The Butcher Andy Williams speaks about his AEW run.
In November of 2019, The Butcher and The Blade debuted on the ninth episode of AEW Dynamite by ambushing Cody Rhodes. Andy Williams a.k.a. The Butcher recapped their arrivals to All Elite Wrestling while on Josh Nason’s Punch-Out podcast.
The Butcher shared that two weeks before AEW reached out, they received an offer from Ring of Honor. The company presented them with the idea of coming in to be paired with Tyler Bateman and winning the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Titles from Villain Enterprises (Marty Scurll, PCO & Brody King). ROH sent them contracts for the dates they would be needed but those shows were canceled.
Butcher felt that was a sign not to put pen to paper. When they got to AEW, the agent for their debut segment was Billy Gunn. The Butcher stated that he was terrified. He would go on to say that Gunn ended up loving the segment.
It’s so funny because we just had our first ROH match. This is so crazy. I didn’t think about this until right now but, it was a six-man match. So we had gotten offered from ROH to come in and win the Trios belt (with) Tyler Bateman and that was like two weeks before we got the AEW offer and it was supposed to be us three versus Brody King, Marty Scurll and… the dude, the Frankenstein guy?… Yeah, PCO, and we were supposed to come in, beat those guys, win the Six-Man Title. ROH had sent us contract offers but then the shows that they offered us had gotten canceled and I was like, ‘This is bad’ and I remember telling Jess (The Blade), ‘This is an omen. We gotta run from this. This is a bad sign’ and we did, we stuck to our guns, didn’t sign anything and I remember being at the gym, I remember Hana (his wife) being on a Stairmaster and getting a call from Cody (Rhodes), asking if we wanted to come in and do AEW and it blew my mind. So I remember getting there, I remember Billy Gunn being the producer. He was like our agent for that match and I was terrified dude. Like terrified and then they take us in the dark, put us under the ring and stuff like that, so casual. I was in my sh*t, I was in my gear, ran down, get under the ring. Luckily, Cody had that big, extravagant entrance where the lights had to go out and there’s fireworks and everything like that. Matt Knicks, Freelance Wrestling promoter, was in the ring. He’s got a singles match with Cody, like a squash. I’m under the ring and terrified. Like what if this thing doesn’t open, and you’re going through all of this stuff and then it’s like, once I’m out there, what do I do? And we went over it. It’s so crazy dude. It was such a wild ride and it was over and I remember Billy, walking up to Billy and now I know Billy’s mannerisms. At the time, I had no idea. It’s f*cking Billy Gunn and he looks angry and he walks up to me and he was like, ‘Great job man. Great job, great job’ and he’s talking to me super calm and I’m like, oh my God and I’m waiting. I’m like, he’s gonna yell at me and I did something wrong. I had to have done something wrong and he was like — at the time, we were doing a suplex into a backbreaker from Jesse called ‘Full Death’. That was our finish and he was like, ‘When you get the snap, you snap it. You gotta put a little more snap into it’ and I was like, ‘Okay’ and then work week is over. Our work week is over. I talked to Billy Gunn, blah, blah, blah. People are saying, ‘Oh, great job,’ blah, blah, blah. Then things are happening online, ‘Who the hell are these guys?’ Blah, blah, blah and then Cody literally put us in a position where we were in a main angle for like a month, month-and-a-half and I had to learn how to wrestle on TV that week. It was crazy.
It was not until January of 2020 that The Butcher and The Blade were offered AEW contracts. They had been working on per-appearance deals up until that point.
They received their offers after Bash at the Beach where they teamed with MJF to take on Dustin Rhodes, Q.T. Marshall and Diamond Dallas Page. Butcher shared that Nick Jackson and Cody Rhodes offered them their deals at 2:30 in the morning after a night out.
No (we didn’t have a deal with AEW when we debuted). We didn’t have a deal until we wrestled Bash at the Beach which was like months later. We were just by-appearance and it was cool. That was DDP’s last match ever and I remember us being done and me and Jesse (The Blade) being like, ‘Alright. Well, we got nothing booked now. I guess we gotta start calling promoters and start getting the tag team back on the indies and see what happens’ and all that stuff and they waited — that night, I remember all of us being out at a bar. The show had ended, we all went and hung out, ate and dude, hours are going by that we were there and I had to fly to Denmark. I had missed a show in France, Paris, France that night and then had to fly to Denmark from Miami to start a tour but the band had already started the tour, you know what I mean? Because I had missed one show and I’m like, man, I got no contract. I got to wrestle DDP’s last match. That’s really cool and then around 2:30 in the morning, Nick Jackson and Cody (Rhodes) pulled us aside and were like, ‘So, we’re offering you guys both a contract. It’s this. We’re gonna send everything in the mail’ and then I had my contract. Dude, it was crazy man. It’s so crazy and then I didn’t have time to celebrate.
The Bunny a.k.a. Allie has not wrestled since the February 8th episode of Dynamite. Butcher confirmed that she suffered an orbital bone injury but is doing well.
She (The Bunny) like hurt her orbital. She like broke her orbital and yeah, she’s doing really good. I’m sure she’s gonna be back soon. That’s the thing is when something like that — I think she came from an injury too so she was injured for a bit then had a couple matches and got injured. That’s gotta crush your confidence, you know what I mean? But the good thing is since she’s been gone, we’ve been kind of building this new little faction thing up and so when she comes back, it’ll be awesome.
The Butcher and The Blade are currently part of a trio with Kip Sabian. All three were involved in the Blackjack Battle Royal at Double or Nothing.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Josh Nason’s Punch-Out podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
