It was not an easy week to be a pro wrestling fan, or a pro wrestling blogger. Some might think a business and a fandom as familiar with death as this one is would get used to losing people, become numb to saying goodbye. I foolishly told myself that no one’s passing would be harder for me to write about than Jay Briscoe’s, and seven months later Bray Wyatt’s was.
So I figured that as long as I was lucky enough to have this job, chances are I’d be floored by another wrestler gone too soon. And last
Sunday it happened when AEW announced that Ben “PAC” Satterley was gone.
Partly it was because many of us had just watched him wrestle the night before. A lot of us watched him break down over the sudden loss of another wrestler, Andy “The Butcher” Williams, only a couple weeks ago. It only then dawned on me how rarely PAC — or Neville, as he was known in WWE — broke character, and I know I wasn’t alone in that realization.
I know I wasn’t alone in any of the emotions I experienced after we learned PAC died last Sunday afternoon, or while reading his friends and colleagues remembrances and memorials to him, or after watching an amazing, cathartic Dynamite. Because I shared that with all of you here at Cageside Seats.
Now, admittedly the idea for this article came to me when I realized I’d done nothing for our new Mailbag feature this week… after promising it would be a weekly feature when we launched it just a couple weeks back. But I did already tell you I’ve been in a bit of a glass case of emotion. Anyway…
This collection of comments and Feed posts about PAC isn’t a “best of”, nor does it include everything the community created this week that made me cry, smile, laugh, or shout, while helping me not focus on my sadness and anger, but to instead appreciate Satterley, and the other people and things I enjoy, or that otherwise make my life better or easier.
Hopefully you have or will find them somehow therapeutic, too. Share anything you came across from your fellow Cagesiders that was helpful or that you’d like to shout out. Use our comment sections and The Feed to continue processing PAC’s death, or to distract yourself for a little while.
Point is, this community rocks — in bad times, and good. Thanks for being a part of it.
Tom Van Dam: Moments like this is a reminder these are human beings, with families.
I thought we were done with wrestling deaths. I don’t even know what to say. My heart is broken. I send everyone in his family and all is other fans a hug, and a shoulder to cry on.
God must’ve needed a new cruiserweight champion.
Thank you for being ours. ;…( We love you, Pac.
DarthJanus: This is a good time to remind all of us: Companies don’t matter. Corporate rivalries don’t matter. Human beings matter. Hug your loved ones, tamper your vitriol for what you don’t like, and be excellent to each other. PAC would want that.
Jay Lethal Weapon 4: It’s interesting how celebrity deaths can genuinely tug at your emotions in a fashion not altogether logical when considering our closeness to the person involved. This feels more devastating to me than the deaths of any number of random persons I never saw on TV. It made me reflect on a C.S. Lewis quote that, while written about war, resonates to me here:
All the animal life in us, all schemes of happiness that centred in this world, were always doomed to a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realize it. Now the stupidest of us know. We see unmistakably the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it.
It’s easy to think “hug your loved ones and treat every moment as if it’s your last.” It’s more difficult to steadily employ this after the shock wears off.
So maybe the trick isn’t to force yourself to love harder as if it’s against your nature to do so.
Rather, we need to train ourselves to love better consistently, to the point where it becomes second-nature even in a world of so much cruelty and so many excuses to hate.
My prayers are with Satterly’s friends and family. I will try to make my actions match that same energy. I won’t always succeed. But I’ll try.
BrettDHitman: I’m from Pac’s home town Newcastle, he first came ‘home’ after his time as Neville, in 2019 for WCPW / Defiant. I was there, the atmosphere was off the charts for the hometown hero, chants of ‘Toon Toon Pac and white army’, ‘We love you bastard, we do’. It’s a shame his opponent turned out to be proper scummy, but I’m glad I got to see Pac in the flesh and let him know how much he was adored by the Geordies.
Kidd is Alive: PAC was the kind of wrestler that could make anything work. Even the silly Mighty Mouse gimmick looked cool on him. He helped making NXT into the insane product that it became in the 2010s, which in turn modernized the in-ring work for the WWE as a whole, at least for a while. He made a Cruiserweight Title run, meant to be a lowcard feature, into a career-changing act. He was a great foe for the Elite in the first years of AEW, a place where he probably would have won a world title if it wasn’t for Covid and visa issues. Even then, he helped making new stars and putting other talent over, just watch the OC match. All of this while being incredible in the ring and looking legit as hell. Wrestling is gonna miss you, Bastard. I, for one, surely will.
PoundSterling: As good as everything else he ever did was, it’s the post-WWE Dragon Gate run I’d like to highlight. The dude left WWE and went back to the place he made his name for the first time and helped establish a new generation of top guys for them. Guys like KZY and Ben-K were made by that short run and it’s such a fun series of matches. Will always love him jumping Yoshino during the British national anthem.
Maybe the most proficient and skilled wrestler to ever come out of England (and that’s saying something)
Nilluminator: Adrian Neville got me back into wrestling at NXT Takeover Fatal 4-Way. In a ring with 3 supremely talented wrestlers, his presence stood out. His confidence, his swagger, and his immaculate athleticism were testimony to why he was the champ going into the match and coming out.
Was blown away by PAC’s Dragon Gate matches. When he brought back the Rings of Saturn after his main roster debut, it looked like vicious AF.
Nobody has ever hit a poison frankensteiner the way PAC did. He just snapped it like flipping a switch. All his movements were things of beauty.
Also, if I’m not misremembering, he might have been the first person to almost pin Seth Rollins during his chickenshit champion era.
Gravity may have forgotten you, but we’ll always remember you.
Only love.
hotshotrobot: In 2010, I saw PAC work Dragongate USA at the Miramar Theater in Milwaukee, in front of maybe 100 fans. Even back then, I realized this dude was a star in the making.
Orange Cassidy is one of my current favorite performers in wrestling. He doesn’t get anywhere close to as popular as he is now without having PAC as his foil. Their match at Revolution 2020 is a master class in character-based story while not sacrificing in-ring action. It’s my favorite AEW match and one of my favorite matches of all time.
It’s crazy how we wrestling fans glom onto these people whose work resonates so much to us. I hope his family knows how beloved he was amongst we fans. OUR BASTARD.
Toledo Joe: I really enjoyed PAC,as a performer. I’ll share one minor thing that now seems poignant. Back during CIVID- era AEW, when PAC had not been able to perform with the promotion for some time, when he returned, he cut a promo in his great Geordie accent that began, “Did you think I’d be gone . . . FOREVER?!?” Since then, my son and I regularly quote that to each other (e.g., when one of us has been away for awhile), attempting to do his accent. I’m going to keep doing that. [Denseman kindly provided this video]
ap_ncl: As a fellow Geordie, it meant a lot to see him succeed and firmly establish himself as one of the very best in his field. It means more to know he left such a positive impression on those he worked with, and that wrestling was clearly a better place with him in it. This is so sad.
celtic_core: It amazes me how connected we all are – it’s just unfortunately never more significant and clear until after a shared loss.
RIP Pac and Butcher. You’ve brought people together.
blorky: As you get older, your friends, your loved ones, your family members, people you never met who’s work you love and respect, strangers who made your life better, they’ll pass and you wind up living a life filled with people shaped holes. Tell people that they’re part of life’s little grace notes while you have that chance.
Gonna practice what I preach. Thank you CS members. You’ve made my life better. Not “won the lottery” better, or “saved my life” better, but “I’m part of a fandom that cares about the things I care about” better. Some days, that’s what you get, and some days, that’s more than enough. Thank you all.
