William Regal Wanted AEW Originals To Sign For WWE In 2011

William Regal was pushing for WWE to sign AEW Executive Vice Presidents The Young Bucks as far back as 2011.

Speaking on the first edition of The Gentleman Villain podcast, the current AEW figure and all-round wrestling legend would note how there was once a moment in time when the former AEW World Tag Team Champions were being considered for a place on the WWE roster following on from their departures from Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling in 2011.

As Regal would recall, despite the fact the duo had already signed with Ring of Honor at the time, The Bucks were thrown into a tryout match against The Usos which more than lived up to the hype:

"My first day was after SummerSlam, and the first people on the tryout, the group of extra talent that came that get brought to every show, and part of that was the Young Bucks. I liked them straight away and we had a great few days together, I talked to them a lot. They had some incredible matches in the afternoon. In fact, I put them on with The Usos to have a tag match. The two teams tore the place down. That’s probably something that the fans would love to see. I saw it in the afternoon, and I was raving about them.”

Following on from this epic dream match of sorts, however, Regal felt that his chances of signing Matt and Nick Jackson were slim at best, mostly due to the pair's ages at the time; 26 and 22 years old, respectively.

As Regal would continue:

“I’d been told a few things - the guidelines were ‘We don’t like to hire anybody under 20 something.' It was something to do with rental cars. We’ve talked a little bit and I heard different people tell me, they’d already made their minds up, they were going to Ring of Honor, they didn’t really care about this gig. I liked them, but I thought just looking at them that they were, like, 18 and 19. So after spending the two or three days with them - they went on their way and it wasn’t till after, and this was a while after, that I found out that they were older than what they were.”

Regal's recounting of the story very much lines up with The Buck's version of the events as the Jacksons confessed to Title Match Wrestling that they indeed had no plans to sign for WWE despite attending the tryout and taking part in said Uso match that utterly elated the Brit.

With The Bucks also confessing that had WWE given them a big enough offer they may have changed their minds, it's interesting to note that Regal "would’ve tried really hard to try to get them right on that weekend" had he known the pair's actual ages, citing "the fire they had" and the fact that he "knew somehow they’d do well for themselves” as the reasons for him wanting to bring them aboard.

What would the wrestling world look like today had he succeeded, eh?