Mark Andrews and Trent Seven discuss Butch a.k.a. Pete Dunne’s success.
Entering his fifth year under the WWE umbrella, Butch, formerly known as ‘Pete Dunne’ is now a member of the SmackDown roster. He is currently aligned with Sheamus and Ridge Holland and last Sunday, he made his WrestleMania debut by accompanying Sheamus and Holland to the ring.
At the age of 28, Butch is a 14-year veteran in the sport of pro wrestling. His longtime friends and colleagues Mark Andrews and Trent Seven discussed Butch’s success during the latest ‘My Love Letter to Wrestling’ podcast. Andrews expressed that Butch was not appreciated by those outside of his inner circle of supporters until he received the stamp of approval from William Regal in 2017.
Andrews went on to add that after that, everyone else followed suit and promotions such as PROGRESS began to suddenly present Butch in a more prominent light.
Andrews: And going back to what you said about Pete [Butch] a minute ago, a really nice touch about Pete being so advanced and so far ahead of everybody else in-ring. I mean he still is to be honest. The nicest thing is that he wasn’t appreciated really by anyone in the scene other than people close to him until William Regal saw him and Regal saw him and of course Regal sees talent when he sees it and suddenly, soon as he gave him the kind of, this kid is the future, everyone leaped on because they couldn’t see it before and they’re like okay, yeah, yeah. Suddenly, PROGRESS [Wrestling] booked him really well and suddenly everyone was like oh, if Regal said it then we’ll all do it. It was like ah! We knew for years.
Trent joined in on the conversation and both he and Andrews talked about how proud they are of Butch’s recent success. Seven dove into his history with Butch and Tyler Bate as ‘British Strong Style’ and being the front men for the launch of NXT UK.
Andrews: This past weekend, Pete Dunne [Butch] was on WrestleMania.
Seven: Just bypassed that [Andre The Giant Memorial] Battle Royal business.
Andrews: Straight to a storyline with The New Day, where the match was pretty much all about him and honestly, I was watching it so happy. I felt so proud. How did you feel watching that?
Seven: It’s… obviously, the answer is just utter pride. Just so, so chuffed for him because he’s by far and above — you know, we all blow each other’s trumpets but he is by far and above probably the most professional and talented performer I’ve ever worked with. I don’t know how he does it. Whether he’s part-Jesus, don’t know, but he’s just — you know, and I look up to him a lot, you know what I mean? It doesn’t matter about the age difference or the age gap and I think that’s why the whole British Strong Style thing worked so well is because I would learn so much from Tyler [Bate] about gym and working out and stuff and the same with Pete but the performance side of it with Pete, he just seemed to be so much more advanced than everyone else and I was like my God, how are you — you’re a freak alien. Just an alien performer but, to watch it happen was, you know, obviously it’s gonna get me gushing but when I started with the company, we all got signed, there was a lot of pressure on our shoulders because it was — no matter however anyone wants to look at it, we were the little epicenter of the buzz that was going around Britain at the moment. So we knew it was going to be based around Pete and Tyler and me and then obviously Mark had gotten involved because obviously, you were with TNA at the time, right? You were with IMPACT at the time so that was another big thing and that was another big story that added a lot of build to it so it was a lot of pressure on our shoulders and I remember when we first signed, the first goal was obviously just to do this two-day [United Kingdom Championship] tournament and just blow the world away. Just absolutely blow the world away.
This past Thursday on NXT UK, Mark Andrews made his return to the weekly TV program. Coming out of the 4/7 show, Ilja Dragunov retained the NXT UK Title by defeating Roderick Strong along with Meiko Satomura calling out Isla Dawn for 4/14.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit ‘My Love Letter to Wrestling’ with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
