Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows Explain Why They Returned To WWE
The Good Brothers duo consisting Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows have opened up about why they chose to return to WWE.
Former WWE Tag team Champions Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows returned after two years away when they came to the aid of AJ Syles on the October 10th episode of Raw. That would lead to The OC facing off against The Judgment Day at Crown Jewel, which led to The Judgment Day group picking up the win thanks to Rhea Ripley interfering.
The OC group finally got some backup on Raw’s November 7th episode when Mia Yim also returned to WWE to help Styles, Anderson & Gallows deal with their “Rhea problem” as it has been called.
In April 2020, shortly after participating in the memorable WrestleMania 36 Boneyard Match main event match with Styles against The Undertaker, Anderson & Gallows were released by WWE even though they re-signed new deals with the company in 2019.
After their WWE run ended, Anderson & Gallows worked for Impact Wrestling for two years, they also wrestled in NJPW often and even appeared on AEW television as well. Anderson is still the IWPG NEVER Openweight Champion in NJPW with an expectation that he’ll defend the title on his time.
During an appearance on WWE’s After The Bell podcast, Anderson & Gallows discussed their return to the company. Gallows spoke about how he could tell there was a positive vibe in WWE.
“We had gone back and forth with Uncle Allen [AJ Styles] before the regime change, but we weren’t talking about anything. We had done the two years at IMPACT and were thankful to them, it was a great two years there, but we wanted to recharge our batteries and hit Japan pretty hard. We were like, ‘let’s take this time and go to Japan through the New Year and then make a decision on what we want to do.'”
“We’re in Dallas, doing our last match with the Motor City Machine Guns and we get a text, ‘Hey guys, can we talk?’ Well, s**t, here we go. Maybe we should text back. It was a text from Triple H, but we didn’t know if this was something we could do or wanted to do or what was going to come out of it after what happened the last time. We got on the phone and could feel the new vibe and how positive everything was. One thing led to another from there.”
Anderson went on to explain that they always had a good relationship with Triple H, who made it clear that things had changed in WWE since Anderson & Gallows were last there when Vince McMahon was in charge. Anderson spoke about how nice it was to have that conversation with Triple H again.
“We always had a good relationship with Triple H. He was our guy when our contract was coming up at the end of 2019 and it was Hunter who we talked with and ended up signing a new deal. We had a good relationship. That’s why, when we got released, I held some angst if we’d ever go back or ever speak again. We didn’t talk to Triple H for two and a half years. There was one text in July 2021, Gallows sent a selfie of me and him drinking beer to Triple H saying, ‘Hope you’re doing well baby boy.’ Three days later, I’m like, ‘Did Hunter ever text you back?’ ‘No.’ A day later, ‘Hunter wrote back and said I hope you’re doing well.’ Besides that, we didn’t speak at all.”
“We were just getting home from an IMPACT weekend, it was our final weekend, we get home, do a FaceTime with Hunter, we talked and asked how the families were. We got asked if we wanted to come back, talked through our issues, and said, ‘that was then, this is now, let’s push forward and go.’ That was it. Getting chills now thinking about it because I didn’t think we’d ever have that talk. Not just the business talk, but to get the personal talk out. It was nice to get all that on the table, and now we’re going forward. We still had to go back to Japan, we had a 10-day tour, I had a singles match with (Hiroshi) Tanahashi, then go to England for New Japan. Nobody knew we had planned to do October in New York City.”
Shortly after Anderson & Gallows returned to WWE, it was reported that they had signed “big money deals” to come back although no terms were ever revealed.