Brodie Lee Talks About His AEW Debut, Not Wanting To Be Compared To Bray Wyatt

Brodie Lee, the Exalted One of AEW’s Dark Order, was Chris Jericho’s guest on the latest installment of the Talk is Jericho podcast. It was a great discussion chock full of interesting anecdotes and details about Lee’s journey to All Elite Wrestling. We will be breaking up this recap into a few parts.

Here are some highlights of Brodie Lee’s talk with Chris Jericho:

Regarding the Coronavirus impacting his AEW debut, Brodie saw the news a week before his debut about Trump’s presidential address, Tom Hanks being diagnosed with coronavirus, and the NBA shutting down their season. “I was pretty aware, at that point, that it was maybe over for the Rochester debut.”

Jericho was hopeful that they could have at least made it to Blood & Guts in Newark, which could have acted as a season finale of sorts, but in the span of his match that Wednesday night, the news broke and he figured they were going to have to cancel their show in Rochester the following week. Brodie says he was “heartbroken” that it had to be canceled.

Brodie says he was released by WWE on December 8th, with a 90-day clause, which should have expired on March 8th. However, when he received the official letter in the mail, it strangely had his final date as March 11th. “So they moved it three days, so that I couldn’t do the Wednesday that week. Somehow, it was like a 94-day period. I think that was one little extra ‘f*** you’ to me.” Although, if WWE hadn’t released him, his contract wouldn’t have been up until March 25th, so he wouldn’t have been able to appear at Rochester, but ultimately it didn’t work out that way.

On the day of his debut: “It just didn’t feel right, all day. I was very stressed out about it – more than I thought I would be – and not as pumped up or excited as I should have been.” It wasn’t until he was told that his debut was up next that he suddenly got pumped up for it. The promo video debut was his first time seeing it, so he was enjoying watching it in the ring. Afterwords, he said “it felt right.”

Tony Khan told him that if he didn’t want to do this, then he didn’t have to do it, but Brodie said that he had been “cooped up for so long” that he was eager to get out and do something. The uncertainty of when they could follow up on it (due to the coronavirus) also helped lead him to that decision, because he didn’t want to potentially risk wasting additional months of his career.

Later in the discussion, Brodie Lee revealed that he actually had some reservations about portraying the Exalted One character. Specifically, as the leader of the Dark Order cult, he did not want to be compared to Bray Wyatt.

When he was first told he would be debuting as The Exalted One he was nervous. “I didn’t want to be compared to Bray, I didn’t want to be compared to the Wyatt family. But then, in my head, I’m like, ‘Well no, I can make it better. I can be better than that. I can be what it should have been.'” He also has had some history working with both Evil Uno and Stu Grayson.