AEW Dynamite Brodie Lee Tribute

When I decided to start writing up Dynamite last year, Phil and I thought the best way to document it would be the classic DVDVR Workrate Report style that Phil, TomK, and DEAN popularized. Talking about what worked and what didn't work is a satisfying way to talk about a pro wrestling show, with certain benefits over just writing up the show linearly. But after watching this episode in its entirety, a typical Workrate Report didn't really feel appropriate. 

There was plenty of wrestling on this show, plenty of in ring to praise and criticize, but a seemingly healthy man just a year or two older than I am dying unexpectedly makes criticizing a weak bodyslam or poorly laid out match seem a little inconsequential. These wrestlers all lost a brother, a friend, a mentor, and I couldn't begin to put myself in their boots and what could have been going through their heads as they honored Brodie Lee. 

I did think the wrestling was good on the show, but this show was obviously not going to be about furthering angles in any drastic way, so it was nice to sit back and enjoy it as much as I could, while also feeling crushed every single time they cut to -1 at ringside. Brodie was a guy who I first saw teaming with Necro Butcher as the Hillbilly Wrecking Crew, and within a few years of that was in the best wrestling match of 2014. He was one of my favorite WWE wrestlers of the decade, and around 2014/2015 he was one of maybe three guys who I would most look forward to seeing on TV every week. But up until his passing I did not know one single solitary thing about the man outside of the ring. 

In the days since his passing I've seen nothing but warm, tender stories about the big man, stories that were a joy to read. But the stories were also gutting in their earnestness, in their disclosure, in what delight they revealed about this man whom I've "known" for over a decade without really knowing a single thing about him. Reading stories and seeing photos that reflected his sense of humor, reading stories about the road, reading about how much of a loving father and husband he was, it hit me how much I wished I never had to learn *any* of these stories. I was only hearing these details because so many were mourning, missing a man they had no reason to believe would be out of their lives this soon. I knew not one detail of his non-wrestling life before this week, and while it has both warmed and torn my heart hearing what a great person he was, I wish I was still able to live in that bubble where I only knew him as a wrestler. I wish these stories were still private, wish they were memories shared among friends, stories that didn't need to be shared to the world to illustrate what we were now without. 

This show was probably the most affecting wrestling memorial show we've seen, but it's not like any of us would be actually ghoulish enough to rank wrestling memorial shows. This is not a contest anyone would want to participate in. Owen Hart's show hit me particularly hard, because it was one of the first times I'd seen wrestlers opening up as humans, to remember someone who they unexpectedly lost. Hearing Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston talk about Brodie gave me the same kind of swelling sinus feeling I felt when Mark Henry read a poem about Owen. I could have listened to Kingston talk about Brodie for an hour, as there is nobody else in wrestling who is more brazenly unafraid to directly associate personal pain and emotion to his words. There is just something so difficult about seeing tough competitors with wet eyes, the saddest way to break the fourth wall. 

Wrestling images don't get more powerful than seeing a man's son take part in an in-ring boots ritual that he shouldn't have ever had to learn about. But another that hit me harder was one of the last images in the show closing tribute video, with Brodie's wife smashing her face into his massive beard to give her husband a kiss. Seeing his out of control beard and mustache engulf her face just made me think about how a woman is never going to be annoyed by her husbands absurdly large, scratchy facial hair ever again; a private moment we were all let in on only because that husband is no longer with us. 

AEW put on a great tribute to a man whose kindness, love, and affability obviously inspired and touched nearly everyone he came into contact with. I wish I never had to learn these details of his life, as that would mean he was still spreading that warmth.