Pat Buck has talked about losing sleep over WWE production rules and says he enjoys not having to panic so much in AEW.
Back in 2020, Buck produced a segment in a Buddy Matthews vs. Baron Corbin match on SmackDown. During the match, the Mysterio family were to get involved.
During one of Corbin’s signature moves, he was meant to almost run into Aalyah Mysterio. However, the camera shot did not capture the shock on her face, something that Buck was ultimately responsible for.
He told Sam Roberts:
There’s things that I carry over to AEW where I’m like… I’m not gonna use the word “traumatized” but I’m like, I can never have that happen. For example, in the ThunderDome, you would never — and most of the time, you should avoid this too — you shouldn’t have a manager on the hard cam side of the ring. You’re just getting the back of their head. The ThunderDome, that was extreme no-no.
I remember one time in particular, maybe it was [Baron] Corbin versus Buddy Murphy and The Mysterios were involved. I remember when we had Dom, before Dom was Dom, and Aalyah and Rey’s wife. I don’t think his wife was out there but Rey was out there, Aalyah was out there and so was Dom and we wanted to have Aalyah involved in a spot and you know, Baron Corbin does the tribute to Bossman type thing.
He slides out from the post, wraps around, goes back in the ring into one of his moves. So we did a thing where he slides out and Aalyah’s kind of just standing there and the creative that night was get all of the Mysterios involved to kind of rattle Corbin. Like, Dom’s involved, Rey’s involved and they’re rattling him and I think Buddy defeats him.
So, Corbin slides out and here is Aalyah in his face, just kind of standing there but the spot was near hard cam. Like by that post and they can’t get her face and you would have thought I lit the ring on fire and did something atrocious and I went — on something so minute, you still know she’s there, you’re still getting the Corbin going, ‘Hey! What are you doing?’
But we didn’t get her face and then we continued. That’s all it was…I didn’t sleep that night because of how, ‘Pat, you messed up. You can’t let that happen again. What the heck?’
Buck said there was much less pressure on small production issues in AEW:
So when I come to AEW now and I’m like, I get these moments like, ‘Tell the manager don’t go there’ and they’re like, ‘Yo, chill. It’s fine. It’s fine. We still know there’s a manager there…’ And it’s not a right or wrong. It’s just kind of embedded. I can never say belts ever again. It’s always title, it’s always championship. But I do love that about AEW. I don’t have to panic about those things.
Elsewhere in his chat with Sam Roberts, Buck shared that Shane Helms, Sonjay Dutt & TJ Wilson recommended him for WWE producer role:
I think also, my association with Sonjay Dutt is kind of — who was like his (Jeff Jarrett’s) person…He was a part of me getting in WWE. Long story short, they eventually asked the producers, ‘Who out there do you think —’ because WWE was going to FOX and they needed another crew and they had like nine producers. We need to double up. So they asked the producers…They were going in a younger direction.
They brought on [Shawn] Daivari and Abyss and [Shane] Helms and I believe Sonjay, and I think they did that because of the success of Tyson Kidd. Because he was doing so well, they were like… we need a younger, fresh take and they asked a lot of those guys, ‘If you had a list of three people, who would you recommend to be a producer?’ And three of those people put my name and that was awesome and Sonjay was one of ‘em. So, and Helms and TJ were the other two, so I gotta give them the credit too.
Transcription by Andrew Thompson.
