Matt & Nick Jackson are this week’s guests on the AEW Unrestricted podcast with Tony Schiavone and Aubrey Edwards. During the conversation, the brothers told the story of how they came to be known as “The Young Bucks.”
Early in their careers, Matt and Nick got booked on a show at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. The venue has hosted several wrestling and boxing events in the past including ECW’s Heatwave 2000 PPV.
“There was a local show that was running the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles,” Nick Jackson said.
“Famous building for boxing and wrestling,” Matt Jackson chimed in.
“The promoter contacted us and he had saw us wrestle at a local lucha libre show and he was interested in booking us,” Nick Jackson said.
Matt Jackson said at the time the brothers weren’t even wrestling as a tag-team yet.
“So, they were like, ‘we’re going to team you up” and we were like ‘what?’ Nick continued.
“The arena was famous and we had to do it because this was going to be our first big break.”
The brothers then joked that at the time, they were being paid in hot dogs and lucha masks.
“So eventually we get to the building and we look at the names on the list of who is booked and we’re not seeing our names,” Nick continued. “So we went up to the promoter and we were like ‘hey, our names aren’t on the list’ and he’s like ‘no, they are, we have you named as the Young Bucks.'”
Matt Jackson then recalled how the promoters explained the name to them.
“If I have to be honest, I didn’t know your names so when we were going over the card we were like ‘hey, didn’t we book those two young bucks? Yeah yeah, throw them on there and will call them Matt & Nick the Young Bucks,'” Matt said. “They just remembered our first names.”
