Ring of Honor stars The Young Bucks recently spoke with Scott Fishman of The Miami Herald and below are some interview highlights:
On their recent decision to re-sign with ROH:
“We were feeling burnt out, and our bodies were hurting,” Matt said. “We were missing that valuable time at home. We are fathers with young babies. About a year ago, we really started thinking that maybe it’s time to slow it down and take a little bit of a break. Ring of Honor has this great thing with New Japan — this relationship. They got together and wanted to help us. They saw how banged up we were. ROH offered us this great deal and New Japan backed it. We looked at each other and thought now was the time.
“They offered us a good amount of money,” Matt continues. “Basically, the same amount of money we would make on the independents anyway — and we would have a lot more time with our family. So it was just win-win for us. It wasn’t really a hard decision once the offer came. We are signed for 14 months and now 13 months are left on the thing. Once we signed, I think we felt pretty good. Now that we are living the new schedule it feels really good to be home more. My body feels a lot better.”
On resonating with the audience:
“I think it was when we got screwed by TNA, and they didn’t know how to use us properly,” he said. “Then the WWE thing happened with Booker T. Then we went to ROH and that didn’t go good with [Jim] Cornette. So I think the fans had a lot of sympathy for us. They felt like we didn’t deserve the treatment we were getting. From all of that, I think they had sympathy for us and liked what we were doing at the time. They felt we were getting screwed. I think they supported us from that, and it snowballed.”
On wrestlers using similar maneuvers and in-ring styles:
“I like it,” Matt agrees. “It’s all fun. I turned on Raw for a minute — and I haven’t watched it in a long time — but this week I decided to watch a little bit of it. I’m sitting there with my wife, who isn’t necessarily the most wrestling educated person in the world, and she is going, ‘Oh my God, these guys look like you,’ and ‘These guys are doing moves like you, Matt. Are they copying you?’ I don’t think they are copying what we do. Maybe that’s just the wrestling trend right now. Whatever is popular is popular for a reason. We all kind of do it.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
