What Makes The Young Bucks' DEFY Appearance A Smart Move

Pro Wrestling Torch Senior Columnist Bruce Mitchell had his Bruce Mitchell Audio Show over the weekend (VIP subscription required) and gave some thoughts on The Young Bucks‘ invasion of DEFY Wrestling Friday night. Mitchell states his case why it’s a very smart move on Matt & Nick Jackson’s part to go against the mainstream wrestling company grain by showing up to independent promotions, what it can do for All Elite Wrestling as a brand and its growing fan base. Quotes are below (transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo at WrestleZone):

“The Young Bucks showed up and got a huge reaction. They didn’t wrestle, but they were just there to support the promotion and that’s something that has been, you know having wrestlers from a mainstream promotion show up at an indy show and they showed up on their own dime. They flew themselves, they didn’t get paid by Defy and if you’re doing something grass roots the way they’ve been doing it as far as Facebook and as far as going to indy shows and working indy shows and doing face-to-face things, I just thought that was so smart and particularly the Bucks.”

“The Bucks – they’re accessible. You can go to a show and spend some money and get in line and they’ll take a picture with you and they will talk to you like a human being and they’ll give you a little time. But that’s how they do that and so I just thought – that’s kind of against the idea of the top stars in wrestling or in anything. They [top stars] keep a distance – this was ‘there’s this surprise’ and then I would imagine, if you’re a wrestling company trying to find out where the talent is, you have this huge boom in today’s technology of being able to watch any promotion or any wrestler that you’re interested in on tape, but going out to a show and meeting the people that are there and meeting the wrestlers. You’d want to go to the more established independent promotions that at least lasted for a while, but even ones that just have some name and get an idea with your own eyes of what’s going on and make those connections and also just create goodwill among those people one crowd at a time while you’ve got some time off I thought was a really interesting thing to do.

“Maybe it’s a one-off, but I just thought ‘that’s marketing.’ You know, that one person can tell six people, can tell six other people and that kind of thing. So they do a little bit of that and also kind of keep their hand in on the wrestling community, keep a finger on the pulse of it, that’s a good thing to do because you do learn stuff from that that you don’t learn from that watching it on your computer or watching it on television. I just thought, it’s such an obvious thing to do, but no one’s ever done it, I’ve never thought about it and what a good idea. It’s a small thing, but small things add up. Can you imagine if WWE with their schedule, that’s the last thing those guys are gonna want to do and I understand that the big stars there and they’re not looking to do something like that. So if they’re not, you contrast your new company by doing things that make sense in a new way and not just in the old way.”

Bruce also talks about the Jimmy Uso & Mandy Rose angle on SmackDown along with potential dark horse candidates for The Royal Rumble. You can subscribe to the PWTorch by going here.