The Young Bucks On If They Pay Attention To The AEW – NXT Ratings War

On a recent episode of The Chris Van Vliet Show, The Young Bucks were on to discuss the AEW – NXT ratings war. Chris Van Vliet also asked Matt and Nick Jackson about the challenges of being EVPs. Nick talked about the grind of the weekly process and the lessons they have learned so far.

“I never would have thought that we’d be doing this on a weekly basis, so I have to pinch myself every Wednesday before we go on live,” Nick admitted. “So that aspect is still there. It still feels like a dream. The hard part is the job and keeping everyone happy because you don’t even really realize it until you get into management that’s it’s hard to keep a lot of these wrestlers on the same page.

“Because obviously there’s a lot of egos in wrestling and you want the wrestlers to be happy and that’s something that’s hard but it’s manageable and we’ve learned that you can’t always be the good guy so at some points you have to be the bad guy.”

The Young Bucks recently admitted that they don’t watch NXT. However, on The Chris Van Vliet Show, Matt noted that you have to pay attention to everything when it comes to the Wednesday Night War.

“Our fans, I’ve learned, are very loyal to us and no matter what is on we still have a good base, and they’re always going to watch at this point now that we’re a little over a year in,” Matt said. “But yeah, we definitely pay attention to everything. You have to pay attention to everything because everything is competition.”

Matt also discussed the balance between storylines and in-ring wrestling. Matt noted that there are sacrifices that have to be made when it comes to trying to come up with interesting television and segments that will get a rating.

“It’s constantly trying to come up with compelling, interesting television that also will get a rating. And sometimes those two don’t go together,” Matt admitted. “Sometimes you have to make a sacrifice a week or two and do something that maybe people won’t be compelled by or gravitate to immediately but maybe in four to six weeks they’ll go ‘oh!’ and then they’ll get it and it will then create a bigger rating.

“But that’s difficult, especially in wrestling. So that’s been a challenge having interesting storylines that normal people are interested in watching because sometimes we’ll maybe overcomplicate something or try to make it a little too complex and sometimes wrestling fans just kind of want to watch wrestling.”