On the Season 4 premiere of 10 Bell Pod, NickOHlessA, Tyler Wood, and The Man Scout Jake Manning tell the full story of Brodie Lee.
We will track Brodie from backyard wrestling & indie grinding through Chikara and ROH, to the rise and repeated mishandling of Luke Harper in WWE, and finally the creative rebirth he found in AEW as the Exalted One.
This episode traces what Brodie gave to wrestling and how rarely it was returned in kind.
It’s a funny, angry, and deeply human conversation about unrealized potential, creative suppression, and the sudden, devastating loss of a wrestler who still had so much left to give.
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Episode Notes
Brodie Lee (Luke Harper): The Long Road, The Wrong System, and the Time He Was Finally Heard
This episode is both a biography and a reckoning.
It traces the life and career of Jonathan Huber, better known as Brodie Lee or Luke Harper, through the lens of a wrestler who loved the craft deeply, survived multiple systems that didn’t know what to do with him, and finally found creative freedom just as time ran out.
Jonathan Huber grew up in Rochester, New York, hunting for wrestling the hard way: VHS tapes, tape trading, and limited live access. Influenced heavily by Bruiser Brody, Terry Funk, and early Ring of Honor, he was a true wrestling obsessive.
Before formal training, he dabbled in backyard wrestling and DIY promotions, eventually debuting in the early 2000s.
His early years reflect the scrappy, underpaid, travel heavy indie era where passion mattered more than money and wrestlers worked wherever they could.
Brodie’s time in CHIKARA was essential to his development. Wrestling under the “Right Stuff” gimmick before evolving into a more serious presence, he became part of one of the most creatively open environments in American wrestling.
The episode treats CHIKARA not as a footnote, but as a vital incubator for a generation of wrestlers who would later define modern wrestling.
From CHIKARA, Brodie worked everywhere: CZW, IWA Mid-South, Jersey All Pro, Ring of Honor, EVOLVE, and Dragon Gate USA.
He became known as a reliable, athletic big man who worked safely, moved fluidly, and carried himself like a monster without sacrificing skill.
His Ring of Honor run was uneven, largely due to timing and backstage shifts, but it reinforced a recurring theme: Brodie was consistently respected by peers, even when companies failed to capitalize on him.
Brodie signed with WWE developmental in 2012, just as FCW transitioned into NXT. Rebranded as Luke Harper, he was paired with Erick Rowan and Bray Wyatt in what would become one of WWE’s most compelling factions of the decade.
However, tension emerged quickly. Vince McMahon viewed Harper as a simple “backwoods” character, clashing with Brodie’s desire to play a more intelligent, unsettling monster. This creative disconnect never fully resolved.
A serious knee injury in 2016 slowed things further.
Later, Harper and Rowan were repackaged as The Bludgeon Brothers, a Demolition-inspired team that Brodie was lukewarm on creatively.
In 2019, Brodie requested his WWE release, wanting to wrestle while his body still allowed it. WWE refused, adding injury time to his contract and paying him to sit at home.
This period becomes one of the episode’s most emotional points. In hindsight, the delay robbed Brodie of precious time, including the chance to debut elsewhere in front of live crowds.
Released in December 2019, Brodie joined AEW in early 2020, debuting as The Exalted One, leader of the Dark Order. Though the pandemic robbed him of live reactions, AEW finally gave him creative freedom.
