By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

During this week's NXT Conference Call, Triple H presented an argument for independent wrestlers to pursue WWE's Developmental system to make a good living in pro wrestling.

One of the top independent tag teams, The Young Bucks, presented the counter argument in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, which was conducted last week.

"We're the kings of being independent. We represent that. We don't need a contract, we're on our own thing. You can make money without Vince [McMahon]. You can make money without going there and selling your soul. You can be yourself. You can make a good living," said Matt Jackson.

"I think that's the most rewarding thing about it: we don't have to be on Monday Night Raw for people to know us. We don't need a machine to push us, like the majority of guys. We take pride in the indies, because obviously this is where we work, so for anyone to say that we are the kings of it, that's cool. That means we're the kings of what we're doing right now," said Nick Jackson.

The Young Bucks said they had to make a commitment to "building their brand," though, after realizing they lacked an identity and were not connecting with fans early in their careers.

"We really built this brand by going town-to-town, showing people that we're the Young Bucks and this is what we do. That's part of how we've gotten to where we are," said Matt.

"We watched the best guys in the world do it. We watched Colt Cabana do it, we watched El Generico (now Sami Zayn in WWE) do it. We watched Kevin Steen (now Kevin Owens in WWE). Those guys are like the forefathers of the merch table. I want to say that Colt really started it all. Nick and I would sit there at our tables and not sell a thing. We'd watch Colt just raking in the dough, and we were trying to figure out what he does. To us, this is the business part of it. We're going to work on the wrestling-side of course, but this is just as important.

"We just watched what Colt did. We watched El Generico wave people in and smile and interact. It's important to engage the customer. You are the guy trying to sell your stuff, these are your customers, treat them like that. Some wrestlers, they're on their phones, and they act like they're too good, or above this - they aren't branded. They're just guys that wrestle. You need an identity. Our identity is that we're the guys who do the Superkick Party. It took us ten years to figure that out."

Triple H described it as the "hustle" of booking your own shows and selling your own merchandise to make a living and provide for your family, which WWE mainly takes care of in their system. For some, WWE's one-stop shop is preferred. For others, like the Young Bucks, they would rather be their own boss. For right now. From Hunter's perspective, he believes making equal or potentially more money in NXT compared to the independents with the chance to make the main WWE roster carries enough incentive for wrestlers.

"This is what you do for a living, so you can go out and hustle and book yourself and travel all over the place and hustle to sell photos and some merch and all those things with very little TV or anything else and make ends meet. That's a lot of hustle," Hunter said. "Or, you can be here with none of that hustle or very little of it on your end. And just be in this system doing as well or more likely than not better than you would do outside of this system as someone who is succeeding to some level at NXT."

"There are people in the system who might not ever make it to the main roster, but this a place to make a living. You can do well here. If it's not and you want to try to make a living elsewhere, that's cool too," Hunter added.

The "hustle" of being your own boss is a grind, especially for the Young Bucks, who live on the West Coast and often-times travel to the East Coast or Midwest for bookings, especially for Ring of Honor. They also travel to Japan for New Japan shows. Rolling Stone reporter Aaron Oster asked if they're thinking about making a change.

"We've been talking about that, because we're getting burned out. There's only so much you can do with this style," Matt said. "I'll be honest, I am burned out. We're being patient. We're waiting for whatever will bless us and our families the most," Nick added.

"We're waiting for the right offer. When we do settle down, it's going to be for the right dollar amount. We're thinking of our families, so it'll be what's best for our families, 'cause we'll be able to maximize our time at home while still being wrestlers," Matt said.

As a result, the Young Bucks confirmed that they are in the middle of a "bidding war" between promotions trying to lock down one company to be their exclusive U.S. home.

Will that one company eventually be WWE? The Young Bucks said "right now, no," mainly because they would have to start in NXT, which would require uprooting their family from California to Florida.

"For one thing, I have a young family. I just couldn't uproot my family for less money than I make right now," Matt said. "If we had an offer to go straight to TV or something, well that's just a whole different thing. Of course, we'd love to entertain that idea. That's the place to be. It would be fun to do it. Right now though? I don't know."

Nick added, "I just couldn't move my family to Florida at this point. If something changes, then maybe you'll see us there. I own a home in California. Right now, mentally, I need to stay where I'm at. My wife told me three years ago that we're never moving to Florida. I was like, 'Okay, well that rules out WWE then.' But in five years? Who knows, maybe we'll need it."

Matt joked that perhaps five years from now, every one of their independent wrestling colleagues might be "running the place," opening the door for a WWE main roster call-up. "'Hey Bucks, you interested in coming on TV on Monday?'" Who knows? Never say never," Matt said.

In the meantime, the Bucks say they will continue building their brand, both collectively and part of the Bullet Club faction that originated in New Japan.

"Keep making money and support our families doing it. Not get hurt, keep having fun," Matt said when asked what's next for the Bucks.

"As soon as you stop having fun, then why are you doing it? The other thing that's important is to have the respect of your peers. You want everybody to always go, 'Oh you have the Bucks tonight? You're going to have a good one.' The guaranteed good match. It's always important for us to not only have the respect of the fans, but the guys as well. At the end of the day, that's what's important to us."

At the end of the day, they're in a much different position than at the end of their TNA run in 2011 when they hit "rock-bottom" and thought about quitting the business.

"We were at a point, I want to call it 'wrestling rock-bottom.' I was ready to quit," Matt said. "We had been in one of the biggest companies and they didn't know what to do with us. It was really disheartening. Finally we decided that if we were going to do this, we were going to do it right. Your character is supposed to be like yourself, only with the volume turned up. So we just decided to be ourselves. Not these two guys named Max and Jeremy, that's what they called us then. That wasn't us. That was just two dudes out there. So we decided to just be ourselves."

Nick added, "At that point, Matt and I, we pretty much just said, 'Screw it, let's do as much as we can - let's do what we think is cool.' We pretty much brought what we watched during our childhood into our act now, and somehow it worked. I think from that point on, that's when it caught on."

Four years later, they stand in the middle of the big independent wrestling debate - be your own boss, build your own brand, and travel across the world taking bookings, or, if you're good enough, join the buzz-worthy NXT "Independent All-Stars" roster with the hopes of making the big-time?

We'll re-visit this story again, perhaps around the time of WrestleMania 2020.

[ LINK: Full Interview with the Bucks HERE ]

[Torch art credit Marco D'Alfonso (c) PWTorch.com]

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