Tunnel Talk is a Social Suplex Network Podcast focused on the kayfabe world of AEW. Join Allie, Anne, and Lea every week as they discuss who should fight, who should cry and who should kiss.
All quotes should be credited to Tunnel Talk Pod.
Interview produced by HC and edited by Amy Depazos.
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Allie TT: We are joined by our AEW EVP, Matthew Jackson, one-half of the Young Bucks.
We are in the week after Christmas and in the week approaching Wrestle Dynasty, which you are heading to Japan for.
Matt Jackson: We leave [on] the second, so it is less than a week to getting on the plane. All of our kids [are coming], Nick’s bringing all of his kids, he’s got three, I’ve got two. We are all sitting together so it is going to be a wild ten hour flight.
Allie TT: Are you feeling excited for that?
Matt Jackson: Yeah, I’m thrilled.
Anne TT: At least you are already on the West Coast because it is so long with little kids.
Lea TT: Have they ever done a flight that long [before]?
Matt Jackson: [They] have. It’s funny because my kids will not remember but they have already been to Japan quite a few times. My daughter, Kourtney, is thirteen now, I think this will be her fourth trip over, and then Zachary’s nine. We were so stupid, we took him when he was, like, a baby, six months to a year [old] and it ruined his sleep cycle for the rest of him being a baby. We went to Japan and it ruined it forever. He never slept good after that. So we’ve done it. Now, they’re older, they are pretty good travellers. We travel quite a bit with them, you give them their iPad and they are pretty much good to go.
Nick’s got a younger one now. He’s got a boy who is four and he’s wild. He is worried about that. We are all going to probably have to help out on that one.
Allie TT: That is an uncontrollable age for the plane because that is old enough to really be bored.
Matt Jackson: Yeah. He’s on his feet and he is running around and tumbling everywhere. He’s crazy. Everyday, Nick keeps telling me, ‘oh my God, what am I going to do?’
Allie: You are going to follow him around, I think. [Laughter]
The last time you guys wrestled in Japan was 2019. For New Japan fans who maybe have not followed you since you left, how would you describe the characters of Matt and Nick Jackson right now, as you return?
Matt Jackson: It is so different from the last time they’ve [the Japanese audience] seen us. For one, if you look at it physically, [back in New Japan] we wore the tassels and the colourful neon spandex and our attitudes were a lot different back then. I think a lot of the people who saw us back then are seeing us now and [thinking] ‘who are these dudes with moustaches in suits with pearl necklaces and all this weird stuff?’ A lot of people probably don’t even recognise us, like: ‘Who are these guys?’ We’ve gotten older, obviously. Father Time is catching up.
For fans who haven’t seen us in a while, we are now Executive Vice Presidents. We take it very seriously; we are not Matt and Nick anymore. We are Matthew and Nicholas Jackson. There is a little bit more of a serious tone; although, you know us, we like to have fun in the ring.
Who knows what it is going to be like being in the ring in Japan in 2025? Maybe a little bit of those old characters will come out in us. I don’t know if I can’t help myself from yelling out ‘Matto! Matto!’ When I get in the ring, maybe you will see a little bit of that stuff.
I was just talking to Masa (our biggest hardcore Japanese fan in the world) and he’s so excited. We are going to have a little reunion. I asked him: ‘It’s been so long, do people there even remember us?’ It’s been six years. Wrestling fans have really short term memories sometimes. He’s like ‘no, people are very excited for you guys.’ That made me feel better because it has been a long time.
We are eager and we are excited. A little bit of that is probably nostalgia. It is like you are revisiting a childhood home in a way. I still drive by my old house in Rancho Cucamonga, where we had the ring built, and I get this warm feeling. That is the same feeling I get now when I think about Japan. Just going back to Japan; I had so many great, warm memories there.
I am just really excited. I am excited to take the kids now they are a little bit older because they were really little. It was six years ago. [Kourtney] tells me ‘I have some memories, Dad’ but I am really excited to give them some lasting, core memories that they will be able to look back at forever, so when I get to talk about my days in Japan, they will actually have something [where they can say] ‘oh yeah, I was in that building and saw you guys do this.’
Tokyo Sea and Tokyo Disney, we are going to do all that. I am just excited to show them around and show them the culture. I have nerves right now, and it is not just about the wrestling, it is about everything. [From] just landing in Haneda and looking around, familiar smells and seeing all the things that I’ve missed. I dream about Japan.
It is something I am really excited for, Nick’s really excited about it, my kids are and Dana too.
Allie TT: It is so cool you get to go together.
Anne TT: Are you consciously thinking about your characters over there ahead of time? Are you thinking about who you guys are going to present yourselves as or is it something that happens more naturally in the moment?
Matt Jackson: God, I really should be preparing better.
[Nick Jackson joins the call].
Matt Jackson: What is funny is, when we are out of the loop, we are completely out of the loop. When we are in wrestling, we are completely obsessed and think about it all day. Since we’ve been on break, it’s like: ‘Oh my God, it’s already been two months? We better start thinking about what’s next and preparing for what’s next’ and now we are going to be wrestling in a week. We really need to start putting our heads together and getting prepared.
Nick Jackson: We do have a new set of gear. We just tried it out a couple of days ago. It looks pretty cool. It is a little different from what our normal look has been as the EVP characters. It is something we are excited to debut at the Tokyo Dome show.
Lea TT: On behalf of all your female fans, may we ask if the suit tops will still be part of it or are we finally losing that?
Allie TT: Are we keeping those vests? What is going on?
Nick Jackson: It is a little different. I don’t know, I might actually lose [the top], we’ll see.
Anne TT: And Matthew?
Lea TT: Can we get a firm commitment on the topic?
Matt Jackson: We are not doing vests this time, we have tops. Whether or not we decide to wrestle in them will be decided…
One thing I have been able to do is get myself into pretty decent shape during this break. I have taken [my] diet and working out really seriously. It is not for anyone but myself and my family. I’m thirty-nine now, turning forty in March, I better really start getting myself into gear. A lot of wrestlers do it cosmetically, I am doing it more for my health but it has carried the benefits of looking better. I’ve dropped a few pounds and I feel really good. I am probably the strongest I have been in years.
So maybe, if I’m feeling good, I will pull that top off. We will see what happens.
Lea TT: That is a reason for people to tune in. That is going to sell PPVs.
Nick Jackson: We will see how New Year’s goes.
I have an ‘In and Out’ hat on right now. Things might get bad in the next few days before that flight so we’ll see.
Anne TT: This year you’ve been doing the EVPs [gimmick], wearing your suits in the ring, do you have a favourite era when it comes to the Young Bucks look?
Matt Jackson: Oh boy.
Personally, it was really interesting wearing suits because we’ve never really done that, ever. I remember when AEW first started, I had one tailored suit and I wore it at every event. Dana’s like: ‘God, you’ve got to get another suit, this is getting ridiculous.’ It was fun doing that because it was so out of character for us. We dress casually, usually.
My favourite era is probably 2021, where I got to wear all my Hawaiian shirts. Nicholas was doing the rompers. We were doing it just to pop each other. I’m like ‘Nick, I dare you to do a nose ring this week’ and he’s like, ‘done.’ That was fun because we would walk around every week and the whole locker room was going ‘what are they wearing this week?’ Whenever you can entertain the boys and girls back there and they are having a laugh and we are laughing along with them; that’s when it is the best.
We got similar reactions on this most recent run because every week it was like: ‘What facial hair are they going to have this week?’
Allie TT: You went through quite a few phases.
Matt Jackson: For me, it is a battle between 2021 and 2024. As far as the most fun and entertaining, it was definitely those two eras for me.
Nick Jackson: I agree.
Anne TT: Nick, those rompers were incredible. Where were you buying them? I was so interested in where you were sourcing your rompers.
Nick Jackson: Believe it or not, I found it all on Amazon.
Matt Jackson: You aren’t giving enough credit to yourself. Don’t you remember? We used to go to the [local] malls on Wednesday mornings before the shows and we would find whatever local flavour there was. We would buy a lot of our outfits the day of the shows.
Nick Jackson: Well, the rompers were exclusively on Amazon. I would wear them with shoes I would find at the local malls like you are talking about.
Allie TT: Is that where the new pearl accessories are coming from as well? Are we finding them online? Are they from the mall?
Matt Jackson: The origin of the pearl necklace is funny.
Dana and I went to a Justin Timberlake concert earlier this year. He was wearing a pearl necklace and I said ‘God, that is so freaking ridiculous, that is such great heat.’ All the time, I am looking at it and I am kind of judging it. ‘That is awful, how can you wear that?’ And then, as a joke, [I said], ‘I should do that.’
So I started wearing them and after our segments/matches, I would wear the necklace around a couple of extra days. I’m like ‘Wait a minute! Hang on! Is this growing on me?’ I worked myself into a shoot a little bit. Dana brought me a really nice one and then I went to Hawaii and a custom jeweller had them out and I [asked] ‘can you add this to it?’ And she did. I wore that around all summer. Now, I actually like them. I buy real nice ones.
There are also a couple of real giant ones that you can find at the mall or on Amazon. They only really last one match and then they break.
Nick Jackson: Not even [the whole match]. Sometimes, it is during the entrance.
Matt Jackson: That is true.
Allie TT: How do you identify those aspects of your presentation, like ‘it would be fun to play these things up?’
Matt Jackson: If it gets an emotional reaction out of myself… if it makes me laugh or feel a certain way, then I go ‘OK, there is probably something to that.’ You can also feel – like putting that certain necklace on and walking around at TV all day and what kind of reaction does it get from everyone. If everybody is laughing, if they are reacting strongly, you know that it will read better in front of a live audience.
Nick and I do that a lot. We will test out a stupid moustache by just wearing it. If people are going crazy all day, then it’s like ‘OK, this is how I am going to present myself tonight on television. It’s a winner.’
Nick Jackson: Sometimes, to pop the boys, we would not even shave until our segment was about to air. We would be backstage with a full beard for the entire day and then we would switch it up five minutes before we were going live on television.
Lea TT: I always loved that BTE segment where you guys were painting your beards right before you went out.
Nick Jackson: That helps fill it out more too. I still do that.
Allie TT: Just like a hair-coloured spray?
Nick Jackson: Pretty much.
One week we would have a moustache and it is pretty much impossible to have something else so the paint/mascara would help cover that up a little bit more.
Anne TT: It is fun to have the built-in audience of the guys and girls in the back. Do you feel that too when you are building storylines? Are you bouncing ideas off people?
Nick Jackson: That is the same way. We usually talk about storylines out loud just to see if there is anyone around to give feedback. That is usually when the best stuff we create happens, with collaborating with all the boys. Most of our long term stories have been that exact way.
Lea TT: When you first start working with someone, can you tell if you have chemistry with someone or is that something you find out in the ring?
Matt: No. Sometimes, for me, it is just having a conversation with that person and laying out that night’s segment. If it is so easy to put together, then you immediately know there is something here. If it is really difficult to put together, if it is a struggle, if there are no ideas and it is quiet in the room… then it’s like ‘oh boy, maybe this isn’t going to work.’ You know what I mean?
We are lucky that we have so many people in AEW’s locker room that we have worked with for so many years elsewhere so we already know, it is like that built-in chemistry. Like ‘I can’t wait to work with so and so…’
Nick Jackson: We have had instant chemistry with a lot of the guys, though.
I remember wrestling FTR for the first time ever and we had a classic the first time we ever touched. That doesn’t happen with people often. The same could be said with the Lucha Bros. I remember wrestling them for the first time at PWG and we had instant chemistry. The Motor City Machine Guns are another team where the first time we wrestled them was an instant classic.
Matt Jackson: Private Party too. The first time we locked up I thought: ‘OK, we are going to kill it with these guys.’ Top Flight [too].
Nick Jackson: The Briscoe Brothers, we always had classics with them from the start.
A lot of those teams we had instant chemistry [with]. It makes it so much easier when performing.
Anne TT: Are there times when you don’t have chemistry with someone but you build it over time or do you end up getting bored working with them over and over?
Matt Jackson: It will happen. You have to figure it out sometimes. You will have one match and be thinking ‘well, it was the first time we touched, I am sure the next time we work with you guys, it will be better’ and nine times out of ten, it usually is.
Allie TT: So if you are starting a feud and coming up with ideas in a room together, where do you start?
Matt Jackson: For us, particularly, we like to figure out what is next.
I like to work backwards – ‘So the PPV match will be against… So how do we get there?’ Then let’s figure out six weeks of television to make that compelling and interesting. At the same time, you don’t want to overdo it and you don’t want to peak at some point in the middle because then it is like: ‘Where do we go from here? We’ve already brawled three times or whatever.’ We like to lay it out pretty far in advance.
Nick Jackson: It is interesting. For instance, the last run we’ve just had, we were supposed to drop those titles months and months before we actually dropped them but creative changed four to five different times in the last six months. At one point, we were going to lose the belts to a ‘certain’ team and then a month later, it had changed to another team.
I remember when Private Party came up to us and they mentioned they wanted to do a long-term program with us and we were like: ‘Sorry, Tony just gave us the layout of what we are doing and that is not in the cards.’ Something changed and we ended up wrestling them in a match in Seattle and we tore the house down. As soon as we got backstage, we knew. It was in Tony’s eyes. He was like, ‘I think we have something! I think we have something.’ Matt and I thought exactly the same thing; ‘we’ve got to pivot, we’ve got to change our plans again.’ That was the fourth time changing plans for those titles to be dropped.
We were happy, though, because we wanted to put those guys over. They deserved the spotlight. It has been five years now and they were ready for that big push. I am just glad Matt and I got to give them that last shove before we left.
Lea TT: Does pivoting like that have an impact on how you see your own personal character arc/gimmick? Does that get frustrating or is that just part and part?
Matt Jackson: It can be frustrating because sometimes you see things a certain way. You dream about it and you think about it for months and then all of a sudden, it is not happening at all. It can be frustrating but in wrestling, you have to be light on your feet and be ready to make those changes at the last second. So much happens in wrestling, things change every week; people get hurt or people miss travel. I think what really helped us get good at it was probably Covid because it was ‘so and so popped this week so you are not wrestling them now.’
Changing things, it does get frustrating when you have plans and you are so excited to execute them and then it’s like ‘nevermind. It is not happening and it will probably never happen.’
Nick Jackson: Would you say that the last two to three years is the most we have ever had to pivot storyline-wise?
Matt Jackson: Yeah.
Nick Jackson: It is incredible how many things have changed; not even on a monthly basis but on a weekly basis: our characters alone, the Elite as a stable, everything. It gets frustrating because in your head, you have something pictured out long-term but it never happens the way you feel like it should.
It is crazy but that is just live television.
Matt Jackson: You can’t get too attached to an idea in wrestling. When that idea changes, try not to be too disappointed. It is just the way that showbizness works.
Allie TT: Do you have any ideas or storylines that you didn’t get to do that you can tell us about?
Matt Jackson: Originally, I had a big plan to do something called the ‘Elite Roulette’ or the ‘EVP Roulette.’ I wanted to spin a wheel every week and whoever it landed on, randomly, they would have to come out and wrestle us right then and there in a title defense. I wanted to do it every week and I wanted it to be that we never knew who it was going to be. In the back, we would have a live shot of twelve tag teams in their gear, all ready to go and we are in the ring. That name gets picked, they come out, and we do the match.
I wanted it to finally land on… I probably shouldn’t give that away because that could be something we do in the future… but I wanted it to land on a very specific team and I wanted them to maul us in four seconds. I thought it would have shocked everyone. That was my big plan and we would have dropped the [Tag] Titles that way.
We were going to do this, it was set in stone, and then one day, Sonjay [Dutt] sent us a text that went ‘about your idea..’ and he sent me a thing. I guess NXT was doing a ‘spin the wheel, make a deal’ thing and they were going to start it that week. We were like, ‘Damn!’
It was one of those things where I was so excited for this idea to pay off; to fight four or five random teams and to drop the titles Ultimate Warrior/Honky Tonk Man style in five seconds and I had to just give it up. That idea, it was never going to happen. It hurt.
Anne TT: Have there ever been times when you have had to pivot but it ended up working out even better or at least worked out well?
Matt Jackson: Probably the most recent is the Private Party situation, right Nick?
Nick Jackson: Yeah.
Matt Jackson: I feel like the reaction they got was so strong [when they won the Tag Team Championships]. Everyone was saying that it felt like an old-school AEW pop, like when the Lucha Bros beat us in the cage [at All Out 2021]. There is something about when we are the bad guys and we are fighting a team that come from underneath and we are the Champions and then they beat us for the belts. We know how to get the people on the babyfaces’ side.
I think that is one thing I will pat ourselves on the shoulder about is that we are probably one of the best at that. I am glad it resonated with you guys because that same feeling resonated with us. We were all in the back so emotional.
It was fun because I think Zay had a dozen family members come in for that show and he told them ‘I wanted you guys to be there because this is it, me and Quen, we are splitting [up].’ He ribbed his whole family. When they beat us, they were shocked. They came to the back and they were all in tears. They were like: ‘Why would you do that to us, Zay?’ We thought that was hysterical. It made the night even better.
Allie TT: Have you ever suggested something that you thought was really great and everyone around you said ‘no, that is so stupid’?
Matt Jackson: Oh God, how many times?
Nick Jackson: Probably many times but I can’t think of one that comes to mind.
Matt Jackson: This one must have been three years ago. It was the Halloween episode. We had all done our due diligence and we had these great costumes for Squid Game. We had the whole match planned around me, Nick, Kenny…. Who else teamed with us that night? It was the night we ended up being the Ghostbusters.
Nick Jackson: That is when Hangman was the marshmallow guy, right?
Anne TT: That is my favourite AEW moment.
Allie TT: Iconic AEW image.
Lea TT: That was my first ever, in person, wrestling show. The first one I ever attended.
Nick Jackson: That was a fun night but it was frustrating. Like Matt said, we were supposed to actually be Squid Game.
Matt Jackson: We had all the costumes. We had worked so hard on it. We were so excited. We had a tug of war spot in the match, we were going to do all this crazy stuff. I am not kidding you when I say this, we were three or four hours from [first] bell and Tony [Khan] came into our room so frustrated. He is like: ‘You guys aren’t going to believe this but the Network does not want you to be the Squid Game guys. They are pissed about it. You have to do something that is part of the property of WBD.’
We panicked. We had to send runners to Spirit. [Laughter]
Anne TT: Do you now have a list of WBD properties to scroll through?
Matt Jackson: It was like [Ghostbusters] or Rick and Morty or a couple of others. Ghostbusters was the best option, obviously.
We scrambled it together and somehow we came up with that great plot in the match where Brandon [Cutler] got tied up and we took the mask off of his head…
Nick Jackson: Duct tape on his mouth.
Matt Jackson: It ended up working out even better, I would say. I am glad we ended up doing it the way that we did it.
That was one of those tough situations.This was going to be one of the first Halloweens where we don’t all dress up. It’s a disaster. I think we had promised everybody too that we were going to do a costume match.
That doesn’t exactly answer your question; there has definitely been times where we will spitball and say something we think is amazing and the whole room is looking at us like we’re freaks or we are crazy.
One idea I remember, at the very beginning [of AEW], we tried to get belts on Santana and Ortiz and it didn’t work out.
Nick Jackson: I just thought of one that Matt still keeps pushing on me: instead of wearing normal gear, we would go to the classic, bikini-like, underwear/trunks and shave our heads.
Lea TT: OK, you lost me there. I was really excited for a minute and then, ‘No!’
Nick Jackson: I think that everyone that hears that idea says the same thing like me, ‘Never going to happen. Awful.’
Allie TT: Take us through your thought process, Matt.
Matt Jackson: There is something about just stripping away – taking away absolutely everything that people have known about us – that I love. I even wanted to lean more in on the EVP stuff. I told Nick: ‘I don’t want to do a superkick ever again.’ He fought me on that and he won the fight. I was like, ‘when we come back, I never want to do one ever again’ and he’s like, ‘that’s our thing, why would we ever stop doing our thing?’
Nick Jackson: I was like: ‘Here is the problem with that Matt, you idiot. We have a shoe that is called ‘The Superkick’ coming out that we have to sell and Reebok will be super angry.’
Matt Jackson: I am just an extremist, though. I either want to go one way or the other completely. Like: ‘Now we are never Matt and Nick again, we are Matthew and Nicholas, we are never doing superkicks, we are shaving our heads’ and he is just like: ‘Shut up!’
Allie TT: What do you think that impulse is? Are you just a natural contrarian? Do you want to get away from people’s expectations?
Matt Jackson: Maybe. Maybe there is a little bit of that. I want to reinvent myself. I always want to try new things. I think I get bored quickly so I always think: ‘How can I shake things up?’
Dana would agree, I think, I am like that in real life. I always want to just rock the boat a bit. I don’t know what that is.
Allie TT: Is there a go-to when you have that feeling that you are bored?
Matt Jackson: Well, Nick just spoiled one of them right there.
I think the hair I probably would keep – that one is more of a joke – but I do go ‘maybe we should go to the trunks’ and then he is like ‘are you going to shave your legs and tan your legs?’
Nick Jackson: I am not tanning my legs every single week. I don’t know how those guys do it.
Matt Jackson: I like the idea of feeling uncomfortable and trying new things. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out but most of the time, in our career, the things we have bet most on have usually worked out. I like to take those big risks and try new things. If we fall flat on our faces… at this point, who cares?
Nick Jackson: I think part of it is [after] doing it for twenty plus years now, sometimes the normal gets boring and you just want to think outside the box.
Matt Jackson: You want to entertain yourself but, to Nick’s point, you go to a rock show and you want to hear the songs that you know. Whenever they play the new stuff, everyone is just like ‘Oh come on, the new stuff? This sucks!’ I get that, but as a performer – as a creative person – I always want to come up with something fresh.
Anne TT: When you are shifting who your character is, do you think you have to dial up certain things and dial back others? How do you keep the continuity but change it up?
Matt Jackson: Sure. Here is a good example: When we did the EVPs thing, we were like: ‘Let’s just have really boring matches. Let’s stop doing all the super athletic moves that get the big reactions.’
Nick Jackson: That was hard for me.
Matt Jackson: It is hard because one of the things in general is that most of our stuff is pretty exciting, it’s highspots. We did it.
Nick Jackson: I stopped doing dives for, maybe, eight months. I didn’t do a tumble out to the floor for about eight months and that was on purpose. We literally wanted people to think ‘Are these guys not athletic anymore? Are they just boring wrestlers now?’
Lea TT: There was definitely some people saying some wild things.
Nick Jackson: I see some of it. I stay off most of social media but one thing that really pissed me off was someone said ‘I thought the Young Bucks were washed’ and I was thinking: ‘Oh, come on! You guys fell for the gimmick that we were doing? We didn’t forget how to wrestle out of nowhere. Come on, don’t be dumb.’
Matt Jackson: You know what, though? It worked because if we had continued to just wrestle the same style then people would be like, ‘they are just doing the same stuff.’ Then, when you switch it up and you dial it down a lot… when you bring it back, there is a huge reaction. It’s like, ‘Woah! They can still go!’ And it’s like, yes, that was all on purpose!
Everything we do is on purpose. We put a lot of thought into every little thing. If you see us having a match where we are not leaving our feet much, we are just trying something new. Sometimes, it doesn’t always work out. I feel like, maybe, it hurt our matches a little bit and our matches, at some point in the year, were not as exciting as people normally think our matches are.
I remember Nick just going, ‘Matt, let’s just go freakin’ kill it like we always do. We know how to kill it, let’s just go kill it again.’ I said, ‘OK.’
Lea TT: I remember one of the first matches you guys really pulled it out again, one of our friends from the [Social Suplex] Network, Rich from One Nation Radio, was on Twitter just being like, ‘Apologise to the Young Bucks! Apologise to them! Apologise with your full throats.’ [Laughter].
Nick Jackson: That was funny.
Allie TT: It was fun to watch you guys do the EVP wrestling because it felt like you guys were doing a thing where you guys were really willing to be the butt of the joke… to be the buffoons in the match. Do you think you will leave that behind or try something new going forward?
Nick Jackson: Maybe a mixture of it all because it feels like we learn something new every time we do change it up… like a hybrid version of all of that mixed into one night be something unique and maybe challenging to do.
Matt Jackson: We might not even figure it out at first. It might take a little while to workshop it.
I was thinking that the EVP run [would be] a year long and it probably took four to five months to be able to really go ‘OK, I think I finally know what this is.’ When we are cutting the promos in the first couple of weeks, we are just trying to think what it is we want to say. I will write a promo out with ideas and I’m like, ‘Is this good? Does this make sense?’ At a certain point, it just clicks and you go, ‘OK, I am finally that guy.’
In wrestling, it is like you are learning in real time, live, every week, on television. It is tough. I am not doing this character anywhere else. I am practicing on TV.
Allie TT: And you don’t get to retcon it; you can’t go back and edit things out.
Matt Jackson: You’ve got one shot at this, better make it good.
Allie TT: Can we ask you two general questions at the end? We have called them ‘our questions for us.’ They are not about you.
One thing that your colleagues do, that we haven’t seen you do as much, is they come out so wet all the time. Their hair is so wet. Why is that?
Nick Jackson: That is a weird wrestler thing. I would say that when you look wet – when you are wet – that your muscles pop out more and that is the only reason I can think why a lot of people do that. I’ve never done it. I don’t like being slippery whilst running the ropes/walking on the ropes. Most wrestlers do that and I think that is the main reason.
I know a lot of them do baby oil all over their bodies and I can’t stand that because it is hard to control someone on anything when they are that slippery.
Anne TT: When you are trying to catch them and they are that slippery, do you botch the moves a lot more?
Nick Jackson: Oh yeah. Many times.
Matt Jackson: It is definitely a cosmetic thing, though, because, like Nick said, you are shinier, the lights hit you, and you have more definition.
[Wetting] the hair… it is a little more animated like when you get punched, the hair just whips back. I used to do it too for a second. I’ve done the baby oil. Now I do Hot Stuff.
Nick Jackson: I hate that stuff.
Matt Jackson: He hates it but it makes you more red and vascular.
Nick Jackson: Yeah but it burns!
Matt Jackson: The reason I used it is because it is actually an easier way to warm up… to prevent injuries. If you are in a cold building, you put that on and you immediately feel like you are kind of on fire. You are ready to go out there and wrestle. It works.
Allie TT: You guys were some of the first people that got us into wrestling in the way that we were following the storylines and understanding these characters. It was you and Best Friends, who are some of our favourites. Can you tell us something nice about the Best Friends?
Nick: Oh, they’re sweethearts. Are you talking about all three of them?
Tunnel Talk: Yes.
Nick: My God, we’ve been friends with all three of them for probably about fifteen years now.
What is funny is that I still have Orange Cassidy in my phone as ‘Fire Ant’ (his previous wrestling name back in his CHIKARA days) and I’ve never changed the name. I always tell him that and he gets a kick out of that and that’s pretty funny.
We hit it off with Trent as soon as he left WWE. The first time he saw us was at this random Canada [indie] show that Teddy Hart was putting on. He saw us at the merch stand and we were selling a tonne of shirts and 8x10s and he only had one 8×10, one photo. We gave him hell for it. We were like, ‘What are you doing Trent? This is not how you make money on the indies, you big WWF Superstar!’ He had one photo and we gave him hell for it and ever since that day, we hit it off with him. We’ve been very close with him ever since.
Matt Jackson: We’ve toured Japan a lot with that guy too.
Nick Jackson: That’s right.
Chuck Taylor, of course, we’ve been good buddies with him since the CHIKARA days as well. It’s funny, there is a lot of the CHIKARA guys backstage to this day. Bryce Remsberg is another one, we’ve always been friends with him too.
A lot of those guys, we specifically hired because of our CHIKARA days with them. I remember that Tony [Khan] wasn’t very high on Orange Cassidy at first so we had to kind of sell him on him for a little bit. And I remember Tony saying: ‘You guys were right.’
Matt Jackson: I have an old picture of us on our first New Japan tour in October 2013 and it is Nick, Trent and I standing in the rain at Tokyo Disneyland, wearing these Mickey ears these girls let us borrow just for the photo. At the time, Trent, for whatever reason, would only wear board shorts everywhere. It was freezing that day and he was standing there wearing board shorts. That day, I remember, we really hit it off [whilst] trying to find our way around Tokyo on the trains. We’ve been close ever since.
Nick Jackson: I love those guys.
Lea TT: This is the second Worlds End PPV you are not attending. Do you guys hate this one PPV? [Laughter]
Nick Jackson: It would look that way.
Matt Jackson: We’ve kind of made it a tradition now to try and take the holidays off and be home with the family.
Nick Jackson: It has been nice, I have to admit. The family, the kids [in particular], they love this time of year because they know Daddy’s home for at least four to six weeks.
Matt Jackson: We’ve spent so many years just missing so many things, especially the build up to the holidays with the decorating and the shopping, so it’s been fun to actually be so involved in that stuff again. Unfortunately, we’ve had to miss a few AEW shows because of it but it’s been great. We are at that point in our career too where it’s like, ‘they can have a couple of shows without us.’
But you guys will be able to watch us soon, we will be on New Japan [World] on January 5th at the Tokyo Dome. We are very excited about our opportunity to, possibly, get our hands on the [IWGP] Tag Team Titles again. It is going to be a big night for us, we’ve got our kids in attendance and our wives. They are going to be watching there and I am hoping to give our children a memory that they can actually remember because they were too little last time. We’re pumped.
It is going to be fun walking into that building again too. I never thought, in a million years, we would go back to Japan, and especially, wrestle at the Tokyo Dome so this is really cool. I am really excited.
NJPW Wrestle Dynasty is live from the Tokyo Dome on January 5th, only on NJPW World and Triller PPV.
