Effy Honors ‘The Butcher’ Andy Williams, Praises Him For ‘Always Putting Over Other People’

Effy comments on the passing of ‘The Butcher’ Andy Williams.

The world of wrestling is still mourning Williams, who tragically passed away on September 5 after collapsing backstage at an Enjoy Wrestling event. Effy was at that event, competing before the incident occured.

Speaking with Fightful Overbooked’s In The Weeds podcast, Effy told Jeremy Lambert and SP3 that he tried to make everyone feel comfortable after the shock of the incident.

“First, I want to shoutout everyone on that Enjoy team because it was something that was immediately being handled. I was right there at the door where they were trying to get everybody through and get things to where they have a little room to figure things out and work through things. While they were resuscitating and doing everything, I kinda felt myself in a spot where I went, ‘I need to go pull everybody away from this. I need to go get people to a space where they feel comfortable.’ Obviously, the fans had already left, but it’s really tough being around people that you love that much. I wouldn’t say I compartmentalized it at the moment, but I knew — there’s sometimes when you have to jump into stuff and go, my personal feelings here need to take a secondary backseat because people are really struggling right now. I think I didn’t put it together until I got home because the news wasn’t going to break until everybody had been informed and things had gone on, but I obviously had an insight into what was going on.”

Effy has a detailed history with Williams, first meeting him in 2015. Eight years before that, he saw Every Time I Die in concert.

“I didn’t put together how long I’d known Andy. I met Andy at a 2015 PWG show. We were both aware of each other. The first time I saw Every Time I Die in concert was in 2007 with my friends. The month before [his passing], he was asking me to come out and see his new band. I ended up getting a few of my friends from college to get to go to the show, but I couldn’t make it, I was doing wrestling and stuff. He was a guy that I talked to a lot and spent a lot of time with.“

Effy continued on by remembering a time where Williams was putting over Brody King during an EVOLVE tryout.

“There’s one story that sticks out to me and that’s when I did my EVOLVE tryout. This was in 2016. Andy was there because he was hanging out with Brody King. I just remember talking with Andy throughout that whole day. Obviously I’m nervous, not really understanding what my position would be in wrestling and thinking EVOLVE would be something I should at least give a go to. He was like, ‘Dude, Brody King is the guy you need to be watching.’ This is the first time I’d seen Brody King, but he was so high on Brody’s visuals and his ability in the ring and the difference on how he looked. That was Andy, he was always putting over other people. He was always telling you who the next guy was going to be or who was doing something awesome or who you needed to check out. It’s so crazy that you finish your match and you hug a guy and talk to a guy and watch his match and then life changes very quickly. I think in wrestling, we treat this as an escape. Obviously, it’s my life, so it’s less of an escape sometimes but it’s very hard to enter a space like that and have that escape be taken from you. Where we stand now, it’s just sort of like, I feel a great deal of that Andy energy of checking on your friends and checking on people around you, getting a text out of nowhere that you didn’t expect. As we go forward, I’m gonna try my hardest to keep friendships/relationships, keep these things in wrestling not separate from the rest of my life and make sure — these people I’m seeing all the time at shows, they are my friends. They’re my colleagues, but they’re my friends. I think we just all have to keep communicating with each other.”

After recognizing the wrestling community’s ability to rally around names like Rebel and Jeff Cannonball, Effy took a moment to recall one joke that he always had with Williams.

“I would always joke with him that I owed him a receipt because when I saw Every Time I Die one time — I used to have a nose ring. It was kicked out in the pit. I used to tell him, I owe you one for getting my nose ring ripped out in your pit. I always see that in my mind of him laughing when I tried to hold him accountable like, how dare you let these guys from the pit kick my nose ring out at the metal show? I think that one will stick with me for a while for sure.”

Fans can check out Fightful Overbooked’s full interview with Effy in the video linked at the bottom of this article.

Effy’s mom is writing a book, ‘Wrestling With A Rebel’. Learn more about that memoir by clicking here.

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