Young Bucks: Killing the Business from Backyards to the Big Leagues

Dedication

To Dana, Zachary, and Kourtney.

Everything I do, is for you.

Mom, Dad, look. I wrote a book!

—MATT

To Ellen, Alison, Gregory, and Michael.

Thanks for being you.

You’re my world. I love you.

—NICK

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Growing Up Young Bucks

A Wrestling Ring in My Backyard

Nice to Meet You, My Name Is Mr. BYWA

High Risk Wrestling

Superhero Origin Story

Extra Talent

Culture Shock in Japan

Sweaty Nights in Reseda

Sign the Bucks!

Welcome to TNA

Handshake Gate

Superkick Party

Bullet Club

Bloodstained Sneaker

The Elite Is Born

Being the Elite

Going All In

A Road Never Traveled

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Photo Section

About the Authors

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

BY MATT JACKSON

Me and my brother Nick, together the most sought-out tag team in professional wrestling, along with arguably the greatest wrestler in the world, Kenny Omega, all had contracts that were set to expire. We sat quietly in a hotel room, surrounding an iPhone placed on a coffee table, waiting for it to ring. We had back-to-back phone calls scheduled with two major players: Tony Khan, entrepreneur and co-owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, and eager to get into the wrestling business; and Triple H, an executive representing World Wrestling Entertainment, the largest wrestling organization in the world. Both were vying for one thing: our commitment to work with them. Our next move would largely impact the future of the wrestling business. (Seriously, not an exaggeration.) Finally, the phone lit up, and vibrated on the table. I looked at my two Elite comrades and said, Well. Here we go! before pressing the green accept-call button . . .

We had been preparing for this moment our entire lives, but, sitting in that paisley room and realizing that our worlds were about to change forever, my brother and I were thinking the same question: how in the world did we get here anyway?

Growing Up Young Bucks

MATT

Code Blue! Code Blue!

This was what blared over the hospital intercom at Beverly Hospital in Montebello, California, as a team of doctors ran toward the room where my mother lay in bed in the tenth hour of agonizing labor with her second child. Code Blue means a patient is having cardiopulmonary arrest and needs immediate resuscitation; what it meant to my mother was that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. My mom’s doctor, Dr. Lee, told her that this was now going to turn into an emergency cesarean section delivery, and he and his team promptly stuck paperwork in my mom’s face, asking her to make a choice in case something were to go wrong during surgery: Whose life is the priority to save? The baby’s or her own?

My mom chose the baby. The surgery team quickly wheeled my mom into the operating room to prepare her. My dad was hysterical and prayed to God to spare both his wife and baby son. He held my mom’s hand and recited, Lord. You’re the giver of life! You’re the giver of life!

Dr. Lee made an incision, but the positioning of the baby made this difficult, and his arm was sliced as a result. My mom fell unconscious. Finally, the doctors pulled the newborn out and unwrapped the umbilical cord from his neck.

The baby boy’s face was blue and he was not breathing. Immediately, the doctors put a breathing mask on him and began chest compressions. Soon they used a defibrillator, which sent doses of current to his heart. His chest began to move up and down, and his breaths increased, shallow but steadily. But the work wasn’t over yet. The medical staff had to clear fluid from the baby’s lungs, and after forty-five minutes of intense work, the operating room was finally filled with the productive sound of crying.

That baby was me. I was born Matthew Ronjon Massie on March 13, 1985. To this day, my mom and I have matching scars from the initial incision made by Dr. Lee—mine on my right arm’s bicep, hers on her midsection. My scar is a lot more visible during the winter when I don’t have a bronze tan. But they aren’t just scars, either: they’re matching reminders of what we went through that day, of how close we came to death.

I know the story of my birth in such detail because my dad, also named Matthew, tells it to me each year on my birthday. Growing up, I recall him telling it to anyone and everyone we’d meet. We’d ride ten floors down in an elevator, and by the time the elevator doors opened to a new floor, every stranger on that elevator knew I was a Code Blue Baby. It became such a reoccurring story in our household that every member of the household would scatter as soon as he began telling it.

My mom and dad are the definition of Couples Goals. They met at a church outing at Bullwinkle’s Family Fun Center when they were only thirteen years old. My dad, ever the charmer, approached my mom and told her how beautiful her voice was. They were dating not long after that, and by age sixteen he asked my mom’s father for permission to propose, which was swiftly denied. So, he waited until he was eighteen to ask again, at which time permission from her family was granted. They haven’t looked back since: for the thirty-nine years they’ve been married, they have probably spent a total of five nights away from each other. They hold hands wherever they go, attend church together every Sunday, sing together in the car, and pretty much make all other married couples look weak in comparison.

My mom, Joyce, comes from a large family of eight and was born and raised in Chino Hills, California. She is a little thing: five foot three inches and one hundred pounds and not a lot of change. She’s blond-haired and pale and is the most soft-spoken woman you’ll ever meet. My dad, Matthew, comes from a family of eleven and was born and raised in La Puente, California. He’s six feet tall, has long jet-black hair, tanned skin, and is handsome and gregarious. When I was growing up, it would take fifteen minutes to check out of the grocery store line because he would strike up a conversation with the cashier. Half of my childhood involved me grabbing my dad by his hand in an attempt to pull him away from a pleasant conversation with a stranger.

My father’s openness compared to my mother’s shyness seemed stark, but both of my parents had one thing in common: they were both super-Christians. Or, as I like to refer to them: Jesus Freaks. I mean absolute fanatics. Naturally, that devotion became part of the home I grew up in. Before every meal, even if we were at a restaurant, we’d link hands and say a prayer. During every car ride, Mom and Dad would sing praise and worship music, encouraging us to join along.

My older sister, Donajoi, (pronounced Donna-Joy) or DJ for short, and I were best buddies. She’s about three and a half years older than me, and always babysat me in those early years. She was a wonderful playmate who taught me how to use my imagination whenever we sang, danced, and tumbled in the living room. I remember she and I would hold our ears to cups and press them against our parents’ door in order to listen in on their conversations. We didn’t know what was going on in that room, but we knew the moans and groans coming from the other side of the wall sounded silly. Luckily, we had the wherewithal not to investigate them further.

My sister and I had so many toys between us that my parents would store them all in a giant gray Rubbermaid trash bin. Every day we would play a game called Barbies and Hulk where she’d use her Barbies and I’d use my collection of World Wrestling Federation LJN figures. These toy figures aren’t like today’s figures: they were rubber, heavy, and the paint chipped from them as soon as you touched them. The body parts didn’t move. Oh, and if you had a pet, the fingers and arms of the figures would be chewed off almost instantly. My very first wrestling figure was Jesse the Body Ventura, which I still have to this day. Some figures were not so lucky as to survive my youth, though. When I was two years old, my family went on a trip to Hawaii. While at the ocean with my favorite Hulk Hogan figure, a big wave came and launched the toy from my hand. My Hulk was lost forever, and I was devastated. For years after, whenever my parents would ask me where my Hulk figure went, I would look out into the distance and dramatically say, Hulk went bye-bye in the ocean.

I spent the first few months of my life in Whittier, California, until we moved and settled into a small three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Yes, Rancho Cucamonga is a real place. And yes, it’s the same Rancho Cucamonga referenced in Looney Tunes cartoons, the Friday movies, and the television show Workaholics. It’s a small city located thirty-seven miles east of downtown Los Angeles and is sunny pretty much every day. I’m not kidding, it’s sunny on average 287 days per year.

That was where my brother Nick entered the picture. Like my delivery, it wasn’t easy. Prior to this pregnancy, my dad told my mom he didn’t want to have any more children. He didn’t want to relive what they had already gone through with my birth, and he planned to get a vasectomy. But my mom wouldn’t sign off on it. Literally. Back then, the spouse would also have to sign off on vasectomies. Despite Dr. Lee recommending to my mom that she not have any more children due to the high probability of a miscarriage, she wanted to try. Eventually, she became pregnant again, but at two months into the new pregnancy the house became filled with my mother’s screaming. I remember racing into the bathroom because it sounded like she was in trouble. The door was cracked, and when I let myself in, I found her hunched on the floor crying hysterically. Next to her was my dad, who was scooping something out of the toilet. I couldn’t see what it was until he turned around: in his cupped hands was a red, fleshy, transparent fetus of a little baby girl. I remember being able to identify a small semblance of a face and thinking how it looked like a little alien. Soon after, wiping tears from their eyes, my parents sat my sister and me down and explained what a miscarriage was. The house felt dark for a while, to say the very least. I was young and confused, not quite able to grasp what had exactly happened, but I think I learned a small lesson about mortality.

Two months later, my mom complained of feeling weak and ill. She thought she was having spasms, and my dad feared she might’ve developed an infection from the miscarriage, so she was rushed to the hospital. As my dad sat in the waiting room, my mom was wheeled out wearing the biggest smile. Apparently, she was four months pregnant with a baby girl. How could this be possible? The miscarriage from two months back was a fraternal twin, Dr. Lee explained. My parents went back home and painted the nursery pink in preparation for their girl to arrive. However, my sister DJ told my parents they weren’t having a girl. She said she had had a dream that my mom would have a boy and that they would name him Nicholas.

What compelled DJ to say this to my parents I’ll never know, but nevertheless it proved prophetic. Nicholas Lee Massie was born on July 28, 1989 (in Greek, Nicholas means victory). While I was born with dark brown hair, brown eyes, and darker skin, Nick came out with light blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. We like to say that I got my dad’s features and Nick got my mom’s.

So now you know, if you didn’t already, that Nick and I aren’t twins like many people think. Even today, when we’re traveling, TSA agents will look at us side by side, with our matching Elite backpacks and clothes, and say, Twins? Sometimes we get tired of correcting them and just smile politely.

I adapted to the big brother role nicely. I enjoyed not being Baby Matt anymore, which everyone in our extended family annoyingly called me. The house might have been louder, full of Nick’s crying, but I appreciated the company.

Then, in unexpected fashion, my mom found out she was going to have a fourth child. Don’t worry, nothing dramatic happened this time—well, aside from the tears from DJ, who cried, No! Not another boy! Sure enough, after keeping the gender secret for the duration of the pregnancy, our dad came back to report the news of the birth of another baby boy, our youngest brother, Malachi. DJ might have been bummed, but it was only temporary. (Later in life, she ended up having three beautiful daughters of her own: Makayla, Rebecca, and Natalie). As a baby, Malachi was up most nights screaming in pain. My parents were absolute zombies around this time, constantly complaining about their lack of sleep, though I’d argue that sleep and parenting are antonyms as stark as night and day. I know that now because I’m a parent, too.

* * *

On my first day of elementary school, I stood in my front yard on one of the busiest streets in Rancho Cucamonga, Arrow Route, where two huge pine trees shrouded me from the traffic. The street we lived on was so busy the windows in my bedroom would shake violently when cars drove by. But outside on that day, all felt still and serene. I was wearing a white Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt, and a giant name tag attached to a necklace.

Say cheese. I smiled for a picture for my mom and dad.

We lived so close to Bear Gulch Elementary School that my parents walked me there. The mascot for the school was a bear, and in the front of the school was a giant plaster statue of a bear hugging a pole. There were bear tracks all along the sidewalks that led to the classes. I thought that was really cool, and it made me feel like I was visiting somewhere fun, like a theme park, as opposed to a school. My parents showed me into my class, met my teacher Mrs. Robertson, a sweet older lady probably in her sixties, and then cried their eyes out before saying good-bye. The tears mostly came from my father, who is the most emotional man I’ve ever met. I settled in and met another quiet boy who was all alone, playing on the carpet. He wore glasses and seemed anxious, just as I was. His name was Michael. He was my first friend.

My siblings and I went to Bear Gulch Elementary from kindergarten through fifth grade. By third grade, I was deemed responsible enough to wake myself up in the morning, get dressed, pour myself cereal, kiss my parents who were still in bed, and then walk to class by myself. Times have changed, haven’t they? Around this time, I also started to realize that everyone else in class was taller than I was. As we would all stand in a single file line by the door after the bell rang, I’d walk into the classroom on my tiptoes so I could blend in with the rest of the students. My size difference compared to the rest of the class would become more apparent as I got older. As all of my friends grew taller, it felt like I stayed the same height. I was bullied for being so small, and while these taunts were mostly verbal, I was still hurt by them. On Fridays I’d stare at the classroom clock, counting the seconds until the final bell rang so I could finally go home to a place where I was one of the biggest kids.

Every weekend home was a marathon. Our house was always filled with family members and friends. Uncles, aunts, cousins, and neighbors would stay over until early morning, and everybody seemed to either sing or play a musical instrument. I remember trying to sleep late at night and hearing someone playing the drums or bass guitar so loud that my body vibrated. My dad was an aspiring Christian rock musician and had turned our garage into a music studio. In the living room and on car rides, bands like Chicago, Styx, Queen, Boston, and Stryper played constantly, and if they weren’t playing, it was because someone was singing their songs a cappella. Every Sunday morning was spent at church with the same family, and without exaggeration, the service would go on for hours. I would fall asleep in the car on the way to church and hope my parents would just leave me in there during the service. I thought it was the most mind-numbing, boring thing in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I considered myself a Christian, but I would’ve much rather been at home watching Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Plus, after the anguish of church, we’d go out to eat and eventually end up back at someone’s house and stay until the wee hours of the night, where the family would sing and debate about the Bible. A marathon. By the time Monday came around every week, we kids were exhausted. I credit my parent’s ceaseless behavior for the reason I’m always on the go or am constantly anxious to leave the house and do something, to this day.

During most of my childhood, my dad worked as a house painter. Since the life of an independent contractor didn’t guarantee full-time work, he’d work his butt off all day and often pull into the driveway late at night, stepping from his truck exhausted and his shirt splashed with a rainbow of color. At night, I’d hear him and my mom stressing out about when the next job might come. Still, my parents always somehow managed to spoil us. They would save up money and buy us name-brand clothes in the clearance sections at outlet stores before school started every year, or buy us secondhand toys at the swap meet to make sure we had presents underneath the tree for Christmas. My mom stayed at home with us and kept the house in neat order. Not only did she physically look young (she still does!), but she also had a childlike spirit and spent hours playing with us on the floor. Many times, throughout my childhood, people thought she was my older sister, and as I got older, people thought she was my girlfriend. Gasp.

The buoyancy inside the house was put to the test when I was eight and my dad’s father, my Grandpa John, became seriously ill with colon cancer. Suddenly, dread permeated my family. We all went on a health kick and fed him carrot juice among other homemade recipes, but as the days dragged on, we could feel we were losing him. One afternoon in March, we visited him at his home where he was being treated by hospice care. I watched as my teary-eyed dad massaged his back and spoke to his father in hushed tones. I felt hopeless, and, unsure of what else to do, I began massaging my grandpa’s feet, which seemed to soothe him. Later that night, when my family and I were back at home, I heard my mom scream when she picked up the telephone; I knew Grandpa’s time had come, but I wasn’t told how. I found out later that Grandpa must not have been able to take much more pain because, with the last of his strength, he took the gun he kept in the house and shot himself in the heart. It ripped a hole in our family that still hasn’t been fully healed. That night, my mom told me that if I felt sad or if things in my life felt out of control, God would always listen to me. Before this tragedy, praying was just something I did prior to dinner and bed. But after Grandpa John’s suicide, I experienced loss on a whole other scale, and I believed that God could help me brave future storms to come. On the day of the funeral, as I passed my grandpa’s open casket while holding my dad’s hand, I prayed my first real prayer. I said it with conviction.

* * *

It seemed like I was destined to be involved in wrestling from the day I was born. The very first T-shirt I wore read, World Champion. There’s a picture of me, a couple days old, wearing this T-shirt with my hands raised in the air. To this very day, whenever my arms are raised in victory after a successful wrestling match, my dad still screams, World Champion!

My earliest memory of professional wrestling is at age two. I was in San Francisco at my aunt and uncle’s house, where my mom left me while she went with her sister and her nephew to watch WrestleMania 3 on closed-circuit television. I didn’t get to attend because I was too young, but I noticed how happy they were when they returned. Their joy seemed contagious. The way my cousin described what he had seen must’ve captured my imagination because I kept asking my parents questions about the colorful world of wrestling.

This memory formed the basis of my interests, and as my brothers got older, I introduced them to wrestling as well, letting them watch along with me and look at my Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazine collection. My dad would take us all to Blockbuster Video, and we would rent every World Wrestling Federation videotape on the shelf. Like me, my brothers gravitated to the lively, muscular, bald-headed Hulk Hogan. Before my parents knew it, we had the Hulk Hogan stuffed animals, bedsheets, mugs, lunch pails, and even hand grippers. We were full-blown Hulkamaniacs. We’d run home from Blockbuster, push the VHS tape into the VCR, and all of us would wait for it to kick into action as we would mimic the sound of a ring bell—ding, ding, ding!—and copy the moves on-screen. As Nick and I would nail Malachi with a perfectly synchronized double Superkick, Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels (the Rockers) would play in the background. (For you fans newer to wrestling or who didn’t grow up in the ’80s or ’90s, a Superkick is a sidekick once used as a finishing maneuver but that is now used sporadically in wrestling matches.) It wasn’t even known as a Superkick yet, so we’d just yell, Double Kick! Then we’d create the sound of a roaring audience with our mouths. I was the biggest of the three boys but unselfish, and I let my brothers clothesline me and trade off giving me jumping leg drops. I was selling their moves before I even knew what that meant. These nights would usually end with Malachi crying from one of us slamming him down too hard onto the makeshift pillow wrestling ring, and my parents rushing into the room to shut down shop. On one of these nights, I jumped off the top rope (meaning the couch) and landed right on poor Malachi’s arm. The crack was so loud that my parents heard it from across the house. After crying for an hour, Malachi convinced our parents he was fine. A few weeks later, my mom noticed Malachi favoring his arm, so she took him to the hospital for an X-ray. Turns out, the tough kid was walking around in school with a broken arm. Wrestling was banned in our household for a while after that.

But while walking past our local comic book shop a few months later, my brothers and I saw a poster for a WWF live event taking place on June 30, 1994, at our minor-league baseball team’s stadium. My eyes lit up when I saw Diesel and Razor Ramon on the poster, and I couldn’t fathom they would be coming to our tiny hometown. Nick and I begged our parents to get tickets, and lucky for us we were headed to the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes’ stadium, which was known as the Epicenter, for some WWF action! As we walked up from the concourse, my eyes fixating on the wrestling ring, I wondered how the ring mat felt, how bouncy the ring ropes were. As each wrestler came out, I stood silently and studied their every move. I didn’t boo the bad guys or cheer the good guys. I just watched in blissful awe.

A year later, on July 28, 1995, Nick’s sixth birthday, WWF came back to the Epicenter, and we were even more excited and prepared this time around: we chose sides. I brought a sign dedicated to Kama the Supreme Fighting Machine that read, Kama the Supreme Losing Machine! I thought it was genius, though I’m sure Kama did not (he probably never even saw it, however). Things kicked off in the second match when 1-2-3 Kid flew around the ring, dazzling me and the rest of the audience. We sat right by the entrance where the wrestlers entered and exited, and after 1-2-3 Kid’s loss to Waylon Mercy he walked toward the exit holding his neck. He spat at the wall, launching a stream of blood. Kids at school would tease me about wrestling being fake, but this was all the evidence I needed to bring back to them. As the show progressed, the tensions rising high with each subsequent wrestler, I couldn’t look away from the bloody spit. My attention would soon turn back to the show when Shawn Michaels reached out and gave me a high five. He did the same for DJ, who looked down at her hand and said, I’m never washing this ever again! At one point later in the night, the black curtain was flung open and I saw a smiling Paul Bearer sharing a laugh with Yokozuna. During the matches, Paul Bearer played a creepy, boisterous character who carried around an urn while Yokozuna was portrayed as a giant, immovable sumo wrestler. I knew at the time that this was a moment I wasn’t supposed to have seen. A good guy and a bad guy, together, laughing? It didn’t add up. I looked back at the blood-stained wall and smiled.

The Undertaker would eventually stuff Kama into a casket and slam the door shut, winning that evening’s Main Event Casket Match and ending the show on a high note. As my family and I exited the building, I saw a giant line forming to meet several of the wrestlers. I pulled on my dad’s arm and pleaded with him to let us meet Razor Ramon, whose gold necklace lit up the entire room. We’ve gotta beat the traffic. Sorry, Matty, my dad said.

For those who grew up in California, traffic is as natural as the sunshine. So, when we weren’t glued to a television watching wrestling, our family would drive three hours to the California-Nevada state line for weekend trips to escape the bustle of the city. We usually stayed at a family fun casino resort called Buffalo Bills, which had a roller coaster adjacent to it and even an indoor log ride. I recall many summers spent in the arcade and in their giant buffalo-shaped swimming pool. One time, I was left upstairs in the hotel room to watch Nick and Malachi while my parents went downstairs to play slot machines. Within minutes of their leaving, Nick picked up a hairbrush, and I surprised him with a beautiful Superkick. We would do this all the time as a cruel sort of game: find each other at inopportune moments and greet each other with a Superkick. When I performed this kick, however, the brush was inadvertently slammed directly into Nick’s face. His hands immediately covered his mouth, and his eyes began to well up. I asked him if he was okay, and rather than replying he uncovered his mouth to reveal that one of his front teeth was gone. It took Nick a second to realize this fact, but as soon as he did, he cried and chased me around the room. A few hours later, I sat at the edge of the bed staring at