AEW’s The Young Bucks: We Helped Make Sneakers In Wrestling Trendy
The Jacksons always bring the heat
In their mission to be one of AEW’s biggest heel acts, The young Bucks Matt and Nick Jackson realised they could easily get under people’s skin by wrestling in expensive rare sneakers.
The pair have wrestled in some of the most coveted shoes in recent years, from the Nike Air Jordan Diors, the Travis Scott Air Jordans, and countless Nike SB Dunks, and as told to Complex on Sneaker Shopping, 'wearing heat' has been instrumental in 'garnering heat':
“We were turning heel. I told Nick,” Matt Jackson said. “‘What is the one thing we can do that can p*** off so many people?’ I’ve been obsessed with the [Dior Jordan 1s] since they came out. I said, ‘What if we buy those and wrestle in them?’ I knew it’d be a big thing, but I didn’t know it’d be as big of a deal as it was. We stumbled on something really unique. From that point on, any pair of shoes we wore to the ring, we built a costume around them.”
Whilst not the first, The Bucks are arguably the most high-profile sneakerheads flexing their collection during matches, and have claimed they made wrestling in expensive sneakers ‘trendy’;
“I feel like we actually made it a trend,” Nick Jackson added. “If you look on Instagram or Twitter or any social media, you’ll see wrestlers in sneakers, and that wasn’t a thing three or four years ago.” Matt Jackson then added, “Shane McMahon may have been the first to do it, but I don’t think all the wrestlers were copying it. So maybe Shane is the OG but we helped make it trendy.”
Shane McMahon prominently wrestles in Nike Air Jordans (usually Jordan 1s), whilst John Cena notably wore Reebok Pumps during his ‘Doctor of Thuganomics’ days.
The Bucks aside though, the only wrestlers to have consistently worn rare air are Enzo Amore, who wrestled in the Nike SB Dunk ‘Ferris Bueller’ amongst others, and Kofi Kingston. But no-one has taken it as far, or seemingly spent as much, as The Young Bucks.
