The Young Bucks on Kevin Owens, Keeping It Indie and Vince McMahon’s Money
The “King of the Indies” title has been bestowed on many wrestlers over the years. CM Punk, Daniel Bryan and Kevin Owens have all laid claim to the distinction before making the leap to WWE. Right now, the honor probably belongs to two men – brothers Matt and Nick Jackson – better known to smart fans everywhere as the Young Bucks.
Working as a tag team, the Bucks have been wrestling together for over a decade, and they’ve been just about everywhere – except for the WWE. They spent several years in TNA (where you might remember them as Generation Me), Ring of Honor and have wrestled all over the country for various independent promotions. In 2013, they joined New Japan Pro Wrestling, where they became a major part of the Bullet Club, the hottest faction in the biz. With their brash antics – and familiar hand gestures – the Bullet Club has drawn comparisons to the nWo, and it has infiltrated every aspect of wrestling short of the WWE (though even Vince McMahon has taken notice, as evidenced by a recent trademark filing and a Finn Bálor T-Shirt).
If you go to any wrestling show in the world, chances are you’ll see someone wearing a Bullet Club shirt, and the group plays up the comparisons with older stables whenever possible, using the “Too Sweet” hand sign that Scott Hall and Kevin Nash made famous, and shouting “Suck it!” to their critics. In short, Matt and Nick Jackson have built a mini-empire…but what’s next? Recently, I had a chance to ask the Young Bucks that question (and plenty others) at the legendary “ECW Arena” in Philadelphia before the first night of War of the Worlds, a series of four shows that featured the top wrestlers from Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling.
We’re here in the ECW Arena. Does it still feel weird that you’re representing New Japan in a show like this?
Matt: It’s funny, I’m like, “Nick, what are we? Are we ROH? Are we New Japan?” But I guess we are New Japan because we hold the IWGP Junior titles, so we’re representing them. It is interesting that there’s all these Japanese guys, and then there’s two gaijin, as they call us out there, we’re representing the company. It’s cool to think about.
Nick: This and Madison Square Garden are probably the two biggest wrestling buildings here in the U.S. It’s where we’ve had some of the coolest moments in our history. I remember at one point, about seven years ago, we were going from L.A. to Philly every weekend. In Los Angeles, fans hated us. This place has never hated us, which is weird.
Getting over with Philly crowds is an accomplishment. What’s it like to get that kind of reception from that kind of wrestling fan?
Matt: It’s very flattering, cause you couldn’t really get that from any other job. If I’m bagging groceries I’m never going to get a reaction like, “Dude, that’s so awesome, I’m going to chant your name now.” It’s really a unique thing.
Nick: And again, I think that’s something that really caught on here. Even when we weren’t on the cards here, people would be chanting our names. People would tweet us saying, “Hey, fans are chanting Young Bucks.” We were like, “What, why? We were 4000 miles away.” It’s pretty cool, and pretty flattering. It gives you that extra motivation. I don’t like performing if the crowd’s dead.
Do you remember when those reactions started? I remember seeing you guys back in 2012, shortly after your TNA run, and while you got a nice pop, it’s nothing like it is now.
Nick: It was probably a year after we quit TNA. At that point, Matt and I, we pretty much just said, “Screw it, let’s do as much as we can – let’s do what we think is cool.” We pretty much brought what we watched during our childhood into our act now, and somehow it worked. I think from that point on, that’s when it caught on.
Matt: We were at a point, I want to call it “wrestling rock-bottom.” I was ready to quit. We had been in one of the biggest companies and they didn’t know what to do with us. It was really disheartening. Finally we decided that if we were going to do this, we were going to do it right. Your character is supposed to be like yourself, only with the volume turned up. So we just decided to be ourselves. Not these two guys named Max and Jeremy, that’s what they called us then. That wasn’t us. That was just two dudes out there. So we decided to just be ourselves. You know, there are so many rules in wrestling. We just said, “Let’s break them all, let’s break through the mold, let’s do something different. Everybody does the same thing, because they’re scared of getting heat. Let’s just have fun. If we get heat, we’re going to get heat. Let’s go out in a burning blaze.”
For the past year, you guys have always been mentioned at or near the top of the “King of the Indies” discussion. How much pride do you get from that, or do you consider it a backhanded compliment?
Matt: It’s huge. That’s what we do, we’re independent wrestlers. If anyone is ever going to rank us at the top of, well, anything, it makes us feel proud. We’re the kings of being independent. We represent that. We don’t need a contract, we’re on our own thing. You can make money without Vince [McMahon]. You can make money without going there and selling your soul. You can be yourself. You can make a good living.
Nick: I think that’s the most rewarding thing about it: we don’t have to be on Monday Night Raw for people to know us. We don’t need a machine to push us, like the majority of guys. We take pride in the indies, because obviously this is where we work, so for anyone to say that we are the kings of it, that’s cool. That means we’re the kings of what we’re doing right now.