The Butcher Recaps His Botched Tan Prior To His AEW Debut
Photo Credit: Lee South / AEW
The Butcher and The Blade recently appeared on AEW Unrestricted and discussed various topics, including their run with the company and Butcher’s mishap with a tanning bed. Here are some highlights:
On winning a championship in their first match together:
Butcher: “We won, in our first tag match, we won a world championship.”
Blade: “[It was in] PWR in Erie Pennsylvania. We won tag team gold [in] our first debut match.”
Butcher: “I had to go on tour, so they took the title away…. I just remember, he told me, we’re winning the titles tonight and I was like, I think I have a tour in like a month, so I don’t know when we’re gonna defend them, so they took them away from us.”
On juggling his band with his wrestling career:
Butcher: “So it was like, for me to go to the dudes, like I remember, I missed my first show in like 22 years, like that was the first time I had ever missed a show, and it was Paris, France, it was like a big city. And I had to tell the guys like, ‘Hey, do you guys mind playing as a four-piece that night so I can like do this match?’ And they were like, yeah totally. The band has been so cool with all this, so it’s pretty insane to have like two full-time jobs like this and that’s like the only I guess blessing out of COVID for me is the fact that the band had to chill out and I could just concentrate on wrestling for a year.”
I think that I’ve always been about art, you know what I mean, in general, like creating art, and I realized that wrestling is like writing a song anyway.”
On being booked like a spectacle:
Butcher: “A lot of times, I was like getting bookings, and people just thought I wasn’t training, they thought I was just a guy that wanted to do a spot on a show. The first like 20 times I wrestled, like I’d get to a town with him and then the promoter would be like, ‘I’ve got this great idea.’ And it was always like, ‘My top heel’s gonna go in there, he’s gonna call you out for being a fraud, and then you’re gonna slap him in the face, he’s gonna slap you in the face and you’re gonna chokeslam him.'”
Blade: “I really wanted to get over the characters, like we’re The Butcher and The Blade. He’s not Andy Williams the guitarist, I’m not Pepper Parks, the 20-year journeyman. We’re completely different characters. I mean, eventually that stuff will come out, but initially I wanted to get those characters over first.”
On a tanning bed misadventure before their AEW debut:
Butcher: “My girlfriend is a pro body builder. So I told Hanna, I’m like, ‘Oh I gotta go tanning, I gotta go tanning, I’m gonna be on TV, I gotta go tan.’ So I go to a tanning bed, I know nothing about tanning beds. And I had tanned prior to, in this tiny bed at this really cheap shot tanning place by my house.”
“I’m pale, you know what I mean, like I’m pink, I have the same skin as like a pig. I went in a new [tanning bed] and that place went out of business, of course, then I went to a new place and went in for like 10 minutes. I did 10 minutes and like at eight minutes, my skin was burning so bad that I had to peace out, like I got out of the thing and I got home and Hanna was mad, oh my god.”
“I’m not kidding you, we never get in arguments but this time, I’ve never seen her mad like that. And she was like, ‘Oh my god! Jesse’s gonna be so mad. What did you do? We’ve got six days, we’ve gotta even this out. What did you do?’ She’s like, ‘Oh god!’
Blade: “That’s the first thing I asked him [if he had untanned armpits], to raise his arms.”
Butcher: “And I had them up and I’m literally the stiffest human being on Earth, like very muscle in my body’s stiff.”
Blade: “I have a good picture, I think it’s from Hellraiser II, where it’s the guy, all of his skin is ripped off, so he’s just like red and behind him on the wall it says, ‘Hell beyond in hell,’ and superimposed is [Butcher’s] head on top of the guy.”
The full episode is available here and on Spotify.
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