The wrestling world has been in mourning since it was discovered that Brodie Lee passed away on December 26, 2020.
On that day, Lee's wife Amanda put out a statement saying that he passed away after a "hard-fought battle with a non-COVID related lung issue." Fightful learned that much of the roster knew that Brodie had been battling a serious medical issue for a number of weeks, but kept it quiet out of respect to the family.
Speaking on the latest Q&A episode of his Grilling JR podcast, the legendary commentator shared his advice to the AEW roster, as well as what he had heard about Brodie's illness. Here is what Jim Ross said:
"Always smiling. Funny guy. Great sense of humor. That's why I said, I'm going to work today and I'll tell these young guys, "Hey, it doesn't hurt to laugh. As I said, laughter is a good medicine, and he made you laugh, didn't he?" "Oh yeah [they reply]." Remember those times. That's a hell of a lot better than him not being able to kick out of his issues.
"I still don't know what... I haven't seen of or heard of an autopsy. All I know is he had double lung failure. His lungs were so bad that he couldn't qualify for a transplant, so after, as I heard the story, whether it's totally accurate or not I don't know, that they took him off his machine to see if he could kick out himself as that's about the only chance he had. It just obviously didn't work, so [it's] a sad time for all of us. Again, he impacted so many of us on our roster that kind of went off the radar and so he'll be very missed."
An official statement on the cause of Brodie's passing has not been issued, and it's worth reiterating that Jim Ross was only relaying what he had been told, which he even admits is potentially incorrect.
AEW paid tribute to the life and career of Jon Huber (Brodie Lee in AEW, Luke Harper in WWE) on December 30, 2020, with a special episode of Dynamite.
A full recap of the show can be found here.
