The Young Bucks Reflect on AEW Full Gear Legacy & 2025 [Exclusive]

This weekend, AEW is heading to Newark, New Jersey — a city that’s become synonymous with Full Gear — for the penultimate pay-per-view on their schedule. The card is stacked, with tag team wrestling taking the forefront for a second consecutive PPV. Matthew and Nicholas Jackson of the Young Bucks are competing in their fifth Full Gear match, teaming with Josh Alexander against Jurassic Express and Kenny Omega.

VICE had the chance to sit down with the Jackson brothers ahead of their trios match to discuss their Full Gear legacy, tag team wrestling taking the forefront in AEW, and more.

When the Jacksons signed on to help build AEW, in their world, tag team wrestling would be mainstream. Not a lot of places really value the art of it, so their mission was to show it can sell tickets and main event shows. That was the case for many years, but somewhere along the way, it started to take a back seat. That reflected on screen, but in the last year, it’s been in a really big rebuilding period. All of AEW has, really. Now, this year’s Full Gear has four tag team matches on the card plus the trios match.

“It’s been rewarding, especially when a lot of the fans say, ‘Man, the last pay-per-view, the best match of the night was a tag team match.’ That doesn’t happen often on major scale pay-per-views,” Matt says. “So, if we could do that at least a couple times a year, it puts a spotlight on the division.”

“I’m biased, but I think tag team wrestling is the most entertaining, the most action-packed,” Nick adds. “It’s just cool to see the division in AEW spotlighted again, especially this weekend with Brodido vs. FTR in a big title match that I know Matt and I are going to be watching backstage and excited to watch, because that’s four very talented wrestlers. We’re in a trios match, but you could still consider it a tag-style match, so that’ll be good too. It’d be fun to maybe set our eyes back on the trios title division, maybe. But yeah, like you said, it’s cool to see.”

“Yeah, you’ve got to give credit to FTR. They’ve been consistently awesome. You talk about all-time greats, and they’re at the top of the list,” Matt says. “So if we’re not highlighted on a certain show in a big title match, then you can bet that they’ll probably be in there. They’ve really, really helped out and have been at the top for five years now here at AEW. I’ve talked about it before, but JetSpeed, how good they are. Just so good. So talented. Brodido, I think those two teams really were the shot in the arm that the tag division needed. Because we see these new two new teams show up and it’s like, ‘Whoa, this is fresh. This feels good.’ And, you know, between the three teams that I’ve been talking about, I hope that we’ve helped too in the last seven months or whatever.

I feel like we’ve all brought it to the next level. Every week now it’s like, ‘God, how are we going to top that one?’ Somehow we all manage to do it but that’s good. It’s a good thing when you’re trying to top yourself when it’s this friendly competitive thing that you have with your colleagues because it only makes you want to be better. I hope Brodido and FTR have the greatest tag team match. They’ll steal the show or our six man will.” [laughs].

Not only that, the women are finally getting their own set of AEW Tag Team Championships. It’s been a long time coming, and it’s something they both agree it’s time for.

“Like you’ve said, that was the goal when we started this thing. We want tag team wrestling to be at the forefront of the company and to main event shows. Now both women and men get to showcase that. It’s the best part of wrestling. I think it’s psychologically the best way that you can lay out a match. Tag wrestling is superior to singles. I’m sorry!”

Some of the most notable Young Bucks career highlights have taken place at this very pay-per-view. Their first lock up with FTR, being part of Hangman’s first title win, and the iconic “Carry On Wayward Son” entrance at AEW Full Gear 2022.

“It’s funny you mentioned the ‘Carry On’ thing, I literally just watched that 20 minutes ago,” Matt says. “Someone tagged us in it and I dropped everything and watched it. I like try to take myself back to that day because it was a really emotional day. I remember it was our big return and I had my wife with me backstage. So much craziness was going on at the time so I remember when that certain part in the song hits and the fire goes off and you see us all revealed — I got chills thinking about it right now. That night specifically is very memorable for me. When I think of Full Gear, I think of that day.”

“Honestly, yeah, I think about that 2020 Full Gear match with FTR, because that was the first time we ever won the tag team titles,” Nick recalls. “I remember it was social distance at the time. I think we might have had a few hundred [fans, due to Covid restrictions], maybe a thousand, at most. When we won, there was a real big audible pop from whoever was there. I was like, ‘Oh, that was so nice to hear a pop.’”

“We’ve been a part of all of them except for last year, I think, like you said. So yeah, being able to do it every year besides last year and have a big match on the show involving us and Kenny — I’ve said this before in interviews, I don’t take it lightly because I don’t know how many more times you’re going to see Kenny and the Young Bucks in a ring together,” says Matt. “Especially on a pay-per-view, right? So for me, it’s special, and I don’t take that for granted.”

I then asked whether or not the Kansas tune could make a return down the road if (let’s be honest, when), The Elite reunite again. And is it more or less expensive than “Final Countdown”?

“It’s a lot, I think it’s definitely cheaper than ‘Final Countdown’ but it’s pretty expensive [laughs]. If all the scenarios were right and the timing was right and the budget was there I would definitely be number one in line to see that entrance again,” Matt admits. “That was probably, as far as a performer, maybe my favorite entrance we’ve done.”

Nick explained that it was a “full circle” moment given their personal connection to it with their family and their days running their own backyard promotion.

“We grew up listening to that band because our father was such a fan so when we told him we were going to use it, he was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. This is crazy!’ This is full circle because we used a lot of that type of music while we were doing backyard wrestling. It was crazy to be able to do it in the big times.”

As the conversation winds down, I ask them to reflect on the year they’ve had. What are they most proud of achieving in 2025?

“Oh, man, that’s tough. To me, I think this has been one of our maybe top three best years. I think best year in ring,” Nick reflects. “We’ve had a lot of matches that I’m super proud of and it seems to happen every week now where we’re trying to top what we did the week prior. That kind of puts a pressure on us, but it’s been fun. It feels like when we were trying to make it back in the day. ‘Let’s go balls to the wall, do every move we know in the book, let’s just try to get noticed.’

It feels like we’re kind of back to that level and [there’s] kind of [a] grassroots feel to it. But if we’re going to talk about a certain match, I would say [the one] that I’m most proud of from this year would be Will Ospreay and Swerve [Strickland] at All In. I think that was probably our best match of the year that we’ve had.

But, man, there’s so many Dynamite matches that have been so fun to do and watch back on. It’s hard to compare, it’s like apples to oranges with a lot of those matches. The pay-per-view matches we’ve had, the one with Jurassic Express, that’s up there. The Forbidden Door ladder match, too.”

“I think for me it’s been fun since coming back in April and [seeing] what our characters have gone through,” says Matt. “Just the entire story arc as these powerful terrible EVPs who push their weight around and have to eat crow week by week. Now to the point we’re like, ‘Maybe we are at rock bottom. We’re so broke and nobody in production respects us; we have no friends.’ It’s really fun to see because if you even go back to last year you see us in our EVP gimmick in our suits and we talked different, we looked different, we were 20 pounds heavier. It’s just interesting if you go back and compare the two now and you go, ‘Wow, they really have changed.’

I like that, I like the fact that we’ve taken you on this journey where we’ve changed so drastically whether it’s physically or our characters were way up here and now we’re way down here. I don’t know if anybody’s done it this way coming from being someone who’s running the show to now someone who can’t even get their own entrance so I think it’s been really fun for us to explore this.

When we came back in April I was like, ‘Maybe we need to come back as babyfaces. We’ve done all we can do as heels.’ I pictured the lights being restored and then maybe we had Moxley in a BTE trigger and we BTE trigger him and turn babyface. I’m like, ‘I don’t know if we can squeeze any more out of this heel thing…’ here we are seven months later we got a whole other half a year run as bad guys. And who knows how much longer, right?

So, it’s been cool to to be able to take this story to the next level the way we have. I’m really proud of what we’ve gotten to do week by week with it. I think we wanted to explore something different and try something different because we’re always trying different things. That’s what keeps us in the center of the conversation.”

The conversation shifted to their matches over the last year and the brief period they were, as Nick calls it, “washed.” While it was intentional on their part to appear that way, some fans grew frustrated with it.

“We admitted it was one of those moments where, ‘God, we’re 20 years in and we’re still learning? This isn’t working the way that we thought it would because people have an expectation of us,’ Matt says. “I think 20 years of people going, ‘I’m used to seeing the Young Bucks have the greatest matches. Why aren’t they having the greatest matches?’ You can still be a heel and have great matches.”

“Well, we were still having great matches it was just the style was completely different,” Nick butts in. “If you put that match on a different tag team they go, ‘That was their best tag match I’ve ever seen.’ I feel like our standard is so high that people put us on a pedestal.

I think it’s hard for us because we, like I said earlier, we always have gone balls to the wall and we’ve tried to have match of the night every night for 20 years so when you change that style for six months people go, ‘Wait a minute, they’re washed. We’ve kind of screwed ourselves because when we do become washed it’s going to be a —”

“Let’s hope that never happens,” Matt interjects.

“At some point every wrestler does and hopefully we know to step away at that point,” Nick continues. “I think we’ve kind of screwed ourselves. That’s a testament to how high we feel of ourselves standard wise. We want to be the best and if we lose that I feel like that’s when you quit wrestling.” [laughs].

Matt elaborates, admitting that, in hindsight, he understands why it just didn’t connect.

“We’re at our best when we’re having the crazy balls to the wall matches i think so when you compare the two you’re like okay, these couple of matches in the first half of ’24, it’s not even fair to say that because we had the freakin’ Sting and Darby match. That was one of those nights we’re like, ‘No, no. Screw the thing we talked about. Let’s just go crazy,’ but on week-to-week Dynamites we were trying to be a little bit more slow paced on purpose and it just didn’t connect.

I can see why fans are like, ‘This is so much better,’ because we are at our best when we’re moving fast with a purpose. We’re doing tandem offense, and you see the wild dramatic false finishes. That’s just what we’re good at so we just have to keep doing that.”

I joke that it’s great for the fans but maybe not so much for them as they begin to wind down their careers. They both laugh but agree that their physical health has been imperative in 2025.

“That’s why we’ve really had to step up our fitness in 2025 because I’m 40 now. What are you, 36? So we really have to start taking care of each other,” Matt notes.

“You’re right. That was another reason why we kind of tried to do a slower pace was we were worried about how our bodies will be in 10, 20 years,” says Nick. “So, I guess we’re stupid because we go, ‘You know what? It’s not working. Let’s just go crazy again!”

Catch AEW Full Gear this weekend live on pay-per-view. Fans in the United States can watch on traditional PPV, Prime Video, and HBO Max. International fans can watch via YouTube and TrillerTV.

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