Evil Uno And Stu Grayson On Who Was Originally Floated Around To Be The Exalted One
Dark Order's Stu Grayson and Evil Uno were on the latest episode of AEW Unrestricted with Aubrey Edwards and Tony Schiavone. They discussed the fallout of the December 2019 brawl that caused a change in direction for Dark Order.
"So we had our December beating at the very very end of the year, which was universally hated. That's the one [with all the punching].
"Those were just random extras we had on the show," Grayson added. "That day there were so many bodies, and every time we have extras, we would take the time to teach them the throne he (Uno) would sit on. And if you can't do this, don't do it. You can't just stand there or choke someone with your foot. You don't have to throw punches. If there's something you can't do, don't, and then this whole segment was a catastrophe from beginning to end."
Grayson and Uno then talked about working with Tony Khan on "The Exalted One" character. They noted the many rumored names before Brodie Lee was introduced as the leader of Dark Order.
"So because of that segment, we had a discussion with Tony about integrating a leader character," Uno recalled. "But to be entirely honest, we genuinely didn't know who it was for several months. We personally didn't know who it was until three weeks before.
"We were told, 'This is what we're going for, but at any moment, it could change.' It's wrestling," Grayson stated. "Anything can happen.
"There was some names floated around," Uno added. "Matt Hardy was floating around. This was going around, but Dr. Luther was floated around originally. There were other people that weren't directly told to us I heard that were float around as ideas, but it landed on Mr. Brodie Lee, and honestly, that was the best thing that could have happened for us."
Grayson spoke more on Lee becoming the leader of Dark Order. He revealed Lee's reaction to their hesitation over if they wanted Lee to be part of a group again.
"When Brodie was coming over at first, we weren't even sure if we wanted to propose to him to be The Exalted One because we thought, 'He's been in a team the whole time. Now he's probably gonna want to have a singles run,'" Grayson pointed out. "But he was like, 'No, no, I'm in guys. Let's f**king do this!' Alright, let's go."
John Silver and Alex Reynolds were on the first recruits to Dark Order. Grayson and Uno talked about the process of recruiting them and the reasoning as to why they were chosen.
"Well, the idea was that when we started recruiting, we knew we wouldn't be able to recruit Marko [Stunt] and Jungle Boy because they were starting their own gimmick, their own storyline," Grayson admitted. "So we knew we would have to approach people that are on the show but are ultimately useless at the moment. They would bring them over, John and Alex, and they would make them job and job and they had no purpose. So with that, we said, 'Hey, we know they can go. We wrestled them once years ago.'
"We wrestled on the same promotions, and so we know of them. We had befriended previously," Uno noted. "On the first few shows though, they were losing within seconds to [Jon] Moxley or losing within seconds to LAX, and so to us, as a story beat, if we were going to make winners out of losers, your first few show you've already told people these people are the losers. We know they're very talented. So when we did our Scientology pitch, they're the first people I suggested. I said, 'We can make these guys at least last more than a minute on these shows.' And honestly, they're very entertaining on their own, and let's give them the platform. Here they are today."
Dark Order have gained their fanbase in large part due to their skits in BTE. Uno and Grayson talked about how BTE turned them babyface and how BTE came out necessity for them.
"That was the turning point on where we became de facto good guys," Uno admitted. "We became too likable honestly is what it got to.
"If we had a crowd, there would have been no other choice but to put us on TV a whole lot more and make us turn babyface," Grayson pointed out. "Because at that point, were we even the bad guys?
"Honestly, we only really started doing BTE because it was kind of a fight or flight situation," Uno said. "We weren't certain what our positions were anymore because we had been gone for four months, and Alex and John also didn't know where their positions were because they were unsure if management, people externally liked them. We all knew we had personalities. We could do promos, and we could do the sinister videos, but you can't really show who you are as a person that way, and so we thought BTE would be a good asset because it's more of a comedic show so we can kind of be more lighthearted."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit AEW Unrestricted with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.