftermath of Jay’s death and how his immediate family has handled it with grace.
“There’s no questioning with them. And I saw it with Papa Briscoe, and their mother, and Mark, it’s still, to this day, any glimpse I see of them … they know. They know Jay’s in a better place, and it’s inspiring to see that sort of faith. So I think we all, even as believers, faith is a slippery slope.”
The Pugh family’s particular brand of Christianity has been very out in public for everyone to see since Jay’s death, most visibly at Jay’s public funeral, which the local school district streamed live on YouTube on January 29. Mark’s eulogy for his older brother, in addition to showing the real, highly intelligent Mark Pugh beneath the wild, goofy, Mark Briscoe persona, also served as an explainer for how they had eschewed organized religion for a less restricted version of their faith. This dovetailed with comments Mark had made in 2022 about Jay having a crisis of faith of sorts in the past.
Four days before Jay’s funeral, Mark made his official AEW debut, defeating long-time friend and rival Jay Lethal in the “AEW Dynamite” main event that was explicitly billed as a tribute to his older brother.
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