Mikey Rukus On How He Joined AEW, Nyle Rose’s Theme Being His Audition

AEW music producer Mikey Rukus recently discussed how he got involved with AEW and revealed that Nyla Rose’s theme was his audition track. Rukus spoke with Fightful’s Grapsody team and talked about how he first began speaking with Brandi Rhodes and QT Marshall and did Rose’s track as an audition piece before he signed on full-time. You can check out some highlights below:

On how he got involved in AEW: “We had gotten into deep discussions. I had a couple of conversations with Brandi (Rhodes) and I had a conversation with QT (Marshall). At the time, that’s who my direct contacts were with. At the time, I had somebody hit me up and say, ‘Contact this person, they will get you to where you need to go.’ It was almost like a cryptic ‘find a treasure map.’ You’re walking down the street and some old dude slips you the map. He gave me Matt Sell’s cell number. I text Matt and said, ‘this is what I’m looking for.’ Matt hit up QT, and QT hit up me and was like, ‘What are you looking for in compensation?’ ‘We can talk about that.’ That’s when the initial call came from Brandi. Our correspondence after that was mainly, ‘How many can you do? Can you do three or four by this date?’ Then it turned into ten and then 15.”

On starting off with Nyla Rose’s theme: “Originally, Nyla Rose’s track was my audition track. Before we got into that conversation, they said, ‘let’s try this one first and see how it goes.’ I made Nyla’s track in the first 24 hours. I wanted to show them that, not only could I handle the assignment, I could handle it quickly and consistently.”

On joining the company full-time: “I dropped that, sent it over, and it was a couple of days before I heard anything. Then they were like, ‘how much would you charge for this? What are your rates? Send over a rate sheet.’ I sent over a rate sheet that broke down literally everything I could do, all the way down to voice-overs, scoring, interludes, clips, and things like that. I said, ‘If you guys want, I’ll work here forever.’ I just floated it out there.

“I got a call a week later from Chris Harrington and he was like, ‘we want to bring you onto the team.’ It was 11 at night, I was on my front lawn, it was nice and warm outside. Complete silence. When I saw the phone ring, I was like, ‘I have to take this.’ ‘I stepped outside.’ ‘Is this a good time or bad time?’ ‘It’s a good time.’ ‘I want to know what life is like for you right now. We want to bring you onto the team.’ At that point, I walked back in, looked at my wife, and was like, ‘this is it.’ It didn’t initially sink in, wouldn’t tell a soul, but when I went into work the next day…this is probably mid-April of 2019. Double or Nothing was going to hit at the end of May. Mid-April is the time we decided this was all going to happen. I signed my official contract on May 1, 2019. By then, I already had a list. ‘Give me a list of what you need and we’ll start and knock them down one at a time.'”