AEW Star Pac Dies at 40, One Day After His Final Match
The Newcastle-born high-flyer, known to WWE fans as Neville, was a former NXT Champion and the first-ever AEW International Champion.
Benjamin Satterley, the wrestler known as Pac in AEW and Neville in WWE, has died at 40. All Elite Wrestling announced his death Sunday night.
No cause of death has been given.
Satterley wrestled at AEW All Out on Saturday night at the NOW Arena outside Chicago. He opened the main card by challenging Andrade El Idolo for the AEW National Championship and lost. Andrade shook his hand in the ring afterward. Pac returned later in the night during the main event between Death Riders leader Jon Moxley and AEW World Champion Will Ospreay.
“All Elite Wrestling is saddened to announce the passing of Benjamin Satterley, aka Pac,” the company said in its statement. AEW described him as a wrestler with innovative high-flying moves and incredible in-ring ability.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said Satterley was pronounced dead Sunday afternoon in Des Plaines, Illinois. An autopsy has been performed, and the cause and manner of death are pending additional testing that could take several weeks.
He left WWE in 2018 — where fans knew him as Neville, a former NXT Champion and two-time Cruiserweight Champion dubbed the “King of the Cruiserweights” — and joined AEW in 2019. In 2022 he won a four-way match at Forbidden Door to become the inaugural AEW All-Atlantic Champion, a title now called the AEW International Championship. He was a two-time AEW World Trios Champion, first with Penta and Rey Fenix as Death Triangle, then with Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler Yuta as part of the Death Riders. He was also the first wrestler to hold the International and Trios titles at the same time.
The wrestling world reacts
Tributes came in from every corner of the business on Monday.
John Cena posted a photo of Pac in mid-air with no caption. WWE’s Triple H said he worked with Satterley in the early days of NXT and called him a major force behind that brand’s new era. Sting wrote that Pac was “loved and respected by all of us.” The Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes, Will Ospreay, and AEW CEO Tony Khan also paid tribute, along with NJPW, Dragongate, Ring of Honor, the NWA, and Newcastle United.
AEW’s Nick Wayne called Pac one of the greatest innovators the sport has seen.
The loss comes just weeks after another AEW wrestler, Andy Williams, known as The Butcher, died after collapsing at an independent show in Pennsylvania, according to CNN.
