“The Exalted One” Mr. Brodie Lee joined Aubrey Edwards and Tony Schiavone on a recent episode of the AEW Unrestricted podcast where he discussed his time in WWE as part of The Wyatt Family and The Bludgeon Brothers. While talking about how overwhelming it could be to have large crowds back after getting used to smaller crowds, Lee accidentally made a pun using the word “bludgeon” and talked about Vince McMahon’s influence on the origin of the The Bludgeon Brothers.
“I think now though, I’ve gotten so accustomed to it now, it might feel weird when people are back in the stands,” Lee admitted. “There might be too much energy happening because I’m fired up now. I’m bludgeoning men… Bad pun.
“Vince literally named us that because when we asked, ‘why did you name us that?’ He said, ‘bludgeon, it’s an action. You can feel it,’ and I literally just used it as an action, so okay, he’s right. Maybe I was the one who’s wrong.”
Lee then recalled how he signed with WWE. He said it came on the same day as the birth of his son, and he revealed he had some assistance from Cesaro.
“So about six months earlier, I had been in contact with somebody there and was getting ready to go down for one of their tryouts,” Lee recalled. “I broke my leg, dislocated my patella, lost my shoot job and then a week later, my wife told me that she was pregnant, unplanned. It was mine, so it was okay. The world was ending, but then six months after that, they called me again and said, ‘hey, are you healthy?’ And I said, ‘actually, yeah. Literally just got cleared.’ He said, ‘hey, can you come down January 1?’ So my son’s now scheduled to be born early January.
“So I’m traveling to Tampa from Rochester to do this week long tryout. So my wife said, ‘no problem. Go ahead.’ So the baby did not come out. The week happened, and then January 17, we’re in the hospital having the baby. That’s when Johnny Ace (John Laurinaitis) called me. The phone breaks up. So I think, of course, I’ve ruined my entire opportunity at pro wrestling stardom.
“I don’t have his number because it cut off. So I call Claudio (Cesaro), and I’m like, ‘oh my God, do you have Johnny Ace’s number?’ He goes, ‘yeah, here it is.’ Texted it to me. I call him. I said, ‘Johnny, I’m so sorry I missed your phone call.’ He goes, ‘oh, no problem. Do you want work here?’ And I said, yeah got hired the day my son was born.”
Lee also recalled the first time he spoke with Bray Wyatt. He said that before he officially signed with WWE, Wyatt called Lee, through Cesaro, to discuss ideas for what would become The Wyatt Family.
“I don’t know if either of you have met Bray Wyatt, but he is a very intense human being, and before I was even hired, Claudio calls me, and we never call each other,” Lee noted. “So I pick it up, and I was just almost maybe getting signed this point. Nothing had been signed. He goes, ‘hey, somebody wants to talk to you.’ He gets on the phone, and it’s a man I’ve never met, never spoken to, nothing and for the next 10 minutes, rattles off these ideas of what The Wyatt Family became.
“And then he goes, ‘alright man, I’ll see you later.’ And then Claudio gets back on he goes, ‘yeah, Bray really wanted to talk to you. He knew you were coming here. Just really wanted to talk to you,’ and I go, ‘what happens now if I don’t get signed? Is he going to be really really upset?’ But literally everything he said was exactly what he wanted presented that way, and I had just happened to fit in perfectly at the time, and I didn’t change a thing from when I was on the indies at that point.”
Lee admitted that the Luke Harper character never got fleshed out the way he would have liked it to. He noted that the character never had a series of feuds or storylines that could elevate the character from being a member of The Wyatt Family to being on his own.
“I thought it was a really great step into that world. I always hoped that it would progress from there and become an actual character,” Lee said. “We used to get asked all the time, ‘what is what is your character?’ And then I would point out how somebody else on the roster’s character had been fleshed out through a series of feuds or storylines or things that they did on air, not just hey, here’s this character. He delivers cookies or whatever, like some stupid s–t that’s a gimmick. So I always thought or hoped that it would flesh out somewhere from behind Bray to the forefront and just never happened.”
Lee admitted that he felt that The Bludgeon Brothers’ run was underrated, noting the memorable matches they had. He also admitted that the did not know where the characters were going to go as Erick Rowan had gotten injured and nothing came after that.
“Literally every time that an idea for me and Rowan would come to fruition, a singles idea, it would instantly be taken to a certain level and then be like, you know what, I think we’re just going to put them back together as a tag team, and we did it three times. And we were always happy to do it,” Lee stated. “The Bludgeon Brothers, looking back, was a very cool run.
“I think it’s underrated because we never really had the big matches, except with The New Day and The Usos one time. So we never had those big matches that people could sink their teeth into, but as an eight-month run, it was awesome, and I don’t know where it was going to go. Rowan got hurt, tore his bicep at the end, and it just kind of disintegrated everything. I was sent home eventually.”