10 AEW Wrestlers You Won’t Believe WWE Passed On

8. The Young Bucks

The Young Bucks are among the most acclaimed talents to never once sign WWE contracts. They had the drive and work ethic to become multi-millionaires without Vince McMahon’s chequebook through merchandising and stellar performances whenever and wherever they would compete.

But the Bucks careers and the wrestling landscape would be a whole lot different had WWE hired them when they tried out for the company in 2008 and 2011. They had tryouts in front of numerous WWE agents, but didn’t impress them enough to offer the team contracts. They weren’t interested in signing independent standouts at the time like they are today, with WWE’s developmental system being radically different than it was in 2008 and 2011.

There was also the issue of them generating a lot of heat for famously not shaking hands with the rest of the locker room before their tryout, as well as a confrontation with Booker T for Nick Jackson leaning on Booker’s jacket in the locker room.

They’ve since made amends with Booker, with Nick telling him on his Heated Conversations podcast about the incident and the tryouts:

“I’ll say it right now, being back there at that stage in our career, it’s like walking on eggshells. You don’t know who to say ‘hi’ to. You don’t know if you’re disrespecting anyone, so we were just trying to be out of the way and with us trying to be out of the way, we ended up not being out of the way because I was the one who was accidentally leaning on your jacket, but I had no clue that I was. And when you came up to me, I was so intimidated and scared to death! I was like, ‘Oh no! What did I do?'”