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The Young Bucks recently spoke with Chuck Carroll of CBS Miami about being one of the most sought after free agents in pro-wrestling. They discussed how they met Tony Khan,
Kenny Omega’s future, and how aggressive both ROH and WWE were in trying to sign them.
When they first met with Tony Khan, they were very reluctant to do business with him. They explain how they are very skeptical, due to hearing numerous times about people wanting to get in the wrestling business. After speaking more in-depth they realized how serious Tony was, and how much pressure he put on them to do this project with him.
Being Skeptical Of Tony Khan At First
Matt: I was first introduced to Tony probably around July, but it was more or less just kind of a friendly thing. Like, “Hey, I’m Tony. I’m a huge wrestling fan.” I was flattered and I learned who he was. And he really wasn’t kidding when he told me he was a wrestling fan, because he sent me a video of him wearing a Bullet Club shirt in the front row at one of the New Japan Long Beach shows. And actually, I think I went up and I might’ve “too sweeted” him or something.
And we got to talking, and it was all hypotheticals. What if we did this, and what if we did that? At first, it was almost like I was rolling my eyes a little bit like, oh, we’ve heard this a million times from people wanting to get in the wrestling business. We’re the biggest doubters and skeptics in the world, because everything changes on a weekly basis in wrestling. One day you’re promised you’re going to be the champion, and then you show up that day and then they’re like, oh, we changed it. Or your match gets cut from a pay-per-view.
Then it became more of us actually chatting about the possibilities. He basically told me, “I can only do this with you and Nick. I can only do this with you guys. I’m handpicking you two. I need to work with you because I see your vision, and it seems like it’s the same as mine. And I need you to do this project.” That put a lot of pressure on us. I was like maybe this might be a real thing. We had a lot of big offers on table, so we really didn’t know what we wanted to do and what was real or not. Being skeptics, we don’t know,
Matt and Nick explain that Kenny Omega has offers from every major company in the world, and they are hopeful they he will sign with All Elite Wrestling. They state that until they see a signature on paper, they don’t know what his next move is.
On Kenny Omega’s Future
Nick: Oh man, we hope. Right now it’s still up in the air. I’ll tell you this, just like Matt and I, he has offers from literally every major company in the world. So, he’s got something to think about.
Matt: I think it’s another one of those spaces where we’re not going to know until there’s a signature on a piece of paper. It’s just nuts right now. Obviously, we’re hopeful, but God, we want him.
It seems that The Young Bucks already made their mind on leaving Ring Of Honor before any aggressive offers could be put on the table. They didn’t know if they would end up in the WWE, or somewhere else, but they knew that their time with Ring Of Honor was over.
On How Aggressive ROH Was On Re-Signing Them
Nick: For a company of their size, I guess you could consider it aggressive. But Matt and I felt like we had peaked at that company money-wise. And, let’s be honest. If we would stay there, we would never be able to retire and help our families out. So, we were looking at this window we have, which is not long in pro wrestling. And we were like, “I think we need to make a change.
Matt: And I think that before it could really get really aggressive, we had already made the decision that we were leaving no matter what. We didn’t know where we would end up. We just knew that it was time to leave. I didn’t know if that meant going to WWE. I didn’t know if that meant going and just being competitors again or with this possible new project, that could happen hypothetically. There were just too many choices.
Also, we wanted to gauge our street value, because we had never really even looked before. We just didn’t know what we were worth. We knew in our hearts what we were worth, but until someone actually tells you this is the number that I think you are worth, you just don’t know.
Nick Jackson stated that the WWE made a very aggressive offer. Matt praised how respectful the WWE has to them, and how willing they were to do anything they wanted. If they had any concerns, they explained how they would fix it.
On How Aggressive WWE Was Trying To Sign Them
Nick: Yeah, we could say that their offer was very aggressive.
Matt: I’ll tell you this. For a moment, I thought that we would probably be going to WWE. That was the closest that it’s ever come to us going there, for sure. And they were great. They were respectful, and they told us what our value was. I think it was really like a wake-up call for us. It was almost like, wow. It’s good to be wanted. These guys, they’re teaching us we are valuable and we’re worth this much. It was definitely something we were considering, and it was hard to turn down, because it would have been life-changing.
But again, with WWE, they were pretty much willing to do anything. Any type of concern we had, they had something good to say about it and how they would fix it. I can’t stress enough how friendly and how great they were to us. And I have nothing but good things to say about them.
Read the full interview here