Trivia / Luke Harper

• In Memoriam:
  • Episode 236 of Being the Elite, "Brodie", was dedicated to him.
  • The first episodes of WWE Raw, NXT and SmackDown that aired after his death opened with dedications to Luke Harper, and various wrestlers paid tribute to him throughout the shows. WWE would also release several tribute videos to YouTube featuring testimonials from various WWE talents, and a dedicated special memorializing him was released on the WWE Network.
  • The December 30, 2020 episode of AEW Dynamite was a tribute show to Brodie Lee, with all the matches on the card featuring most of the The Dark Order^note 5 was the sole exception, as he sat ringside with Brodie Jr all night as faces, in addition to a six-man tag team match in which a team of his son's favorite wrestlers (Cody Rhodes, Orange Cassidy and 10) took on Team Taz. Additionally, AEW retired the TNT Championship belt that Brodie had held and handed it to the Huber family, with a redesigned belt debuting on the following episode. AEW also began regularly using his infamous Twitter Catchphrase ("It's Wednesday. You know what that means.") in network advertisements and to open each episode.
    • The September 29, 2021 episode of Dynamite, which took place in Brodie's hometown of Rochester, also took time to pay tribute to Brodie Lee. The card featured a women's tag team match with Anna Jay and Tai Conti going over, as well as a 16-man tag match featuring the entire Dark Order (and Orange Cassidy) going up against the Hardy Family Office, with -1 and Amanda Hubert appearing to stop the faction's infighting and motivate their comeback. The night also featured a TNT Championship match, the belt Brodie won in AEW, with a new champion being crowned.
  • MLW replaced a scheduled MLW Fusion episode on December 30, 2020 with a tribute to Brodie Lee.
  • Night 1 of New Japan Pro-Wrestling's Wrestle Kingdom 15 was dedicated to Lee.
  • The AEW tag team FTR renamed their "Goodnight Express" finisher to the "Big Rig", in reference to Brodie's indie gimmick.
  • Fellow AEW wrestler Chris Jericho and former WWE rivals The New Day devoted the first episodes of their respective podcasts following his passing eulogizing Brodie. The New Day also wore gear paying homage to Brodie at Royal Rumble 2021.
  • The Wrestling Observer Newsletter introduced the Shad Gaspard/Jon Huber Award for 2021, recognizing positive forces in professional wrestling.
• Real Song Theme Tune:
  • The New Kids on the Block's "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" during his original pre-trucker gimmick
  • Replaced by Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down"
• Romance on the Set: He was married to Synndy, a former competitor in upstate New York, New England and Canada.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact:
  • His AEW run lasted just fourteen matches across seven months, from his debut in March to losing the TNT Championship in October, after which he was absent from the company until his death. In that short time he challenged for the World Championship, successfully captured the TNT Championship, and helped elevate The Dark Order into a credible heel faction after they had a rocky start.
  • The influence of his AEW run continued even after his death, as the kindness and respect AEW showed to him and his family made waves in the industry. Notably, CM Punk cited the fact that AEW had been aware of his illness but not one word had leaked to the dirtsheets about it until his passing as the final deciding factor that convinced him that he should come out of 7 1/2 years of retirement to join the company that had treated Brodie so well.
• What Could Have Been:
  • His AEW debut was originally going be in his hometown of Rochester, New York, but unfortunately this couldn't happen; as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold, his debut happened to be on the first episode of Dynamite without a crowd.
  • On Chris Jericho's podcast, Brodie reveals that, prior to leaving the WWE, he had pitched two different ways to reimagine the Luke Harper character. The first was to turn to him into a serial killer-esque "collector" who took things from the opponents he defeated. The other was to become an "intelligent monster" who would break his opponents just by talking to them. Both ideas were disregarded by the WWE.
  • In an interview, Jon Moxley stated he had wanted to eventually form a tag team and was considering having Brodie be his partner.
  • And of course, there's no way of knowing what plans AEW would have had in place for him in the future, but they would undoubtedly have been big. It was universally considered a no-brainer that he would be AEW World Champion at some point, and presumably sooner rather than later.
  • It is also very likely that he would've had a big match with "Hangman" Adam Page at some point; Brodie was notably the only person to score a pinfall win over Hangman in 2020, and given that Hangman's first storyline of 2021 featured him contemplating joining the Dark Order, it's easy to imagine an alternate version of that storyline with Brodie and a more antagonistic Dark Order.