Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson's AEW Group Finally Has a Name

By Connor Casey

Bryan Danielson pitched an idea back in February to form a faction with Jon Moxley, one that could mold the young stars of AEW in their image. Moxley hesitated at first, saying that he only wanted to align with someone he had bled alongside. This resulted in a match between the pair at Revolution which Moxley narrowly won, but when the two kept brawling after the match William Regal arrived to knock some sense into both. Regal then positioned himself as their manager while the two began working together as a tag team, which included a win over the Varisty Blonds on this week's Dynamite. 

Moxley grabbed a microphone after the match and cut a promo about his respect for both Regal and Danielson, then said anyone who wanted to join the group would have to get in "the hard way." He then revealed its name — the Blackpool Combat Club. 

Danielson previously mentioned rising stars like Wheeler Yuta, Daniel Garcia and Lee Moriarty as potential members. Yuta has already indicated his interest by getting in Regal's face last week, while Garcia (whom Danielson has joked about being his father) seemingly went the other way by joining the Jericho Appreciation Society and embracing his status as a "sports entertainer."

"The idea would be, because I just talked about The Young Bucks and their style of wrestling, and a lot of the older generation not getting it. Part of the idea is to be in that older generation, being a guy that says, 'Hey, there's too much fooling around here," Danielson explained on the Masked Man Show last month. "Cut out the crap. Mox, you and me, we're going to show these kids what wrestling is all about.'"

"You take somebody like Mox, who in my mind, you think of, ok, if you take the best brawler in the world, then you take the best technical wrestler in the world, you put them together and teach these kids violence as opposed to comedy, and all the different stories that can come out of that. Like, 'Hey, I don't like your style of wrestling.' The idea of saying , '2point0, you're not good mentors to Daniel Garcia', even though they have a lot of experience and they're very good. That gives them some sort of thing to fight against from a character perspective. Same thing with Matt Sydal who's been all over the world. I really like it, and I think it's a good avenue for storytelling with the idea of mentorship. I think it works really well in Japan," he continued. "The idea of teaming with Moxley is just an idea of like, ok, if you were to ask me, 'Who would I want to help me train the next generation of wrestlers?' I don't think people would instinctively think Moxley, but in my head, he and I have slightly different takes on wrestling, but they're complementary takes on wrestling. Him and me teaching the new generation of wrestlers what this is really about is an interesting philosophical idea to me."

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