AEW Scrapped Young Bucks Idea Due to Similarity to WWE NXT Concept

The Young Bucks had a successful run as AEW Tag Team Champions, using their creative ideas to develop many storylines. However, they recently revealed that AEW had to cancel a major creative angle for them because NXT was using a similar concept.

While speaking to Social Suplex Podcast Network, The Young Bucks revealed that AEW scrapped their plans for a segment called “Elite Roulette” or “EVP Roulette.” The idea was to spin a wheel every week, and whoever the wheel landed on would have to come out and wrestle them right then and there, with the titles on the line.

The plan was to keep it unpredictable, with multiple tag teams backstage in gear, ready for action. The name would be picked at random, and the match would take place on the spot.

“Oh yeah, um, so originally I had a big plan. I wanted to do something called the, uh, right, the Elite Roulette or the EVP Roulette. I wanted to spin a wheel every week, and whoever it landed on randomly, they’d have to come out and wrestle us right then and there, and we’d have to do a title match. Oh, that was—that’s really fun, and I wanted to do it every week. I wanted it to be to the point where we would never know who it was going to be, because in the back, we’d have a live shot of, like, you know, 15 or 12 tag teams all ready to go in gear and waiting in the ring. Then, when the name got picked, they’d come out, and we’d do the match.”

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They also had a big plan to land on a specific team, with the idea that this team would beat them in just a few seconds, shocking everyone. The Bucks thought this would be a great way to drop the titles, but their plans changed when AEW’s Sanjay Dutt sent them a message. He pointed out that NXT had already done a similar “Spin the Wheel, Make a Deal” concept.

They were really excited about this concept but had to abandon it after realizing that it wasn’t going to happen. The Bucks admitted that it was disappointing, as they thought the idea would have been a great twist and would have worked perfectly to drop the titles in an unexpected way.

“Originally, I wanted it to finally land on—well, I don’t even know if I should give that away, because that’s probably something we could do in the future. I wanted it to land on a very specific team. I wanted it to land on a very specific team, and I wanted them to maul us in four seconds. Oh my God, and I thought it would have shocked everyone. That was my big plan, and we would have dropped the titles that way, originally. Right? Wow, and we were going to do this.

This was set and sewn, and then one day, I think it was Sanjay who sent us a text and said, ‘Hey, hey, about your idea,’ and he sent me a thing, and it was like, I guess NXT was doing a Spin the Wheel, Make a Deal thing. Right? Oh no, you gotta start it like that special or something. We were like, ‘Dang,’ I’m like, ‘Well, it was one of those situations where I was so excited for this idea to pay off, like to finally fight four or five random teams and finally drop the titles, and like I said, Ultimate Warrior/Honky Tonk Man style in like five seconds. And I had to just—I had to just give it up and go, ‘Okay, that idea is not probably going to happen.’ You know, wow. And it hurt. It hurt. The universe where that happened would have been awesome.”

That’s not all as The Young Bucks even revealed they were originally supposed to drop the AEW Tag Team Titles long before dropping it to Private Party. Nonetheless, it’s a shame The Bucks weren’t able to utilize their “Elite Roulette” concept but perhaps fans might get to see something similar on AEW television one day.

Do you think the “Elite Roulette” would have been a great addition to AEW’s programming? How do you feel about the cancellation due to NXT’s similar concept? Please share your thoughts and feedback in the comments section below.

Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.