AEW Producer Explains Wanting To Be A Player-Coach
A current AEW Producer is also a wrestler in the company and he explained why in a recent interview.
Pat Buck is a wrestling veteran who started as a pro wrestler over 20 years ago back in 2001. While Buck never made it big in WWE or any other major promotion, he has done a lot in the business including creating the Create A Pro wrestling school, which is where current AEW stars like MJF and Kris Statlander trained.
From 2019 to April 2022, Buck was a Producer in WWE who was often on television to break up fights. In April 2023, Pat signed with AEW to become a Producer who also gets to wrestle, so it’s a Player-Coach role in the company.
Buck can be seen wrestling on the Ring of Honor brand. When AEW was running live events in the spring prior to the launch of Collision, Buck also wrestled on those shows as well.
In an interview with Sam Roberts on Not Sam Wrestling, Pat Buck explained his vision as a player-coach in AEW.
“I never really had [a run]. Of course, you want that, but I also would be so embarrassed to be the guy trying to get that. I know that’s wrestling. People say, ‘Don’t be in this unless you want to be world champion.’ I beg to differ. Myers [Brian Myers] always says, ‘There are only so many spots for this.’ Know where you are, it doesn’t mean you can’t rise to something.”
“I came on board, it was a conversation with me and Tony [Tony Khan], in terms of wrestling, relating back to Create A Pro alumni, ‘Hey, we really don’t have a developmental place.’ I wasn’t pitching Create A Pro or anything, but I went, ‘You have these people that are basically champions. They didn’t come to be from me just coaching them, I did every drill with them, I wrestled them on shows. I wrestled them at birthday parties. I think I’m a proven asset in that.'”
“You have all these guys on the roster. I remember looking at Powerhouse Hobbs, Satnam Singh, and I went, ‘give them to me on dark matches or live events. I can get ten minutes out of Satnam Singh.’ You only get better from wrestling someone better than you. Let me be the person to do that. I want to be your Brad Armstrong, your Irish Barry Horowitz. “
“On live events, I can go longer with people. That’s how it came to be, an actual player-coach.”
Pat Buck wrestling is about making the talent better, not winning AEW titles
As Pat Buck continued to explain, he doesn’t want to wrestle to win championships and things like that. Instead, he wants to be a coach that makes the talent better.
“[Tony] thought I didn’t want to wrestle. I want to do it, but I want to do it from an actual benefit of the talent. Part of me, I wanted to show my kids, ‘Daddy does this.’ I don’t care about championships. I’m a coach, let me be a player-coach,”
“I’m the only person who wasn’t pitching to wrestle. ‘I do want to wrestle, I love wrestling, but I can’t have it interfere with what I do full-time. Here is what I want to do because I want to wrestle from a coaching perspective, not winning titles, that ain’t me.”