After the attack on league boss Tony Khan, the Young Bucks deliver the next shocker at AEW: they also turn on their seriously ill friend Kenny Omega.
A new dark force is forming at WWE rival AEW – and it’s taking no prisoners!
A week after the newly formed group The Elite attacked league boss Tony Khan, it has created the next shock moment, shattering a years-old certainty.
At the end of the TV show Dynamite, Nick and Matt Jackson (The Young Bucks) attacked league co-founder Kenny Omega, who had been incapacitated by a serious illness. In doing so in Omega’s native Winnipeg after eight years, they ended a seemingly unbreakable partnership that goes back further than the league itself – and was a key to its formation.
The Bucks thus cemented their departure from The Elite, which was announced a few weeks ago and now includes Omega’s eternal rival Kazuchika Okada and the returning Jack Perry. Okada and Perry took part in the attack on Omega and moved further into the center of the new big storyline at AEW, which also references the real-life scandal surrounding the fired CM Punk.
AEW: An eight-year-old partnership breaks up
Omega and the Bucks had been side-by-side since 2016 when Omega joined cult group The Bullet Club at NJPW in Japan and the Bucks joined his mutiny against then-leader AJ Styles.
The trio formed the nucleus of the initial Bullet Club subgroup The Elite, which was later joined by today’s WWE top star Cody Rhodes, Hangman Page and Marty Scurll, who has since been discredited due to a personal scandal.
The protagonists’ real-life friendship led to the founding of AEW by Khan, the Bucks, Omega and Rhodes in 2019. Omega and the Bucks are still Executive Vice Presidents of AEW today and have always stood by each other in front of the camera – until now.
Young Bucks give Kenny Omega the EVP Trigger
The rift was foreshadowed months ago when the Bucks reinvented themselves as power-abusing villains – while also dealing with and satirizing their real-life enmity with Punk, now back in WWE.
Back in March, they broke with Omega, kicking him out of the group on flimsy pretexts and replacing him with, of all people, the great newly signed rival Okada. The “Rainmaker” was joined by Jack Perry in the attack on Boss Khan last week. The son of the late actor Luke Perry had not been seen on AEW since the real-life brawl with Punk last summer – which resulted in his sacking.
Omega’s ouster happened in absentia at the time because he had been on hiatus since December: He suffered a life-threatening case of the intestinal disease diverticulitis, which will still keep him from a wrestling comeback for an undetermined amount of time.
With Omega now addressing his home crowd in Winnipeg and promising them a ring return when the time was right, the stage was set for the shocker of Dynamite: after a confrontation between Omega and Okada, Perry and Okada attacked the “Cleaner” first. The Bucks joined in and – as with Khan last week – initially acted as if Perry and Okada had gone too far.
In the end, it proved to be a farce once again: the Bucks gave Omega their finisher EVP Trigger and only let go of their old friend when Team FTR came to his aid – their eternal rivals and, in real life, Punk’s best friends.
Omega was taken away in a wheeled stretcher – only to be attacked again behind the scenes by the new Elite. The Bucks threw Omega off the stretcher and taunted him beforehand, claiming that they were sorry, that they still “loved him to death” – but now it was about business and “changing the world”, and friendship was in the way.
Christian Cage challenges champion Swerve Strickland
In addition to the elite shocker, the Bucks also previously revealed the next challenger for new World Champion Swerve Strickland: it’s legend Christian Cage, who immediately beat up Strickland and manager Prince Nana with his group Patriarchy.
Strickland and Cage will face off at Pay Per View Double or Nothing on May 26, with other title matches featuring TBS Champion Willow Nightingale against the debuting Mercedes Moné (formerly WWE’s Sasha Banks), International Champion Roderick Strong against Will Ospreay and Women’s Champion “Timeless” Toni Storm against veteran Serena Deeb.