On a recent episode of AEW Unrestricted, Luther and Serpentico of Chaos Project were on the podcast with Aubrey Edwards and Tony Schiavone. Serpentico confirmed that AEW President and CEO Tony Khan was the person that paired him and Luther together, and Serpentico talked about how that came about.
He saw us randomly in the back just kind of hanging out together and stuff, and we have a unique,” Serpentico noted. “And he approached Lenny first. I heard through the grapevine that he might have an idea of putting us together. He gave us a little tryout match to see how we gel, and that was that. He just put us in a match that night.”
Luther then talked about how he got into AEW. Luther was one of the first few names pitched as the leader of Dark Order.
“I get a call from Chris Jericho, and he says that they’re looking maybe for a manager for a new group they’re putting together, Dark Order. He had brought my name up, and they were interested in it,” Luther recalled. “I sent in an audition tape, and they liked it and wanted to see another one. So I sent another one in. They liked it. So I sent another one in, and then they brought me in to do a screen test, but then there were some other people also in the running for the same gig.
“Even just that alone I thought was really cool to be mentioned with all those people, and they said that they liked it. I didn’t know about the group, so I watch some tapes of [Evil] Uno and Stu [Grayson]. I kind of did something to what they were doing at the time, which isn’t anything like what they’re doing now. So I was teaching at a school in Salem, and so I just had the students kind of be Creepers or whatever. I used them for my audition tape.”
Serpentico made his AEW debut during the pandemic. He took on QT Marshall and Dustin Rhods in a tag team match, and he revealed his situation at the time.
“That match was right after all the bookings ceased. The indies shut down,” Serpentico said. “Because I’m local, I had at least 10 to 15 bookings on that week alone. Well, there goes my rent because at that time, I was actually living off of independent wrestling. I’m really proud of that, but at the same time, because I was living off independent wrestling, once it shut down, which no one ever thought would happen, now how am I going to pay rent? What am I gonna do?
“I have some savings, but eventually, it’s going to go away, and I’ve known QT for such a long time. We trained together at Bubba and Devon’s school in Florida. He reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I know you’re hurting for bookings and stuff, and this might not lead to anything. I can’t promise anything but show up. You want to wrestle me? It’d be cool.’ And I personally thought, alright, this would be a nice way to go out, wrestle one of my friends. Wrestle Dustin and then that’s it because I wasn’t expecting anything to come from it.”
Serpentico admitted that he thought that match would be his last. He discussed why he had that mindset.
“They kept calling me back, and I told QT this months after. My intention was that to be my last match,” Serpentico revealed. “I like to say I’m a very forward thinker, and I didn’t think I could kick start my career after a world pandemic to where I was. It’s gonna be really hard. Wrestling was hot. It was great, and then once everything shuts down, it’s like a motor. It has to slowly start turning its gears again, and eventually, it’ll get going again, but as it were, you’re not gonna be able to make a living off of it. So that was my last match, and he kept just calling me back, and here I am now.
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit AEW Unrestricted with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
