Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson are officially Impact Wrestling-bound following their WWE releases in April. Their journey to this point has been interesting to say the least, and they revealed their sides of the story on their Talk’N Shop podcast.
When their WWE deals came up last year, they almost signed with AEW, but also had offers from Impact and New Japan. The Young Bucks had convinced them to join the upstart promotion at one point.
“We messaged the Young Bucks because we heard rumblings of stuff they were doing. We stayed close with them the entire time, but hadn’t heard exactly what they were going to do. We sat with the Bucks and talked to them about what they were going to start, left and went to the house show, how f*cking excited were we? This is 10 months before Dynamite debut. They were telling us what we were gonna do, and it’s not that we didn’t believe them, it was like ‘f*ck, is this gonna happen?’ As the year went on, we realized we really wanted to leave. A big part of us, we were nervous about it not going on television. Around July was when Triple H teamed with us in Japan and Hunter was calling us and texting us daily trying to get us to sign a deal. Their price kept going up and Hunter would tell us how badly they wanted us,” said Anderson.
Interestingly enough, those in charge at AEW had plans for Gallows and Anderson to debut on the first episode of Dynamite. The Good Brothers would have come down to the ring at the end to celebrate with the Bucks and Kenny Omega, only to turn on them for a major reaction.
Anderson noted that both AEW and Impact offered them solid deals last year, which of course they regret not choosing. It was ultimately WWE’s high-dollar offer that kept them because they would be set financially for what was likely to be their last full-time contract.
Re-signing with WWE prevented them from formally meeting with Tony Khan, and also rubbed some in AEW the wrong way. Fightful Select revealed that Chris Jericho is one of the top non-executive names who was offended by the change in plans.
Renewing their WWE deals also meant moving to Raw to align with AJ Styles. However, there was some confusion as they entered their feud with Ricochet and learned Paul Heyman was writing Raw after his promotion to Executive Director. They were very weary of how much they could trust Heyman based on previous stores.
“It’s great to be a good charmer, but when you’re 100% full of bullshit — we had this conversation in a rental car before we got on the phone with him. ‘All you ever read, all these guys that came before us, is that he’s a great charmer but the biggest bullshitter in the history of the business.’ We’re both going, ‘We hope he’s not bullshitting us.’ We have these big contracts, we’re rolling with AJ, you gotta think positive. To the end, he’s putting us over and telling us how good we are and ‘we’re gonna put the straps on you a month down the line, but you deserve them now, but you’re gonna go to Saudi and be the best tag team in the world. If you ever have a problem with creative or if I ever lie to you, go on social media and f*cking bury me. F*cking put me under the dirt because I f*cking deserve it! I want those guys in the locker room to know that I can’t f*cking be trusted!’ Guys in the locker room, he can’t f*cking be trusted and I just buried him,” stated Gallows.
On April 15, Mark Carano made the call to the former Raw Tag Team Champions to deliver the bad news. They asked around about who “put their names on the list” and were told it was Paul Heyman. Heyman denied this to AJ’s face, but AJ went straight to Vince and was told it was Heyman’s decision.
Gallows added, “He said we were making too much money for what we were doing and he’s a f*cking liar and a piece of shit.”
In the end, Styles moved to SmackDown a few weeks before Heyman was fired form his executive duties. Bruce Prichard is now the Executive Director of both shows, AJ Styles is Intercontinental Champion, and Gallows and Anderson are primed to make an impact at Slammiversary this weekend.
H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
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