The Young Bucks Talk WWE Fans Feeling Neglected, Winning Matches As AEW EVPs
Two of All Elite Wrestling's Executive Vice Presidents, The Young Bucks, recently sat down for an interview with Bleacher Report. During the discussion, The Bucks opened up about how the booking portion of the shows is handled when they are also active competitors, similar to Cody Rhodes and Kenny Omega.
"There's a fine line, but when it's all said and done, Tony is the last call to order," Nick Jackson said. "He has final say on everything. There have been two times now where Matt and I have actually said 'OK, we want to lose tonight' and it gets to Tony and he goes, 'Nope, you guys are winning.' We tried to dispute and we've failed both times. Of course, fans aren't going to see that and will probably think I'm even lying by saying it, but it's the truth."
"I never even wanted to tell people I was an EVP and it just kind of got out," Matt added. "There are other EVPs who love that. They want to talk about it. That's fine, but Nick and I have always been the type of people who say, 'No, I'm always a wrestler first and I want people to think of me as a wrestler.' We always just want to be one of the boys. It's tricky territory. They are going to say, 'Well, they're booking it. Of course, they're gonna go over.' Then there's the argument they are the popular act everyone wants to see so, of course, they should win.
"I don't think we should overthink it. A big reason we did this was to shine a spotlight on talent that isn't as well-known, and Nick and I are very unselfish in that way. We really want to get other people over. We don't have to win every match. We've been losing most of our career, people don't realize," Matt continued. "We probably don't have a winning record if you looked at it. It's not that important to us, but we should keep ourselves to a point where we don't look overly weak. It's very, very tricky, and you know what? We are never going to be able to keep everybody happy."
Matt and Nick are well aware that their toughest competition, WWE, has endless hours of content available for their fans to access on television. Matt believes that the "WWE Universe" has felt neglected as of late because WWE isn't providing finishing moments in those matches that keep people satisfied. AEW is trying to create an original product that's easy to distinguish and pleasing to those fans who have been turned off by WWE's content.
"The [WWE fans] like they're so neglected," Matt says. "The things that they want, they just don't get. What we learned early on when we did our first show, All In, was we built this entire show and gave the fans the finishes they wanted, and they came out of that show feeling so good. Some of the things they expected, but we learned that it's OK sometimes if they expect something and they want something, you just give it to them. It's what a really good television show is. You build to this climax and you're thinking in the back of your head, 'Man, when they get to the season finale, they have to do it this way,' and then just imagine actually doing that. Aesthetically, we have to look, we have to smell, we have to sound different. If you're flipping through the channels on Wednesday night, you have to know within one second from looking at one frame of our show, 'Oh, that's AEW.'"
Matt wants to continue producing episodes of "Being The Elite" and "Road To" on All Elite's YouTube channel, however, he imagines it as a mature version of their weekly TV show.
"We're going to keep those things separate, and I kind of like that," Matt explained. "I think BTE should live on YouTube. It can be the TV-MA version of our show. You can watch SCU do a PG-13 rant on the Turner program, and you can watch Frankie (Kazarian) drop 12 f-bombs on Being The Elite. As for the Road To program, I would love it if we kept a lot of that stuff and put it on the television show because that's a great way to develop characters and tell their stories. I think our television show will look like a lot of the stuff on Road To."