By Sean Radican, Torch columnist

RADICAN’S ROH DVD REVIEW SERIES
“RAISED IN SANDY FORK: THE LIFE & TIMES OF THE BRISCOES”
BY SEAN RADICAN, PWTORCH COLUMNIST

ROH’s latest release on the Briscoe Brothers was designed to be an inside look at their Sandy Fork farm in Delaware as well as build up their match at “Best in the World 2013.” This release gives some insight into the lives of the Briscoes and their wrestling career, but ultimately it feels like it was rushed to be put on the market quickly.

The footage ROH shot of the Briscoes farm looks amazing. It’s hard to imagine the company produced a documentary that looked this good. The footage captured of the Briscoes on the farm tending to their chickens and driving around with their Uncle Jethro looks fantastic. The music and home photos used to compliment this feature set the perfect tone for viewers to see what life is like on their chicken farm.

Papa Briscoe appears and offers some insight on how the Briscoes got started in wrestling while watching WWE on Saturday mornings. Jay says he started to grow out of it a bit around the time he became a teenager, but he went to a WWE show and a wrestler bled on him and he was hooked for life. It’s a blast to listen to Papa Briscoe seemingly embellish the details of the crazy matches the Briscoes have had in the ring set up on their farm in Sandy Fork.

The documentary gets a little disjointed from this point forward after it got off to a promising start. Several matches are shown in their entirety, which breaks away from the documentary format. The Briscoes talk a little bit about most of the matches, but some of the matches featured on the main release get barely attention at all.

Mark talks about how he lost his front teeth in a wrestling match when Jay accidentally hit him with a steel chair. It’s a fun story to listen to, but with the way it was presented, there’s not a logical connection between the matches being shown and the portions of the documentary footage being shown.

The Briscoes haven’t revealed much a lot about their careers on a non-kayfabe level in any of their previous interviews that have been released and the trend continues here. The Briscoes do give some insight into their signature feud with Kevin Steen and El Generico in 2007.

Jay talks about how crazy the matches were between the two teams and how the things he did in those matches took a toll on his body. It’s interesting to hear Jay say they would still be doing the same things in the ring if wrestling that style of match hadn’t taken such a toll on their bodies. The insight stops there and it would have been interesting to hear Jay and Mark talk about the feud in more detail, especially given that most of the matches shown could have been released on other “best of” DVDs ROH has put out on the Briscoe.

Papa Briscoe is an engaging personality and listening him talk about joining the Briscoes in their feud against Claudio Castagnoli & Chris Hero & Shane Hagadorn is a blast. Papa Briscoe tells a hilarious story about training for the match and his wife helped show him how to get to the top rope to deliver the clothesline for the doomsday device.

It’s clear that wrestling is in the blood of the Briscoe family and there’s some fantastic footage of Jay’s son wrestling in the ring with Jay, Mark, and Papa Briscoe. There’s even footage of Jay’s son taking down Jay and Papa Briscoe with a double shoulder tackle, so it looks like we could see another Briscoe in the year ten to fifteen years down the line.

The end of the DVD feels flat as once again the viewer is taken out of the home life of the Briscoes and shown several different segments from the build to Jay defending the ROH World Title against Mark at “Best in the World 2013” last month.

The extras are really good and well-worth checking out, especially the segments with Mark talking in-depth about going to the dentist after getting his teeth knocked out and the segment where he talked about his favorite and least favorite trees on the Briscoe’s farm. There’s also a hilarious segment that was obviously set up in advance where Jay gets a call from Uncle Jethro to come mow his lawn.

Overall, this documentary suffered from trying to be two different things. On one hand there was the documentary footage, which was absolutely fantastic, as the viewer got a look at the Briscoe’s home life at their chicken farm. On the other hand, this release featured several complete matches that broke up the documentary and took the viewer away from what seemed to be the main narrative.

There’s value to be had here and the people at ROH that produced the documentary footage deserve a lot of credit for capturing the Briscoes in their element with slick production values and music that perfectly set the tone for what they were trying to do. I recommend picking up this DVD if you’re a fan of the Briscoes and want to see what their home life is like, but if you’re looking for a lot of insight into their careers, you won’t find that here.

You can purchase “Raised in Sandy Fork: The Life & Times of the Briscoes” at ROHWrestling.com

Please click HERE and click “like” to join the Radican’s Wrestling Community Facebook fan page.

Follow Sean on Twitter at Twitter.com/SeanRadican

Contact Sean at PWTorchSean@gmail.com

We suggest these recent related articles...

RADICAN'S Beyond Wrestling "Greatest Rivals Round Robin" review 9/26 - incredible show of the year contender, Busick-Edwards top-flight MOTYC, more!

RADICAN'S "The Pull List" (Vol. 5) "Young Bucks Too Sweet Journey" doc review, The Flash season 1 Blu-Ray, Top Ten MOTYC for 2015

RADICAN'S ROH "All-Star Extravaganza VII" PPV BLOG 9/18: Booking issues dampen excellent in-ring action