The Young Bucks On Their First Conversation With Tony Khan About AEW, Biggest Reason They Didn’t Sign With WWE

In a recent interview with talkSPORT, The Young Bucks discussed their first conversation with Tony Khan, the biggest reason they chose not to sign with WWE, and much more. Here are some of the highlights:

Nick Jackson on the Young Bucks’ first conversation with Tony Khan: “What’s funny is he tried contacting us both at first and I no sold it because I had heard this story before. I was like ‘ah, I don’t believe it’ [laughs]. Luckily, thank god, Matt picked up the phone and talked to him. After one conversation, Matt and I, we were still skeptical a little bit, but the way he had talked to Matt, Matt was like ‘I think he knows what he’s talking about’ and it opened out eyes. The relationship got further and I remember meeting him for the first time in London at York Hall for a Ring of Honor show. He was in the balcony and little did Ring of Honor know that we were going to meet him [laughs].”

Matt Jackson on the biggest reason the Young Bucks decided not to sign with WWE: “Even then, though, I was so protective of our brand because we had done so much at that point and we’d just done the All In show. So it was still scary to just hand over the keys to someone else and that was probably the biggest reason we didn’t go to WWE at the time because it was like ‘what are they going to do with this?’ We were almost over-protective of what we created. So yeah, meeting this new guy, Tony, was like this guy seems great, but again, we’re just meeting him for the first time and he’s saying all the right things, but there’s still a trepidation. Because we’d been doing this for so long and had struggled for so long and finally we’re finding this success, is now the time to finally hand it over to someone?

“But he didn’t want to do that, he wanted us to keep being ourselves because that’s what brought us to the dance. When we heard that, it was reassuring to us. He’s a wrestling fan and to this day, he probably loves wrestling more than anyone I’ve ever met. And he knows more about wrestling than anyone I’ve ever met. It didn’t happen overnight, it took a lot of conversation, speaking to him every day and meeting his dad – which we talk about in the book as well – and realising one, I think this is real and two, I think this is someone I’m comfortable working with on an everyday basis.”