Pat Buck touches on a myriad of topics in the interview.
Create A Pro co-founder and 20-year veteran Pat Bucks works for All Elite Wrestling as the company’s Vice President of Talent Development.
In addition to his behind the scenes role, Buck remains active in the ring. He sat down with Sam Roberts for an interview to promote his match against NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion EC3 on October 22nd. As the conversation moved along, Buck was asked what is his favorite match he’s produced in AEW.
He could not answer because he feels he would be offending people by singling out one match, but said there is something special about being the agent for MJF and Adam Cole’s AEW World Title match in the main event of All In at Wembley Stadium.
I know if I said that, I would offend people (Buck responded when asked what’s his favorite match he’s produced in AEW)… I mean, there is something special to being the agent on the main event of Wembley. That speaks for itself.
Continuing on the topic of producing matches, Buck spoke about helping put together Battle Royales in AEW. He stated that those are Tony Khan’s thing. He helps keep track of who is supposed to be eliminated when and relaying that to the production truck so they can grab the right camera shots.
He said after those matches, all who are involved in the production and presentation give themselves a round of applause for the communication between one another.
There’s one time in AEW that a lot of the Battle Royales, they’re Tony’s thing and Tony’s different things but a lot of the in between stuff, find out Tony’s vision, what he wants to do… The thing about a Battle Royale on television, to tell the cameras, ‘Hey, this person’s being eliminated,’ or, ‘This entrance happening here.’ It’s easy to call a one-on-one match. Think about these more complex, multi-person so for that, I’m following Tony’s lead but I’m also, I have my order of eliminations and by who and by what. So then I become a little bit of an auctioneer on headset. ‘Hey, you got to follow this person.’ I remember at the end of that, the production truck, we all let out a sigh of air and I think we all clapped for each other, because we were able to get through this and kind of get every shot and try to — those are always fun.
Buck wrestles for AEW in dark matches and over the summer, he was in action on their House Rules live event shows. He is also featured on ROH on HonorClub. Pat stated that initially, Tony Khan assumed he did not want to wrestle.
Pat brought up that he likes working in the ring with talents like Satnam Singh and other less experienced wrestlers. He said he admires Fit Finlay who would go to the ring, have a physical match, do the honors and then get back on the headset.
I came onboard. It was a conversation with me and Tony (Khan) in terms of wrestling. In relating it back to the Create A Pro alumni was like, ‘Hey, we really don’t have a developmental place’ and I wasn’t pitching Create A Pro anything but I went, ‘You have these people that are basically champions. They didn’t really come to be from me not just coaching with them. I did every drill with them, I wrestled them on shows, wrestled them at birthday parties.’ I go, ‘That’s the integral time of that’ and I go, ‘I think I’m a proven asset in that.’ So you have all these guys on the roster and I remember in that conversation was like Powerhouse Hobbs and I looked at Satnam Singh over there and I went, ‘Give them to me on dark matches, on live events. Let me be the person.’ I’m like, ‘I can legitimately get 10 minutes out of Satnam Singh.’ You got this guy who’s an anomaly in India and you have all these people here but you’re only gonna get better — I’m not saying good or whatever but you only get better from wrestling someone better than you. Let me be the person to do that. I’m not looking for — I want to be your Brad Armstrong, I want to be your Irish Barry Horowitz, I want to be that. But, on live events too, I can go a little bit longer with people and that’s how that came to be. Like an actual player-coach. He thought I didn’t wanna wrestle. No, I wanna do it but I wanna do it from an actual benefit the talent kind of thing. I really want to just — and partly, I would like to show my kids, hey, yeah, daddy does this but I don’t care about championships. I’m a coach, let me be a player-coach. My role in OVW when I was there, I would work with these killers, these basically untrained people. I’m not scared to get in the ring with anybody and I’ll get something out of them and that excites me. Let me see if I can get a match out of someone who kind of everyone’s like, ‘Oh, that guy’s terrible. Whatever.’ Well let me try. Maybe it will be terrible but, put me in that role because other talent, they’re focused on, I wanna get on TV, I wanna win, I wanna be champion. Nah, I just wanna go out there, have a match and then I’ll go put the headset on. I idolize Fit Finlay. You would see him go out there and beat the tar out of someone, do the honors and then right back on headset. That’s what I like doing so…
Buck was in action on the 10/19 ROH on HonorClub. He took on Josh Woods in a Pure Rules match.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Notsam Wrestling with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
