Pro-wrestling star Erick Redbeard was the latest guest on the Front Row Material podcast to discuss a number of topics, including how his pairing with Daniel Bryan happened, and having to say goodbye to Brodie Lee following his tragic death. Highlights are below.
Says he tore his bicep which led to the Bludgeon Brothers dropping the titles:
So I was coming back. I had got injured at a SummerSlam, when I was with The Bludgeon Brothers and we were supposed to give the belts up the next day anyway. So when I got hurt like over halfway through the match, I knew I tore my bicep. Finished the match. Basically, I tell Brodie [Lee] that, ‘Man, I’ll see you in five months,’ you know? Because I gotta have the bicep surgery because I tore my other bicep, separate from the one I had torn maybe like three, four years ago. So I tore the opposite one, and you know immediately when you tear some sort of muscle and you know, so I said I’ll see you and then in the back they say — it’s a Sunday and it’s like, ‘Hey, can you wrestle on Tuesday and lose the belts? We promise we won’t make you do much. We’ll protect you.’ So I was like okay, okay. Fast forward, I end up wrestling the whole match. It was a great match with The New Day. It was a Falls Count Anywhere match where we lost the belts so, if you watch the match back, I did everything. Arm’s not broken, sh*t, you know? Then I leave, have the surgery. They end up not even using him [Brodie Lee] the whole time I was gone which was absurd but, it’s just the way it was.
On getting paired with Bryan:
I get cleared and then I’m brought into an office and I’m told, ‘Oh, you’re gonna come out with Daniel [Bryan] now.’ It’s just kinda like out of left field. First thing I do is I call up Brodie and I was like, ‘Hey man, I did not choose this. This is what they want me to do. Are you cool with this?’ And if he wasn’t cool with it, I wasn’t gonna do it. It’s like that’s just cheap. There’s so many cheap backstage pushes and I remember one guy was in a tag team with somebody and he went back behind his back and was like, always like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna pitch this’ and he’s always pitching stuff behind his back. It’s just like that is not cool, and me, I’m the kind of guy like, ‘I want you to know this wasn’t my idea’ and so, that is kind of how it all came about like just kind of out of left field, and it was great to work with him [Daniel Bryan] and be around him, because you always pick up little things and learn different things and he was — I had never been protected in the business like as far as being a big guy because I was always working with big guys, or they would try to protect another guy who was just as big. So like, I remember when I worked with Braun [Strowman], they’d want me to always do the falls because Braun was the big guy when we’re the same height. I weigh 330. I think on WWE, they said I was like 315 all the time and I was always 20 pounds heavier which was always weird to me, like why they would downsize my weight and height. But it was refreshing to work for somebody that actually had your back and protected you like he [Bryan] and Brodie did. So it was very interesting to just work with that and then what came out of that.
On the death of Brodie Lee:
You know, it’s gonna be hard to talk about for a long time just because he was loved by so many people, and everyone can relate to the loss, and in this day in age with the COVID and the way it’s separated people and not having proper goodbyes in life. Like that was as close to a goodbye I could have, and it’s all last minute which everything is but like, just the chance to say goodbye. To me, it is healing in a sense, and unfortunately, I gotta share those emotions with the world but I also got to share them with people I needed to share them with the most and you know, every day hurts and every day gets a little better at the same time so, you know, it just puts, like I said, everything into perspective. This last year has been a whirlwind of perspective for me and I’m sure everybody in their own lives and putting together what’s really important to you in your own life when things are taken from you, things are taken away, people. There’s been a lot of loss this year too, and just puts everything into perspective.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling
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