The Butcher & The Blade Reveal Scrapped ROH Title Plans Before Signing With AEW
The Butcher & The Blade were set for ROH Title runs before joining AEW
Jun 12, 2023
The Butcher and The Blade have never tasted championship gold during their three-year plus run in All Elite Wrestling, but had they not signed with the company then they would’ve almost certainly won titles in Ring of Honor.
The Butcher (Andy Williams) revealed on Josh Nason’s Punch-Out podcast that the team were set to join forces with Tyler Bateman to win the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Championships, but ended up becoming ‘All Elite’ instead:
“It’s so funny because we just had our first ROH match,” began Butcher. “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 s***, 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****** 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.”
Now that ROH and AEW are both under the same umbrella, it remains to be seen if The Butcher & The Blade make their way over to ROH for a taste of gold.
H/T: POST Wrestling