Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson discussed how close they were to signing with AEW last year while doing a podcast with Ryan Satin.
Here are the highlights:
Anderson on when they first started talking with the Young Bucks:
“I remember, it was January of 2019. We were going out to California for a house show, and we messaged the Young Bucks because we heard rumblings of stuff they were doing. And we hadn’t really — we stayed close with them the entire time, but we hadn’t really heard exactly what they were going to do. And they were just landing back from Japan on the day that we were in Ontario, California for this house show. And as they landed, they said, ‘Dude, let’s meet at the Ontario mall.’ And we said, ‘All right,’ so we drove to the Ontario Mall before the house show. And we sat there with them for an hour and a half…we had a pretty, you know, you could call it rough 2018 where they traded us to Smackdown and we weren’t on television much. We had some good times, but there were some miserable moments in our professional wrestling career that really f**ked with us. And we were like, ‘It’s time to get out of here.’
“And when we sat with the Bucks, and we talked to them about what they were going to start. We left that day and went to the house show. And I mean, how f**king excited were we? This is early, this is 10 months before Dynamite debut. So they hadn’t even announced [Dynamite]…So they were telling us what we were gonna do. And it’s not that we didn’t believe them, we were just thinking, like, ‘Fuck, is this really gonna happen? Is it not going to happen?” Then as the year went on, as 2019 went on, we realized we really wanted to leave. And then we started hearing more, AEW started coming more into fruition. We met with Kenny Omega in Winnipeg, we talked with him.”
Gallows on not being sure about AEW at the time:
“Not that we don’t trust our friends, we had all the faith in the world in them. But you’re dealing with big corporations and business and millions if not a billion dollars and all this stuff. So [the question is], is this really going to happen? Is this really a viable option? If this doesn’t happen, yes, we’re television, American TV famous now. How much is New Japan going to pay? Is it comparable to these awesome paydays we’ve been getting? And now, you’re stacking up this downside guarantee … And when Triple H is telling you, ‘I want this to set you up for the rest of your life,’ and you’re going, ‘F**k man, we’re gonna make a few million dollars over a few years here.’ It’s a hard thing to dance around.”
H/T to 411 Mania
