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In a recent interview with Fightful, The Young Bucks spoke about their contract negotiations and how they received several offers from WWE prior to AEW.
Matt Jackson started by touching on how WWE weren’t aware of the formation of All Elite Wrestling prior to the announcement of the promotion starting.
“It was funny because WWE didn’t even know that this project was happening, but they were willing to throw everything at us, so I’d only imagine if they knew what was happening what they probably would have offered on top of that. That blows my mind even thinking about that. I don’t know, I don’t have an answer. I think that maybe they felt like they didn’t need us all. Maybe they felt like they would have been fine without us. Nick and I knew though. Being the Elite at the tail end was pretty much like ROH television, and it was the driving force to what brought people to the show. I’m not over exaggerating when I say that if a wrestling fan at an ROH show had a shirt on, there was an 80/90% chance it was a Bullet Club or a Being the Elite related shirt. We knew that that was our audience. Maybe they just didn’t realize how deep it had gotten and how much of that audience was strictly ours and therefore us. I don’t know, maybe they just didn’t have the awareness. That’s a good question that you’re probably going to have to ask them,”
Matt continued by saying how WWE opened their eyes to their actual value following lower offers from ROH.
“I don’t want to disrespect ROH too because it wasn’t like it was a bad offer. By no means was it a small amount of money. It just wasn’t enough for us because at this point we valued ourselves. We knew our value and it was very high and it just wasn’t close to what we thought. Maybe they thought their offer was good enough, but in our eyes, it wasn’t even close. When the validation came, basically for us to know we were right and our value was right, was our first offer Triple H made us. That’s when we looked at each other and said “holy crap,” how long have we been worth this much? It’s was almost like we weren’t insulated, we were just like wow,”
Nick Jackson stated how they feel that they didn’t have much time left in NJPW or ROH after both companies offered them contracts.
“At the end of the day, we knew that our thing had run its course at Ring of Honor and New Japan. Looking back now, I think it was perfect timing for all of us to split ways because I think we had peaked with what we would have done there, so it felt like just a natural way to leave at that point,”
Despite now being EVP’s of All Elite Wrestling, Matt Jackson had nothing bad to say about their experience with Triple H during their contractual talks.
“He was great. Charming dude. He said all the right things. I don’t know how many times I told him no. We must have declined the offer, in the end, I don’t want to exaggerate, it had to have been at least four or five times, and by the end of every conversation he would have another call scheduled with me in two weeks and I would go “how did he do that?” What, I just told him no. We’d be laughing by the end of the conversation. The conversation would start with me saying we’re so sorry, we’re going to pass on this, thank you so much, and an hour later I’m talking about our next phone call in two weeks. He’s a magician and no wonder he has the job he has because he’s a charming guy and he’ll charm your socks off. I have nothing but positive things to say about him. He’s very intelligent too. The things he said, the ideas he had. At times I told Nick, “man, maybe this is something we should at least consider.” There was a time when me, Nick, and Kenny, the three of us were all like “holy shit, I think we’re going to end up in WWE,”
Nick finished by speaking about how “It was a very tough decision,” when they received offers from WWE.
Check out the full interview below.
Thanks to Fightful for the transcription.