Evil Uno And Stu Grayson Reveal Contract Offer They Received Before AEW Signing

On a recent episode of AEW Unrestricted, Evil Uno and Stu Grayson of Dark Order were on with Aubrey Edwards and Tony Schiavone about Dark Order's current standing as well as their career on the indies. On the indies, Uno and Grayson were the "Super Smash Brothers", and they talked about why they felt they had to change their gimmick.

"Honestly, we were doing something called the 'SSB back on the independents," Uno stated. "I was a video game guy for about a decade back when I was Player Uno, and we kind of wanted to distance ourselves from the name and also from being video game guys at the time because it kind of pigeon-holed us to being a specific role.

"And we couldn't really get much growth, much story stuff when you were just two little guys playing video games, and so we wanted to switch around. And so we made drastic changes to become heels and be more focused on — originally it was not even cult focused when we were doing it on the independents, but it kind of grew into that because we started running a school and our students would become the Creepers that were at AEW.

"It was a win for us to have them travel with us, build bridges and take bumps every now and then so that we don't think bumps," Grayson pointed out.

The name of their tag team, of course, originates from the iconic Nintendo series. Uno and Grayson talk about if they ever received a cease and desist from Nintendo from using the name,

"So everyone thinks we did and that's why we dropped the name, but Nintendo didn't care," Uno revealed. "As long as we're not selling anything Nintendo focused, they wouldn't really matter, and to be honest, we weren't making enough money for them to be bothered.

"Also, in the last few years, we dropped it to just SSB just in case someone could be like maybe it's something else," Grayson added. "The Super Sexy Brothers. That's what it was."

There have been a number of cases of AEW talent receiving a contract offer after their AEW offer including Eddie Kingston who got an offer from WWE after his Dynamite appearance. Uno reveals a similar case but with a different wrestling promotion.

"So we were talking with them before AEW was even announced," Uno recalled. "They had told us they had something in the works. They couldn't tell us really the details because of whatever legal so on. They said, 'If anything's offered your way, do know we're about to offer you something,' and mysteriously enough, Ring of Honor offered us something literally two days after that this discussion."

Uno and Grayson later took questions from fans. One fan asked which tag team they used as a blue print for themselves.

"I never really had a blueprint. I'll be honest, we kind of just feed off each other because I know his strengths [and] he knows mine," Uno said. "There was Kevin Steen (Kevin Owens) and El Generico (Sami Zayn) on the independents who were very crucial to our success. They also had a similar dynamic and so our dynamic kind of became similar just by being friends. I love the British Bulldogs. I love the Hart Foundation.

"We grew up on some of the best tag team wrestling," Grayson noted. "The years of Edge and Christian, and The Dudley Boyz and the Hardys and so we got to watch a lot of that, but in terms of what we became, a thing, that is really important for us is that we are two completely different individuals. And even if we're a tag team or in singles, we are our own people. There's not a lot of teams that have that so I think that's one of the big advantages for us."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit AEW Unrestricted with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.