A dreadful silence has fallen upon two worlds that seldom touch — the tumult of the wrestling ring and the wild grandeur of that harsh music called metal — for Andy Williams, once the founding guitarist of Every Time I Die and latterly known to the gathered company as The Butcher, has departed this life at the age of 48.
The Fall at Millvale
It was Saturday, at an Enjoy Wrestling engagement in Millvale, Pennsylvania, that the calamity came upon him. Williams fell at the conclusion of his tag team match, and though the physicians on hand labored with CPR until the ambulance arrived, no earthly remedy availed.
He died that same night.
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed the melancholy fact to TMZ. The cause of his death has not yet been made known.
A Founding Hand in ETID
Long before he assumed the visage of The Butcher, Williams wielded a rhythm guitar in the service of Every Time I Die, the Buffalo band he helped establish in 1998. He remained with the group through its entire ending in 2022, lending his hand to all nine of its studio labors, the last being 2021’s Radical. It is no small endeavour to sustain a band through so many turnings of fortune, and Williams’s constancy to ETID marks him as no mere passing figure in that chronicle.
From Guitar to Ring
While yet employed with Every Time I Die, Williams began, in the 2010s, a singular second calling — the training and the practice of wrestling. He labored first upon the independent stages before rising, in 2019, to All Elite Wrestling, where he took up the name and character of The Butcher.
The Words of AEW
AEW itself, in a statement issued Sunday, spoke its grief, declaring that all who knew the organization felt the weight of the passing of Andy Williams, known also as The Butcher — a musician of singular and original spirit with ETID and Atomic Rule, who had made a successful passage into the world of wrestling and was held in the highest regard by his fellows both in and out of the ring, with every good wish extended to Williams’ family and friends. His tenure with AEW and its sister body, Ring of Honor, extended across seven years, concluding only in June 2026.
Guilmette at His Side
Williams’s most constant companion in the ring was Jesse “The Blade” Guilmette, his tag team partner through many a match — and, by cruel design, his partner also in that final match at Millvale.
Even in his last hours Williams turned to labor rather than rest.
Following the ending of Every Time I Die, he had joined the group Atomic Rule, and mere hours before his death he wrote to its followers that new music was under vigorous construction. That such industry should be his final word seems a fitting close — a man who, whether behind a guitar or within a wrestling ring, gave himself wholly to whatever labor lay before him, until the very last.