The Young Bucks Reveal How NJPW And ROH Could Have Prevented AEW
AEW is just days away from its first official event, Double or Nothing. But Double of Nothing, or AEW for that matter, would have never even existed if The Young Bucks had simply been treated better at their previous companies.
The Bucks revealed that and more in an interview with Bleacher Report where they also talked about just how quickly AEW materialized.
"Matt and I didn't even want to announce the start of the company until closer to May," confesses Nick Jackson. "We even thought of the idea of announcing the company at Double or Nothing, and Tony [Khan] was completely against it. He wanted to announce it as soon as possible. Well, we can't say no to him. As soon as we announced it in January, we were like, 'We gotta start working and start getting shows ready, gotta find buildings, build a ring.' Right away, we felt the pressure of getting everything going."
In just a matter of months The Young Bucks, the Khans, Cody Rhodes and others were putting together an actual wrestling promotion. But to start one promotion means that you need to leave another and The Bucks were initially hesitant to depart ROH and New Japan which they had been with since 2009 and 2013, respectively.
However, those promotions never seemed to realize the value or potential of The Bucks and they didn't go the extra mile to retain The Bucks' services.
"You know what's sad? New Japan and ROH could have easily come together and offered us the contracts they wanted, but they just didn't do it," Nick laments. "New Japan never saw the value in Matt and I. They never paid us good. We would have had to work with New Japan for another two decades to even get close to retiring, and the style they demand is backbreaking. Ring of Honor paid us a lot better than New Japan. We could have probably retired there, but we would have to work probably another decade with them.
"We pitched it to both of them: Why don't you guys get us a dual contract? And they just didn't get it done. We would have easily stayed, and there would have never been an All Elite Wrestling if they would have met what we wanted, but it didn't get done."