Kenny Omega and Don Callis shocked the wrestling world on Wednesday night, announcing that the newly-crowned AEW World Champion would be appearing on Impact Wrestling next Tuesday. The idea of All Elite Wrestling crossing over with another major US promotion like Impact left fans salivating for dream matches, but there were also plenty of questions about just how far this crossover would go given the work AEW has already done with the NWA and New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
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In a new interview with Jon Alba and Doug McDonald on the Living The Gimmick Podcast on Thursday, Matt and Nick Jackson of The Young Bucks shed some light on the situation. Matt started off by revealing this was something they had wanted to do for years.
“Two years ago, this is something Nick and I actually brought up and we wanted to get this going,” Matt said. “And for whatever reason, it just didn’t work out. I don’t know if that was more on our side or what, but we just couldn’t get everyone to agree on what the creative would be. But when Nick and I were stopping at all the indy shows and popping up at shows, going to AAA and Mexico, that was one of the suggestions we had was what if we show up in Impact? This is something we’ve been whispering in Tony Khan’s ear for two years. So we’re all about collaboration and partnering with everyone and working together. This is what we’ve always done. Even back when we were with Ring of Honor and we got the Hardys to come in when they were apart of Impact, that was also apart of our plan. So this is something that we truly wanted to do for a very, very long time. And I guess the timing was right and we got done.”
“It’s still so early, I don’t think we, all of us, collectively know what this means,” he continued. I think we’re just dipping our toes in right now and we’re going to see what we can get out of it. But there are immediate plans that I can’t exactly just give away right now. But my dream, if I had it my way, I just think about the possible dream matches. People are already hitting me up like, ‘Oh my god, can you imagine if it was the Young Bucks and the Motor City Machine Guns 10 years later?’ How can you not jump ahead and fantasize and fantasy book?”
He then mentioned possible matches with The North and their fellow former Bullet Club partners, The Good Brothers.
“Are we going to do that stuff? I’m not sure yet, we’re still in the beginning of this. But there are some big surprises coming and I’m really excited about it,” Matt said.
Nick then went into detail about the benefits of collaborating with other promotions.
“First off, it just makes wrestling interesting,” he said. “And that’s something wrestling hasn’t had in many, many years is getting people interested in the product. This is a way to make things interesting, and if you do it right it can be very good for business. We’ve done it, like Matt said earlier, it worked well when we’ve done it in the past. Our program with the Hardys… that did massive business for Ring of Honor. It was the best business, at that point, in the company’s history. It worked there, so it can work [here].”
He then pointed out that there isn’t any real animosity between wrestlers working for different companies.
“I just think it [the crossover] makes things unpredictable when you’re working with companies. That’s what wrestling needs. It gets stuck in the same formula for so long it gets boring. It’s too easy to predict at times and you don’t want that to happen. So when you can make it different and change things up a bit, make it unpredictable, the fans like it more. It’s almost an easy formula when you explain it that way.”
The Bucks’ full interview will air on next week’s episode of the Living The Gimmick Podcast, but you can listen to it now via the show’s Patreon page here.
