Two major AEW stars have taken inspiration from a successful HBO series for their new heel personas, according to the company’s president. The Young Bucks, Matt and Nick Jackson, are currently playing up their Executive Vice President roles as the bad guys within AEW on television. 

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According to Tony Khan on the media call before AEW’s newest pay-per-view, Dynasty, he said the Bucks are inspired by “Succession.” The show is a drama about a family who own a worldwide media company and fight for control of it amidst the failing health of the patriarch. Khan said that during a meeting at the beginning of the year in Jacksonville, the Bucks had a good idea of how they wanted to be presented to go alongside his own “big vision.” He also spoke to the series creator about its influence on AEW.

“Their idea has been tremendous of utilizing ‘Succession,'” Khan said. “So I was able to tell Jesse [Armstrong] straight up to his face that there are wrestlers on our show that have been very inspired by ‘Succession’ and their theme song may or may not be very similar to the ‘Succession’ theme song. He was very kind about it. Matt and Nick brought that up and I thought it was such a great idea. I’m such a big ‘Succession’ fan, I thought it was a great idea for that. So we started working on that late last year. Then on January 10th, we had this meeting in Jacksonville and it was a really good meeting and I laid out ideas for upcoming events and so far, it has all played out exactly how we talked about.”

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The meeting Khan refers to on January 10 was the day of the return of the Bucks as heels. They appeared on stage to stare down Sting and Darby Allin, challenging the pair to face them in Sting’s last match at Revolution, where the Bucks were defeated. Matt and Nick Jackson now move on to face FTR for the fourth time, this time in a ladder match, for the AEW Tag Team Championships at Dynasty.