The Young Bucks have accomplished pretty much everything a tag team can outside of WWE. They aren’t in any rush to sign with the biggest pro wrestling company in the world, either, as they’re making a whole bunch of money and winning over a whole bunch of fans through their work in Ring of Honor and New Japan, as well as sporadic independent dates all over the planet.
But while they opted to sign with ROH over WWE last year, you can be certain that Matt and Nick Jackson are very much on WWE’s radar. This was especially apparent during WrestleMania weekend, when the Bucks took on Matt and Jeff Hardy in a ladder match for the ROH tag titles just 24 hours before the Hardys made their spectacular surprise return at WrestleMania 33.
Because they had such a high-profile match, and because WWE had so much riding on the Hardys being well enough to actually make their return in a SECOND ladder match in Orlando, WWE sent a message to the Young Bucks before the match … and the message came from Vince McMahon himself. During an appearance on Edge and Christian’s podcast, Matt Jackson spilled the beans on when he had the beans spilled to him. (Transcript via Still Real To Us.)
“[Matt Hardy] comes up to the ring and he’s like, ‘Vince McMahon called me this morning and said, ‘Hey I know these Young Buck kids are good, but could you please tell them to take care of you guys?’
“We actually felt a lot of responsibility there too. We knew what they were doing the next night. We were two of the few guys in the world that actually knew about it. Nobody else in Ring Of Honor that night knew about it except us. So we were like, ‘We can’t hurt these guys.’ What would that look like on us? That was definitely weighing on our hearts. We were like, ‘We gotta take care of these guys. They’ve got a big night tomorrow.’”
Yes, the Young Bucks knew about the Hardys’ WWE return well before the Hardys’ own WrestleMania opponents did. There are few spaces left in the Bucks’ caps for more feathers, but they should probably make room for another after unlocking the achievement of “Vince McMahon asked us to do him a solid.”
