The Young Bucks Say Original WWE Invasion Was Supposed To Involve The Hardy Boyz
As previously noted, pro wrestling legend Chris Jericho recently welcomed back The Young Bucks to Talk Is Jericho. Among many other things, Matt and Nick Jackson talked about their "merch empire", being the first non-WWE pro wrestlers to be Funko Pop! figurines, trying to obtain the Bullet Club name and logo, and the WWE invasion as seen on their Being The Elite YouTube series.
According to Matt, The Young Bucks made more money from merchandise than wrestling last year.
"I literally run [the "merch empire"] from home with my wife. Like, pretty much, she does everything, so I have to give her credit. We run it out of our house. Like, literally, Dana, my wife, folds every single t-shirt, puts them in an envelope, and sends them. Old school. Like, literally hundreds. There are boxes all over my living room, boxes of inventory. Yeah." Matt added, "we've made more in Young Bucks merch than we ever did in wrestling just last year. Yeah, crazy. I'm not even talking about prowrestlingtees or Hot Topic."
Also during the podcast, Matt broke the news that The Young Bucks will be the first non-WWE wrestlers to get Funko Pop! figurines.
"The other thing that's exciting that I can announce here is that in July, we're getting our own Funko Pop!s. We're going to be the very first non-WWE wrestlers to ever have Funko Pop!s." Matt noted, "but in July we get a double-pack. That [Hot Topic exclusive] is in July. And then, in August, we get a variant that will be available everywhere."
Interestingly, The Young Bucks made a play to own the Bullet Club name and logo.
Matt said, "we tried to buy that [Bullet Club logo], dude. Bullet Club name, but they got it. It took a long time to get it. We could have had it."
Nick stated, "we were a month late. Matt and I almost owned the Bullet Club logo. They didn't realize how big it was."
Matt also mentioned that there was a ROH "Scrub Room", where pro wrestlers who did not party would hang out together and fantasy book the territory. As the story goes, The Young Bucks would hang out with Jimmy Jacobs, Sami Zayn, Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, and Daniel Bryan.
"So the guys who wouldn't really go out and party after the shows, we would call it 'The Scrub Room'." Matt remembered, "it was me, Nick, Jimmy, Sami Zayn was one of them, Seth Rollins, and [Kevin] Steen was there a lot with us. We were 'The Scrub Room', so we'd order the pizza and talk about the [pro wrestling] business for seven hours. Bryan Danielson would frequent when everyone would party. We would just order pizza and talk about pro wrestling."
On the subject of the WWE invasion, Nick revealed that it was originally supposed to take place at WrestleMania 33 with The Hardy Boyz and be cross-promoted by ROH and Impact Wrestling.
"We had that planned, man, for a long time. Maybe even longer [than six months]. Actually, we were originally going to do it with The Hardy Boyz. We were going to be outside of WrestleMania and we were going to do something with The Hardys." Nick explained, "they were going to transport to WrestleMania and we were going to be there and have a little altercation. That's right, we were going to take their titles. They were the TNA [tag] champs at the time."
Matt shared that the idea of the invasion actually came from AXS TV, the US broadcast partner of NJPW.
"New Japan works with a company called AXS TV where they have a weekly show." Matt continued, "and AXS TV contacted Nick and I, and [David] Lagana was one of the guys that hit us up, actually. I don't know. He's doing some cool stuff with NWA right now. They were about to do the New Japan Long Beach [California] show and they contacted us. And Monday Night RAW was going to be the week before out in L.A. So they were like, 'would you guys be interested in doing some kind of invasion on AXS TV?' and Nick and I were like, 'yes! Let's do it!' AXS was all about it. AXS talked to New Japan. New Japan said, 'no way.'"
Check out the podcast here. If you use any of the quotes from this article, please credit Talk Is Jericho with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Source: Talk Is Jericho