From the outside looking in, that doesn’t mean much. It’s a pro wrestling stable. In simplest terms, that’s a group of creative collaborators performing together as a onscreen unit for a weekly television show. On television, they’re a collection of characters joined together by common cause in an athletic setting.
I couldn’t tell you what being a Death Rider meant to Benjamin Satterley, the man that passed away this past September 27th, barely a day after wrestling a match in Chicago against Andrade el Idolo on live pay-per-view. But, trite as it may sound, the Death Riders meant something to me as a viewer. To be honest, I didn’t realize just how much it did mean until the news of PAC’s passing came out on what was an early Monday morning for me. But as the week progressed, and the tributes from fellow wrestlers came pouring in, it’s that fact that I kept coming back to over and over.
To be clear, PAC wasn’t really one of my guys.
That’s not to say I disliked him, far from it. PAC was clearly one of the most talented pro wrestlers of his generation–one that I continue to refer to in my own head as the “super indie” generation–and he’s a key player in some very meaningful stuff. Perhaps the peak of my interest in him pre-AEW came from his run in NXT. His presence as the NXT Champion was a legitimizing force for the brand, helping to mark it as the WWE’s own built-in alternative to mainline programming. His reign also led to one of the finest WWE-produced moments of the 2010s via the eventual title loss to Sami Zayn in a match that gets the closest to managing the balance between classic pro wrestling and high drama that NXT always tried to capture ever since.
After a brief return to Dragongate–work that others in the space will have to speak more clearly to than me–once he left the WWE, PAC made AEW his home and it’s there that I really got to know him best. As one of the company’s earliest signings, he was an important part of legitimizing a brand new alternative in mainstream wrestling, this time one entirely separate from the machine that had ground him down in the 2010s. His work in AEW’s early years speaks so strongly to that. His feud with Kenny Omega was an immediate must-see attraction, his singles match with Orange Cassidy is part of the promotional canon as far as being the mainstream keystone for Cassidy’s character, and there’s scattered good work against the likes of Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston as well.
But joining up with the Death Riders was something else entirely.
While PAC maintained a somewhat tenuous connection to the Blackpool Combat Club through their early tenure, it wasn’t until Jon Moxley executed the most vicious and devastating heel betrayal in AEW history that he truly let his allegiance be known. As a member of Moxley’s rechristened Death Riders, PAC’s character sided with the vision of brutality, of pro wrestling and violence as a purifying fire, that spoke to many fans and continues to do so to this day. Through the first year of the Death Riders run, they acted as a perversion of the more altruistic origins of the Blackpool Combat Club. Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson envisioned a world where they could shape the future of pro wrestling to an image they believed in–an image grounded in pure grit, struggle, and viciousness. While a lot of that is marketing and gimmick talk, and one can have their opinions on how truly they brought this vision to life, one thing that can never really be questioned is that the people involved always seemed to believe it themselves. Moxley, Danielson, Castagnoli, and PAC himself were part of those super indie luminaries that had nothing in life but their talent and passion. That’s exactly what drove up from the smallest scenes in the world–the proverbial bingo halls, and in PAC’s case even backyards–to bright lights and television contracts. Meanwhile, younger upstarts like YUTA, Garcia, and hell, even Gabe Kidd, continued to carry that same dedication to craft forward.
I couldn’t tell you what the Death Riders means to these people in the real world. For me, at least, through much of their existence, they feel about as close to a true sports team as I’ve ever cared for. Loyalty came in the form of pushing back against the criticism of the group that clouded much of their run in 2025 to pure vindication when critical consensus turned the tide at the end of the year. The tail end of that couldn’t help but carry some of those leftover feelings from the initial formation of the BCC in 2022, but with the line up as it is now, I couldn’t help but decide: these were my fucking guys.
And so, PAC became one of my guys.
He was such a well-rounded performer and athlete. As everyone knows, one of the most athletically gifted and innovative high fliers of a generation. Go back through his PWG work in the 2000s and it becomes clear that this was a man who was pushing the boundaries of what pro wrestling offense could be, and in turn influenced an entire generation to come after him. But see as well how adept he was at the finer qualities of the work as well. His dedication to kayfabe and mystique meant that he understood heel work incredibly well for a man who could make a crowd leap to their feet in awe. This was a man who understood the value of rolling out to the floor to deny the momentum of a hero or ripping out a man’s bandages to scratch at their burns. He could be The Bastard just as easily as he could be The Man That Gravity Forgot.
I did not know Benjamin Satterley, but the picture that has been painted of the man since his passing demonstrate the demarcation between what was on screen and off. While on TV, he put men through flaming tables and sneered at any passing camera, behind the curtain, he paraded about his sausage dog in hats and gave Newcastle football kits to his coworkers’ children. Fans will never truly know Benjamin Satterley in the way his family, friends, and contemporaries did. But where Satterley and PAC intersect is in their unyielding dedication to craft. Listen to any of the testimonies aired as part of the Dynamite tribute broadcast, and you’ll see an entire locker room of people speaking in pure wondrous awe at PAC’s physical capacity and control. PAC was a wrestler his peers looked to that inspired pure ambition.
Remembering PAC through his career will never fully capture who that man was behind the scenes. That’s for his loved ones to know and to cherish for the rest of time. And while seeing him through the prism of pro wrestling might seem insufficient, it’s important to know that pro wrestling is the world that dedicated himself to. If pro wrestling wasn’t enough to know him, why take all these pains to craft the image, to exercise the body, to sharpen the mind to win over (or often infuriate) the hearts of millions? To know PAC is to know his craft, and that man’s craft was professional wrestling.
It’s that raw dedication to pro wrestling and all it can be that fueled the Dynamite tribute to PAC.
It speaks to PAC’s versatility that the tributes to him came in so many forms, touching on all the ways that PAC himself became meaningful to the pro wrestling industry. The first announced match on the card features high fliers that came up with or have often been compared to PAC himself. Will Ospreay and Ricochet reprised their world famous rivalry, incorporating a variety of PAC’s signature spots and bumps throughout the bout. At one point, Ricochet eats a DDT from Ospreay and his back arches all the way back as PAC used to do when taking the move. Tony Schiovane on commentary almost points out the intentional similarity but defaults instead to explaining how such a crash might impact the spine–the slightest preservation of kayfabe that I imagine PAC himself might have appreciated. The match is tight, flashy in a truly impressive way, and well-built around shifting momentum with Ricochet doing just enough to antagonize Ospreay to make the finish twice as cathartic.
And really, what a finish it is. Ospreay’s brief hesitation, the genuine concern on his face, and the beauty of the Black Arrow when he does nail it. The sheer emotion that overcomes him–equal parts relief at nailing the move and raw emotion at the significance of it all. I have no complaints for Ospreay here. It’s maybe one of the finest finishes he’s ever crafted, one that felt true and pure in a way so little wrestling is.
At the heart of the tribute though, the Death Riders.
Through the episode, Moxley and his crew makes good on the promises that they so often make. Pro wrestling can change people, can change anything. Romantic as it sounds, pro wrestling has a strange and visceral power to move people. And on this night, a night of great pain for many, a celebration of PAC could be nothing more than a celebration of pro wrestling itself. His promo, filmed just hours before PAC’s passing, is prophetic and haunting. In it he speaks of eulogies and legacy–likely with the memories of Andy Williams still fresh on the brain–not knowing that his words will become painful reality soon. For the first time since Nick Gage predicted his brush with death in CZW, we get to watch a pro wrestler capture a glimpse of the future as Moxley talks about those that will be lost, and the memories that will remain when we’re gone. In the ring, Moxley takes his time with Orange Cassidy and brings a crowd somber with grief into the ecstasy of combat. Even here, he exercises patience. He attempts the Brutalizer, but can’t quite make it work–that’s for Marina later on. When the bell rings, Bryan Danielson comes out to the ring, and in the shadow an image of PAC, the most heinous heel act in AEW history gets explicitly forgiven and redeemed.
Here, pro wrestling meets reality in the most painful yet beautiful ways.
A loss like PAC’s overcomes hatred. In the face of such pain, only love can pour forth, and so Moxley and Danielson bury the hatchet because some things truly are bigger than pro wrestling. It’s one of the most affecting moments in recent pro wrestling history, one that can’t be read in any other way but pure sincerity. Plastic bags could never smother the love that these men felt for Benjamin Satterley and for professional wrestling. In a time of such crisis, togetherness was the only reasonable response.
And yet, it’s through pro wrestling that those massive emotions become bearable if only through two hours. The catharsis of simulated comeback channels the raw grief of the workers in the ring and the fans in the stands to something simple yet powerful at the same time. Heels like Mercedes Mone and the Don Callis Family become unintentional avatars for the pain, and we take the joy that we can in seeing them get theirs. On a night of raw emotion, the heels play their roles well and tastefully. They jeer and cheat but only so we can revel in their inevitable failure. Eat shit, bad guys, and behold as the American Dragon flies again or as Gabe Kidd runs the ropes to build up steam for a lariat or Marina Shafir wrenches back so hard on a Brutalizer that Mone might be bent in half for the rest of the night. That’s the joy of pro wrestling at the end of the day. Good defeats evil, brothers and sisters bonded by combat.
Walk together to the ring. Run circles like the Guerreros around an empty chair.
Stand side by side at the place of a fallen friend.
PAC was a Death Rider, and the Death Riders are for life.
