Matt Jackson: “Wrestling Has The Most Toxic Fanbase In The World”

In a new interview with Mellisa Joan Hart of What Women Binge, former AEW Tag Team Champion Matt Jackson and his wife Dana discussed fans of pro wrestling.

Though they have had plenty of positive experiences with fans, Matt pointed to some recent negative ones with the toxic side of the fanbase. It was revealed that Nick actually had a bag stolen from him lately.

"The other week, my brother's bag disappeared," Matt explained. "Entire bag, gone. He's still — he'll never get it back, like, the whole bag is gone and the number is erased so we think someone's onto us now at the airports. Like, I think we did a little too much bragging online about, 'Look, we have all these great expensive shoes'. I think they found us."

Matt continued on, explaining that the hardcore fans that aren't fond of them are sometimes "the worst".

"Wrestling has the most toxic fanbase in the world. They're the worst. Honestly, like, there's a lot of good fans. The ones that love you, love you. But the ones that hate you, they hate you."

Shifting the focus to AEW specifically, Matt recalled the early development of the promotion. The duo points to the 'All In' event in Chicago as the major selling point that sold Tony Khan on the concept of creating a new wrestling company.

"We just cultivated this, this movement. Like, this giant wave and it got enough momentum and energy, and to get this billionaire's attention? You know, it's this billionaire named Tony Khan. I think it all kind of worked out too because we ran this show called 'All In' in an arena in Chicago. It was called the Sears Center at the time and we sold it out in 30 minutes.

"It was over 10,000 seats and nobody had done that in years. So when we did that, I was already talking to this Tony Khan guy. When we did that, that might have solidified to him like, 'Yeah, we really should do something with this, like, there's a market for this.' So we did this show and it was super successful, and a couple of months later, we pretty much solidified the deal with Tony to start All Elite Wrestling.

"And we announced All Elite Wrestling on our show, on Being The Elite. It was New Year's Eve, what, 2019? We said and we announced, 'Hey, this new thing's coming.' And people were excited, they just wanted change. They wanted an alternative. They wanted something. And we were, in many ways, we were the disrupter because we were these guys who had never been to WWE.

"And there was no reason why we should be as popular as we were, and we were selling, you know, these 10,000 seats and stuff like that. So people are like, 'What is this?' It got the attention of a lot of people."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit What Women Binge with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.