AEW superstars The Young Bucks recently spoke to 411 Mania to talk all things pro-wrestling. Highlights can be found below.
How they think booking would have went without the pandemic:
Nick Jackson: Man, it is tough to say because a lot of that we have planned for the future is what we are currently doing. I mean, somethings did change. Obviously, the blood and guts steel cage match never happened. And we spent a lot of money building that structure. (LAUGHTER) But the good thing about it is that at least we now have it. So, we can pull the trigger on that at any time. I feel like we are saving that for fans. I think that is the biggest reason we haven’t done it. But that is the biggest thing that changed, not having that match. Because if you look at it, the buildup too it was so strong and our ratings were going up and it was looking we were going to above a million for that show, and we probably would have but we can’t control what is going on around the world so I think that was probably the biggest change, not doing that cage match.
Matt: I was just going to say too, at first we didn’t know what this was and nobody did. And we thought, let’s just put things on pause for a couple of weeks and then we will get back to where we were. And then there comes a point where this thing is not going away, so there is no sense in saving anything and now it is time to put the pedal to the metal and do what you had planned. We can’t wait this thing out, there are fans that are watching our show each week and they want to see great wrestling and we can’t not give it to them. At first, we thought we could stall it out a little bit and then a month or two months into it we all were in a room and we said, nope let’s just give them Dynamite!
What they have learned about themselves in this time in the ring:
Nick: I would say right off the bat for our young talent, it is actually helping them get better in the ring because the nerves aren’t there as much. If there is a sold out crowd of six to ten thousand people, these younger wrestlers get scared and nervous and naturally so, but in front of relatively no one it feels like training, it feels like they are back at wrestling school. They have been able to try different things. New things and get comfortable in the ring. So that has been the biggest positive in what is going on right now.
Matt: You got to remember without this pandemic, there may have never been a Stadium Stampede match, there may have never been that crazy tag team brawl match that we had with Butcher and The Blade. We really have had to think outside the box and one big thing that was said, if we are going to do this in front of nobody, let’s do things we have always wanted to do but wouldn’t have worked as well if there were people out there. Because if people were out there, you have to be in front of them as much as possible, you don’t want them to watch a screen for long right, so that is one thing Nick and I, right out of the gate, we always wanted to do this weird stuff. So, we went home and shot this match called BTE 200 almost like a pilot to show Tony to say, ‘Hey this is our vision of what we can do in a cinematic match.” I think once we did that and he saw that, and we pitched the Stadium Stampede match, that helped the cause, got the ball rolling, and convinced him for us to do it. You just have to think outside the box and do things differently and without fans. I think we have really stretched that as far as we can. (LAUGHTER) There are guys with really big ideas, all the EVPs, Tony and even the wrestlers. We all collaborate. I mean we really use the Daily’s Place as well as we can.