The Young Bucks Praise Chris Jericho Giving Back to the Other Wrestlers in AEW, How Their Matches Usually Get Their Time Cut

– Sports Illustrated recently interviewed AEW stars The Young Bucks who celebrated the 200th episode of their web show, Being the Elite, this week. Matt and Nick Jackson discussed Chris Jericho’s work in AEW and more. Below are some highlights from The Young Bucks interview.

Matt Jackson on Hangman Page’s alcoholic storyline: “One day Hangman walked up to me, Matt and Brandon Cutler, who helps film Being the Elite, and he said, ‘I think I want to become an alcoholic.’ And I said, ‘What?’ We heard his idea, which was incredible, and we said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Look at him now compared to where he was a year ago. He’s a superstar.”

Nick Jackson on Chris Jericho in AEW: “I always call [Jericho] our Hulk Hogan. He’s done it all, and there is something about that. Even though he has been in the business for 30 years or so, he still wants to give back and get characters over. You never see that.”

Matt Jackson on Jericho being an unselfish worker: “Most wrestlers want to be over, and they don’t care about anybody else. The prevailing attitude in this business is often, ‘I want you to do good, just not as good as me.’ Jericho wants everyone to be elevated. We made the right call. Look at how he made Darby Allin. Those matches with Jungle Boy and Scorpio Sky were really important, too. And Jericho watches all our matches, too. People don’t realize he’s the guy that pulls us aside and says, ‘This was great, but you could do this better.’ We don’t have enough of those guys in the business.”

Nick Jackson on cutting time for their matches on TV: “Just as wrestlers, it’s an entirely different beast. For us, the Young Bucks, I want to say 90% of our matches have been cut, sometimes by 50%. There was a tag title match right before the Christmas break with SCU and we were given 15 [minutes], but something went long and we had just over 10. So we went on the fly and did our best to tell the story we wanted to tell.”

Matt Jackson on how their matches never stay true to format: “Our match times never stay true to the format. Nick mentioned the Dynamite match against SCU, and if you’re watching, we want you to think that’s the way it was supposed to happen. The [number one contender’s battle royal on the Feb. 18 edition of Dynamite] ended with me and Proud and Powerful, and the original plan was for me to be in the ring with them for three or four minutes. We had 90 seconds. So that’s a big part of live television.”