All Elite Wrestling fans have endured a lot over the last few weeks. We have seen a show dedicated to Rebel Tanea Brooks, who is currently in the vicious throes of ALS. Andy Williams, guitarist for Every Time I Die and known to wrestling fans as The Butcher, died after an indie match in September. We watched Steve Borden take a bad landing in the ring, and we felt that impact and hoped he was okay. Who knows when Steve will be back? Now, Benjamin Satterley, known across multiple wrestling companies as PAC, has passed away.
That’s a lot to deal with in a short period of time.
When a professional wrestler dies, the first thought of most internet denizens is, “Why did that happen? What substance were they addicted to that made them die so young? They must have been On Something.”
It’s always “How did they die?”
It’s never “What did they leave behind?”
Why do humans think we get to pick when and how we die? Death doesn’t come on a Google calendar schedule, arriving when it is most convenient for you. The Reaper shows when he shows, whether you are snug in bed or standing in the grocery store, trying to decide which frozen pizza you want for dinner. We die alone, we die muddy, and that’s the end of the story. There’s not a damn thing glamorous about it.
I don’t care how Andy Williams died. I don’t care how Benjamin Satterley died.
They’re gone.
And what do we do now?
We grieve.
We cry.
We move past the sadness and move into gratefulness.
It’s different as a wrestling fan. You get somebody going out there every week, fighting against the things most people find abhorrent, and it gives us strength. A lot of us don’t have other or better role models. We needed PAC to flail himself against Andrade El Idolo. We needed the Butcher to throw himself into big gnarly dudes like Claudio Castagnoli because who else was gonna do it? Wrestlers are our avatars. They fight for us, and they fight as us.
Kings, they were, now lost to the aether.
Jesus, when did we stop being nice to each other, and how can we get back to that place? It’s not that difficult. Are we screwed forever as a society? From what multiple people have reported since their passing, Ben and Andy didn’t seem to think so. They took care of the people around them like it was nothing. No skin off their noses.
Gods, I want to be like that.
Don’t you?
Tonight, AEW Dynamite will be a tribute show for PAC. I will watch. I have to. Because without it, I cannot grieve fully. Jon Moxley is gonna say words, and I’m gonna cry. I still have a difficult time dealing with Dusty Rhodes and Roddy Piper being gone. Mention those men, and I will cry immediately. They meant something to me.
So did Andy. So did PAC.
It is hard to explain that to a non-fan. To talk about how Andy and PAC showed up for us, the fans, match after match. How they carved a trench into our souls. How we looked forward to them showing up on our screens, being our surrogate friends. We marveled at what they could do with only the slightest inkling of what they were like.
Good gods, we Sickos are exhausted and sad. And yet, we need these tribute shows. They’re necessary for the whole pro wrestling community. It doesn’t matter if you’re at home by yourself watching the show on television, sitting in the crowd at the live event, or watching from a distance at a noisy bar. We hear the ten-bell salute, we watch the matches and vignettes, and we know that even in the face of tragedy, we aren’t alone in our grief. Those shows help us move on into gratefulness, the joy of having seen some of the best in the business give their all for the business and for us. Tribalism has no place here.
Tribute shows are for celebration. They’re for recognition and remembrance.
They’re for closure.
Is everybody in?
The ceremony is about to begin.
You can watch AEW Dynamite at 8:00 PM EST on regular cable on the TBS network, on HBOMax in the US, or outside the US on MyAEW.
