Could New Japan Pro Wrestling and Ring of Honor have stopped All Elite Wrestling from happening?
AEW is officially set to take course, starting with Double or Nothing, and one of the key match-ups on the show is Matt and Nick Jackson taking on Pentagon Jr. & Fenix for the AAA World Tag Team titles. However, before All Elite Wrestling came to fruition, The Young Bucks were mainstays in NJPW and ROH; The Bucks dominated the tag team scene with multiple reigns as ROH and IWGP Heavyweight & Junior Tag Team champions.
The Bucks were arguably one of the top stars in both promotions; however, it sounds as if New Japan and ROH didn’t go all out to keep 'The Elite' members, as the duo revealed during their interview with
Bleacher Report that if both promotions had accepted their proposal of having dual-contracts, then AEW would've never happened. Nick stated in the interview:
“You know what’s sad? New Japan and ROH could have easily come together and offered us the contracts they wanted, but they just didn’t do it”
Nick believes that NJPW didn’t value him and his brother. He claimed that if they offered the Bucks the money they felt they deserved, then they would have stayed with the Japanese promotion for life:
“New Japan never saw the value in Matt and I. They never paid us good. We would have had to work with New Japan for another two decades to even get close to retiring, and the style they demand is backbreaking. Ring of Honor paid us a lot better than New Japan. We could have probably retired there, but we would have to work probably another decade with them. We pitched it to both of them: Why don’t you guys get us a dual contract? And they just didn’t get it done. We would have easily stayed, and there would have never been an All Elite Wrestling if they would have met what we wanted, but it didn’t get done.”
Feel free to check out the
full interview where The Bucks discuss how talks with Tony Khan eventually turned into All Elite Wrestling.