On August 2, AEW announced that The Elite (Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, & Hangman Page) had re-signed with the promotion.
While full terms of the deal were not disclosed, the contracts are a multi-year deal and, reportedly, in the case of The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson) the highest deals ever for a tag team.
Speaking to Swerve Strickland on Swerve City, the Young Bucks discussed re-signing with AEW.
"When we signed it, we were like, this is an NBA-level contract. That's pretty crazy," said Nick, before they both confirmed that they weren't making Jaylen Brown money. Brown recently signed a five-year, $304 million deal with the Boston Celtics.
Nick continued, "Scott Hall, he tweeted me, this was when I would answer fans about criticism. I was immature and said something like, 'Screw you, I make six figures.' Scott Hall goes, 'Bro, think about making seven figures.' I go, 'No chance in hell this is possible.' That was only a few year ago. Things have changed so quick."
Matt added, "I can see the economy in wrestling getting healthier. With AEW, that's what happened. All of a sudden, everybody is making big money. Everybody in wrestling. I could see in the next ten years, maybe not as high as those players. TV rights money is getting bigger and bigger."
The duo also confirmed that Hangman, Omega, and the Bucks negotiated together and wanted to stay together.
Nick: WWE being hot helps us. Wrestling in general is hot right now.
Matt: The threat of guys from our company going there, it helps the wrestlers.
Nick: I want to see stuff like that. It's interesting. It's real life. Who knows who will jump ship.
Matt: We honestly didn't know. We talked about signing these contracts. A lot of fans, I'm sure are thinking, 'How unsurprising, the Elite re-signed.' We didn't even know if we were going to re-sign. We had no idea. We knew, not just the two of us, Hangman and Kenny, the four of us, we negotiated together, as a team. I don't know if that's ever really been done.
Nick: We were going to stick together. All four of we agreed, we're sticking together.
Matt: The votes did not line up every time. We said majority wins on this. There was a lot of emotions in the last year, as the world knows. One day, this person is voting to leave, this person is voting to go. We were even on the same page the whole time.
Nick: Matt and I [laughs]. There was many times where Matt said, 'I've had enough. I'm ready to retire.' I had to talk him out of that. I had to talk him out retiring.
Matt: I had been toying with that for a long time. He even told me, 'let's do one more big one.'
Nick: It's fun to fantasize about retirement, so I get it. He's almost in his 40s. It's a long-term deal, the fans will see us for a long time.
As part of their deals, Omega and the Bucks retained their status as Executive Vice Presidents.
Fightful Select has more details regarding the contracts of the four men.
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