Evil Uno And Stu Grayson Say The Were At Risk Of Being Cut By AEW Due To Travel Restrictions

The Dark Order's Evil Uno and Stu Grayson spoke with the Ottawa Sun about their time in wrestling, changing their team name in AEW, and the fear of being cut by AEW due to travel restrictions between Canada and the U.S.

Originally going by Super Smash Brothers, AEW asked them to switch it up since that name was a video game property of Nintendo.

"They didn't want to use [the Super Smash Brothers] name for obvious reasons; it's the property of Nintendo," Grayson said. "They wanted us to come up with a new name. Uno and I got on the phone, we started pitching ideas to each other. We had, I think, five names, we sent them to The Young Bucks and they told us The Dark Order was the one they liked the most."

When it comes to developing their gimmicks, Uno noted the freedom wrestlers have to come up with initial ideas, which then run through the different EVPs and AEW President Tony Khan.

"What's great about AEW is we have a sense of freedom for what we want to do," Uno said. "There is no writer in AEW. It all goes through [executive vice-presidents Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega and the Jackson brothers] and Tony Khan. They have final say. When we initially started, they had no TV show to explain our characters. We had masked men with us, but we had no way of properly explaining what that was. So we pitched that we explain it on TV, that we were a Scientology-like cult. From there, it blossomed."

Much like other AEW stars who lived outside of the States, Uno and Grayson were worried of being cut by the promotion when the pandemic hit earlier this year and countries began locking down. The duo had considered moving to the U.S., but wrestling connections in Canada have kept them from moving away.

"We travel every two weeks [to Florida] and quarantine in between," Uno said. "We don't leave our houses; that's a stress. There was a time where it was very uncertain for both of us because we couldn't make it to work for several months, so we were at risk of being cut. We didn't know the scope of what COVID would be like. We also didn't know what kind of financial hit AEW was going to take. It was stressful at first, but now it feels like the norm. We have deep roots in this area, we helped build up this whole wrestling scene over the past 15 years. We're still within the decision phase."