When Brodie Lee joined All Elite Wrestling earlier this year, he took part in a number of segments which appeared to take shots at WWE Chairman Vince McMahon. When he was in WWE, "Luke Harper" had a pretty terrible time of it, and has made it clear he's unhappy with how McMahon used him during his final days in the company.
In some of those segments, Lee was shown kicking out members of the Dark Order during a meeting for sneezing, an apparent shot at McMahon's hatred of, uh, sneezes. Lee also ate steak in a way that was meant to parody McMahon, and we learned at the time that these really upset a lot of people in WWE.
During an interview with Wrestling Inc., Lee explained that these segments weren't meant to be negative and were intended to be fun. "Obviously, there was a couple of little Easter eggs and things that people could very easily pick up on, but as a whole, the character was never meant to be a Vince McMahon parody," he explains.
"But there was definitely a couple jabs his way in the early going. Once I realized that that was everything that people were going to talk about, I wanted to get away from that as quickly as possible because I wanted it to be more about me more about my identity and more about my journey to where we’re going. I didn’t want to be seen as that that bitter ex-employee. I don’t want that label on me whatsoever."
Asked about those aforementioned reports about WWE being unhappy with those segments, Lee added: "I have no problems with that whatsoever. I rather enjoy that and the thought of me, little old me, affecting someone there, that’s OK with me."
Since hitting AEW, it's fair to say that Lee has come on leaps and bounds, and as TNT Champion, his star is definitely on the rise now (and those hilarious shots at McMahon are long forgotten).