The Butcher Credits Cody Rhodes For Bringing Him & The Blade To AEW, Details Talks With ROH In 2019

The Butcher discusses how he and The Blade were signed by AEW.

The popular tag team made their debut for All Elite Wrestling in November 2019, as they attacked Cody Rhodes on an episode of AEW Dynamite. Since then, the duo have had high stakes matches with the likes of the Young Bucks, FTR, Darby Allin & Sting, and the Blackpool Combat Club.

Before signing with AEW, the duo had started to pick up steam on the independent scene, competing in promotions like BEYOND Wrestling, C4 Wrestling, and Limitless Wrestling.

According to The Butcher himself, there were plans to bring him and The Blade in to Ring Of Honor at one point. The duo were set to team with Tyler Bateman, and would eventually take the ROH World Six Man Tag Team Championships off of Villain Enterprises. Instead, the shows that the duo were supposed to debut at were canceled, which led to them getting signed by AEW. The Butcher, also known as Andy Williams, explained the situation in a recent interview with Sam Roberts.

“Cody was the man. There was weird things that kind of happened at that time. ROH was going to bring us in with Tyler Bateman as a six man, they wanted us to come in and take the belts from Marty Scurll, PCO, and Brody King. We were communicating back and forth with that and they wanted us to do it in Texas, they did these Texas shows and then out of nowhere, we hadn’t signed anything yet, and those Texas shows got canceled. I remember being like, this is bad dude, we got to pull out. It was kind of weird because me and [The Butcher] kind of argued because he’s been in wrestling for so long, and I want him to have what he needs. He’s such a great person, and he deserves to be with one of the big companies making money in wrestling. I was like, this is bad, bad juju, we gotta like back away. I think a week later, get a call from Cody and he’s like, ‘Hey, will you guys come into AEW and do some stuff?’”

The Butcher went on to explain that he always planned on keeping it punk rock when it came to wrestling, as he prefers the vibe of independent wrestling. Butcher also stated that television wrestling has helped him learn how to slow down in the ring.

“My intentions with wrestling were to always keep it super punk rock, wrestling in VFW halls and stuff like that. I fell in love with indie wrestling, I thought indie wrestling was — you have a different scene every single night, everything’s exciting, you know what I mean? Yeah, there’s shows that are boring and stuff like that, for the most part, the venue is always different, the people are always different, that is something that I love. Growing up a punk rock kid, I feel more comfortable in a VFW hall than I do an arena. I still feel [that way]. The arena’s are — it’s not stagnant, but it’s the same scene every week. Like a year in, I was like, ah man, I haven’t wrestled in a venue venue in a long time, I’ve been in these arenas for like a year. How can I make this now make sense and be fun. The cool part is wrestling in an arena makes me slow down and be able to pay attention, and then you realize the difference between indie wrestling and TV wrestling. That’s the thing, I had to learn that on the fly. [The Butcher] had experience wrestling on TV, I had none. That first day, oh my god dude. We hit our finish on Cody and the first person standing there when we got to the back with Billy Gunn. Billy has one of those faces where until he smiles, you don’t know where to gauge him. At that time, I didn’t know him at all so I was terrified. He was like, ‘Hey, next time you do your finish, put a little more snap on that.’ He was super smiley, he said ‘You did a great job!’ I never put that in my head, I never put arena wrestling in my head ever.”

The Butcher and The Blade last wrestled on the September 15, 2023 edition of AEW Rampage, where they teamed with Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett to take on The Hardys & The Lucha Brothers.

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