I can’t swear to it. My DVD archive is too disorganized, too vast… but the chances are good that the first time I saw him was on the pre Dragon Gate USA LA Extreme Fight show from sometime around 2008. Chances are extremely good because I know “Hollywood” Stalker Ichikawa was on that show, too, and that was probably also my first exposure to him. Maybe even my first exposure to my beloved SHINGO Takagi, but it’s possible I had already seen him in Ring of Honor. Much like many American / Western fans, my first exposure to Dragon Gate had been through ROH, and for a brief time, I actually bought Dragon Gate shows on DVD from some tape trading site before I decided it was a little too difficult to follow the promotion that way.
But had I persevered for a couple of years, I would have seen the rise of one Benjamin Satterley, also known as PAC.
PAC, the guy about as broad as he was tall.
PAC, the guy billed as “the man gravity forgot.”
PAC, one of the most aggressively Northern, aggressively British wrestlers I had ever seen.
I thrilled to his exploits in DG USA for the time that I followed it.
All too soon, he was swallowed up by the WWE machine. While I hadn’t yet put WWE behind me, I still tried to follow his exploits when I could.
They realized… eventually… that he was better as a fiend… a BASTARD, if you will, and he developed an incredible new persona… that of the King of the Cruiserweights.
And of course, WWE being WWE, they squandered THAT, too… sacrificing him to a guy who couldn’t work, purely for heat.
Instead of enduring that, instead of letting their machine ruin his craft…
…he split.
That simple; he took off. He lost a year of his career sitting out… and you know what the amazing thing was?
THEY were the ones to blink.
PAC, eventually, was free. He could have got a job in the increasingly hot New Japan Pro Wrestling… but no. He went HOME, to Dragon Gate.
And then, in 2019, you all know what he did. He was elite, and he was with the Elite, right from that first press conference. In his “full gear,” if you will.
I just watched him last night.
You probably did, too.
I don’t know anything else. I don’t want to speculate. I just… I’m getting tired of having to mourn.
Rest easy, Benjamin.
Hug a loved one.
Wait on the sons of no one, bastards of young
Now the daughters and the sons
Unwillingness to claim us, ya got no war to name us
The ones love us best are the ones we’ll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones love us least are the ones we’ll die to please
If it’s any consolation, I don’t begin to understand them
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