Forever Our Bastard: RIP PAC

​I woke up about 2:30 in morning the day I write this. Nothing unusual there I don’t sleep all the way through the night I’m use to the interruption. I normally check the time, check my phone to see what my friends in America have said while I’ve been asleep. Today is one of those days you dread, I woke up to the next that Benjamin Satterley known to many as PAC has sadly passed away, he was only 40.

PAC is a unique wrestler, a tremendous high flyer but managed to adapt to a mean in your face style to add to that once he turned heel in his late WWE run as Neville. Somehow regarded as one of the best in the world and also one of the most underrated he never felt out of place and often was a highlight of what you saw. 

I found a weird kinship with his gimmick as The Bastard. A stern looking person who walks around with a scowl and really only likes about 5 people who even then he doesn’t change tact to. He felt like me but was actually talented and I believe we’ve both been called bastards a good number of times. 

Tomorrow is a month to the day I saw PAC live for only the second of three times. He faced Luke Jacobs at Revolution Pro Wrestling’s 14 Year Anniversary show and put him over being choked out in the sleeper hold. Some wrestlers would use their standing to say ‘I’ll appear but I’m winning’ but PAC was a man of principle and done what was right by those he felt done right by him. His want to make his first loss post WWE mean something and mean something to Dragongate a place he made his name in before his journey to Florida put him in opposition to what many would do but that’s a man of principle that’s a man who wanted to do right by those who don’t right by him. I feel that’s a lesson we can all take. 

It’s not hyperbole or grief stricken ramblings to say PAC was one of the best wrestlers Britain ever produced. If you talk 21st century debuts I think it’s him, Ospreay and ZSJ up there I really do (yes even above Nigel). Even if you go back to the heyday of British wrestler I think PAC is up there with Rocco, Saint, Jones and all the others who defined the World of Sport era. 

I’m devastated to write this about a man I felt had so much more to give. A phenomenal wrestler but by all testimonies a better man. Summed up by the fact this is really the only context where the phrase ‘the bastard is dead’ bring about severe sadness and upset. 

RIP PAC

Forever out Bastard