LOOKING AT THE FAR TOO SHORT CAREER OF JON 'BRODIE LEE' HUBER

By Mike Johnson on 2020-12-26 23:19:00

This shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn't be writing this article and you shouldn’t be reading it, but here we are. The announcement today that Jonathan Huber, known to independent fans as Brodie Lee, WWE fans as Luke Harper and then once again as Brodie Lee to fans of All Elite Wrestling has passed away at the age of 41 is unfathomable.

It was only a few months ago as the leader of the Dark Order that Lee captured the AEW TNT title, his first major singles championship on a national level beyond a tiny run with the WWE Intercontinental title that seemed to be all but forgotten. He had left WWE and landed on his feet with a major role in AEW, one that provided him a consistent, larger push than he had received in WWE in forever. Lee was well liked by everyone who came across him, was known as a family man and mentored others and worked hard, happy to finally have the chance to showcase himself as the talent he knew he could be.

2020 should have been the beginning of the stories we told years from now about when it all turned around and Brodie Lee rose out of the forgotten ashes of Luke Harper, his WWE persona. Instead, all of us who love wrestling stand here together at this moment - and it truly sucks, but here we are and I am sorry we are, for Huber, his fans, for pro wrestlers who worked and knew him but most of all, for his wife Amanda and their sons. Life is unfair, we’ve all learned this in 2020, but this is harsh and wrong and f’d up on a level that even for this year, is downright depressing.

A native of Rochester, NY, Lee was a lifelong fan, Huber was part of a backyard wrestling troupe with his brother, wrestling as the Huberboys. Future WWE ECW star Colin Delaney was part of the same group. Huber would later go get formally trained under Rik Matrix and Kirby Marcos, among others.

Lee was a regular for a number of Upstate New York promotions, including 2CW, RPW and NWA Upstate. Even in his youngest days in the business, Huber was a phenom, a tall talent (billed at 6'5") who weighed in the 275 lbs. range could move like a cat, take and given aerial moves without a second thought, keep up with anyone of any size and pace yet look and brawl like he was the second coming of Bruiser Brody. He epitomized, in look, the greasy, unkempt trucker of your nightmares that you wouldn't want to cross in a dive bar or alley, but behind the scenes, he was considered a great person and someone who went out of his way for others.

He was one of the central figures of the Upstate New York scene, but with his size and gifts, it wouldn't be long before Huber found himself moving up the food chain to more prominent independent promotions. In Jersey All Pro Wrestling, he was part of the Hillbilly Wrestling Crew and evolved as an important talent for the promotion, eventually winning their JAPW Heavyweight Championship and unifying it with the Jersey State Title. In CHIKARA, he played a larger bully who tormented smaller talents under Claudio Castagnoli (Cesaro) challenged him, leading to a feud that climaxed with the first ever cage match in the company's history. Lee even worked for Ring of Honor for several months as a member of Jimmy Jacob's Age of the Fall, including several memorable, fun brawls with Necro Butcher.

However, in January 2010, Lee debuted at the first-ever EVOLVE event, a debut that, in hindsight, truly set the stage for Lee really standing out of the pack and likely where he gained the attention of WWE. In EVOLVE, he truly was a giant among men, but unlike most bigger man, he could work with the same finesse in the ring the smaller talents brought and could easily create memorable moments and matches with then. Within months, he was brought into Dragon Gate USA, becoming a member of the Blood Warriors group with the idea that he had come to take out the Japanese stars. He worked with just about every major talent in the group at the time, including YAMATO, Rich Swann, Kyle O'Reilly and many more. Lee impressed CIMA and others, leading to him debuting for Dragon Gate in Japan as part of the Blood Warriors stable.

Huber's ascension was inevitable and he was signed to a WWE developmental deal in March 2012 and assigned to Florida Championship Wrestling, the forerunner to today's NXT. After developmental was reorganized out of Orlando as WWE NXT, Huber debuted as Luke Harper, one of the primary members of Bray Wyatt's Wyatt Family. Teamed with Rowan, Huber as Harper was the muscle behind Bray Wyatt's swampland svengali with excellently produced vignettes putting the trio over the top. The horror movie influence and editing of the group was different, cutting edge and vibrant at the time. By June 2013, they were NXT Tag Team Champions and part of the hottest act in WWE NXT. He looked, acted and performed like the killer monster everyone always assumed he was the second he stepped out of the curtain and headed to the ring.

The trio were called up to Monday Night Raw, where without even doing much beyond coming to the brand and assaulting Kane, they were so over that a faceoff with The Shield had the live audience losing their minds. Wyatt was pushed as the focal point of the group while Harper and Rowan were built as a monster team for months. The Family began feuding with CM Punk and Daniel Bryan and at one point, WWE, seemingly trying to stop all of the legitimate momentum Bryan had built with the audience organically, turned Bryan heel and made him a member of the family, only to almost immediately drop the idea and turn him back into the leader of the "Yes Movement." In 2014, Harper was playing support to Wyatt during his feud with John Cena. At the same time, Rowan and Harper had an entertaining series of matches with then-WWE Tag Team Champions The Usos.

For really no good reason, WWE split Harper and Rowan apart from Wyatt, a decision that seemed stupid at the time and remains such now. It was rare to have a group that enhanced each of its members individually as well as one unit like The Wyatts did, and WWE willingly floundered that for reasons that could never make sense. Harper was given a push against Dolph Ziggler, defeating him for the WWE Intercontinental Championship during a time period where he was trying to impress The Authority, Stephanie McMahon and Triple H. He held the belt for about a month before losing the title back to Ziggler in a Ladder Match at the 2014 TLC PPV.

From this point on, WWE seemed to lose interest in consistently pushing Harper. Whether it was that he didn't look the part cosmetically in their minds or he ended up on the wrong side of someone in power or they felt he didn't click, we'll never know. Instead, fans witnessed as he became far less of a main event monster and more of an undercard man. He would get tossed from the 2015 Royal Rumble by his former mentor, Wyatt. He would be eliminated in the first round of the 2015 King of the Ring tournament. He would be relegated to multi-man matches on major PPVs. WWE reunited him with Rowan, but Rowan would quickly end up hurt, so instead Harper was back with Bray Wyatt. Once again, it was the Wyatts against The Shield, in the form of Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns at the 2015 Summerslam. The next night, Braun Strowman debuted as the latest member of the Wyatts, but now he was the long term Vince McMahon project while Harper was third in line of the group.

Rowan eventually returned, leading to Harper and Rowan working with The Undertaker and Kane at the 2015 Survivor Series and then the Dudley Boyz, with other former ECW personalities Rhyno and Tommy Dreamer getting involved to give The Wyatts some additional credibility.

In 2016, The Wyatts ran afoul of Brock Lesnar in the Royal Rumble after eliminating him, leading to Lesnar beating Wyatt and Harper in a handicap match at the WWE Roadblock PPV.

In March 2016, Harper suffered a dislocation of his patella and tore his medial patellofemoral ligament during a WWE TV taping dark match. After surgery he was out for months and months, finally returning in October 2016, at which point he was involved in Wyatt's storyline and feud with Randy Orton, who had joined the Family and captured the Smackdown Tag Team Titles. Under the Fabulous Freebirds rule, Harper was allowed to defend the belts as well and when he and Orton lost the belts on the 12/27/16 episode of Smackdown, that was a big twist in the Orton-Wyatt storyline. Within weeks, Orton and Harper were at each other's throats. By the end, Harper had been thrown out of the group by Wyatt, starting 2017 on his own.

By January 2017, Harper turned babyface, assisting John Cena against Orton and Wyatt. He was part of that year's Elimination Chamber match, losing to Orton, but by Wrestlemania 32, he was relegated to the Andre the Giant Battle Royal. Rowan returned and he and Harper feuded, but Harper quietly disappeared off WWE TV.

After not being seen for months, Harper was back on Smackdown, once again teaming with Rowan under the Bludgeon Brothers moniker. The team received as healthy a push as any team could in modern day WWE, but Rowan suffered a torn right biceps against The New Day at Summerslam 2018. The team lost the titles to New Day days later with Harper pulled from TV while Rowan was recovering, with the exception of a few house shows. Harper took time off to repair a wrist issue.

Lee returned at the Andre the Giant Battle Royal at Wrestlemania 35 in April 2019, but made it clear publicly that he saw a match against Dominik Dijakovic (T-Barr) at that weekend’s Wrestlemania AXXESS just as important, seeking to show WWE management and fans what he had to offer. The match received great reviews across the board everywhere, except, it seemed with WWE management. Unlike other sports, where your work ethic and output directly feeds into your success, with WWE and other pro wrestling groups, a career is made or falters on what management believes of you and what you have to offer.

In this case, Luke Harper the character and Jon Huber, the talent, were going nowhere, fast. He all but disappeated again.

A month later, Huber publicly announced he had requested his release from the company. The request was not only denied but WWE added time to the end of his contract for the time he was off injured.

With no clear route of exit, Harper quietly returned to the road for WWE in July 2019 before returning to TV, you guessed it, reuniting with Harper and assisting him against Roman Reigns. They soon turned their attention to Daniel Bryan, setting up tag team matches where the former Wyatt Family members were soundly defeated. It was a return in name only, not anything of any true worth to advance Harper or Rowan.

Harper would end up making his final appearance in another Battle Royal at the October 2019 Crown Jewel PPV in Saudi Arabia. In December 2019, eight months after he asked out of his WWE deal and was rebuffed, WWE cut Harper. Huber would never go by the name again.

One of the reasons WWE certainly did not want to let Huber out of his deal was the rise of Tony Khan’s All Elite Wrestling, which, for the first time since 2000, was offering talents money and TV exposure at the level closest to the Monday Night Wars/WCW era. WWE didn’t want to let any potential assets out of their sight and hand them to the competition, even if they were assets WWE themselves didn’t want to utilize, which certainly described Huber the last few years of his tenure there. It was absolutely his time and talent wasted, with the exception of the WWE paycheck that came with him being trapped in stasis.

Huber immediately tried to make up for lost time upon signing for AEW, where he was revealed to be the secret leader behind The Dark Order, a miscreant heel group that had been tormenting babyfaces since the advent of the company. Although there was speculation of others potentially being the leader, including Matt Hardy and Marty Scurll, it ended up being Huber, back to his original ring name, Brodie Lee. The original timing, had COVID-19 not turned the year inside out, was for Lee to debut before a near-sellout in his hometown of Rochester, NY. Instead, what would have been a hell of a resurgence for Lee. Instead, he debuted in an empty arena environment from Jacksonville, Florida.

Now billed as Mr. Brodie Lee, live audience or not, was given a monster TV push with an undefeated streak leading to an AEW title bout against then-Champion Jon Moxley in a great brawl at Double or Nothing 2000. Although some of the initial vignettes were seen as a parody of Vince McMahon’s alleged eccentricities as a way to get some measure of revenge for being on a treadmill to nowhere, Lee would state publicly that was not the case and they were just trying to create an entertaining heel persona.

After losing to Moxley, Lee continued to add members to the Dark Order and shockingly destroyed Cody Rhodes to win the AEW TNT title this past August in one of the most one-sided championship squash matches since John Cena wrestled Brock Lesnar at Summerslam 2014. Lee was, finally, a top AEW Champion and even more importantly, looked strong in the role to the point that when he lost the belt back to Rhodes in October, one could have argued it was too soon given the momentum of the moment. As it turned out, that Chain match would be the final match of Huber's career.

Although initially taken off TV to sell the loss of the chain match, at some point, he became ill and never returned. It has not been announced with what the health concern was, except that it was a lung issue that was not COVID-19. There is no point in even theorizing on the issue unless one wants to disrespect the Huber family.

Huber had been hospitalized for some time at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville with the AEW locker room all pretty much taking an unofficial oath to keep his health issues private. In a case of loyalty and respect to the nth degree, that oath wasn’t broken by one person, even as it became more and more feared that Huber wouldn’t be able to fight his way out. Not one person in the company ever hinted or stated there was even an issue until today, when Huber’s wife Amanda shockingly announced his passing.

While that announcement still feels far too raw and it seems extremely premature to discuss Huber’s legacy, it will undoubtedly be remembered as someone who was beloved everywhere he worked. Countless waves of talent and management speaking highly of him with loving remembrances this evening all but prove that. Still, one has to maddeningly wonder, if Huber was indeed so loved, why did it take until he got to AEW in the last year of his life for him to finally, truly get the push that he was so obviously deserving of - both as a talent and a person? Unfortunately, that’s a question that will likely never be answered, but in the light of the tragedy of Jon Huber’s death, it’s also a question that seems pretty worthless in comparison.

Jon Huber was survived by his children, Nolan and Brodie. If you can, keep them and his wife Amanda in your thoughts. While pro wrestling is mourning the loss of one of their own, the Huber family are mourning the most important person in their lives and compared to that, no matter how much we all love pro wrestling and recognize how talented Jon Huber was, that is also worthless in comparison to the immense loss and grief they are going through.

Everyone at PWInsider.com sends the Huber family our deepest condolences.

Rest in peace Jon Huber, gone far too soon at 41 years old.

Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.

COMPLETE HUBER COVERAGE

AEW STAR JON HUBER AKA BRODIE LEE PASSES AWAY
by Mike Johnson
12/26/2020 8:34 PM

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LOOKING AT THE FAR TOO SHORT CAREER OF JON 'BRODIE LEE' HUBER