Andy “The Butcher” Williams — a professional wrestler and the founding rhythm guitarist of Buffalo, New York, metalcore act Every Time I Die — died Saturday, September 5, 2026, only hours after he collapsed at the conclusion of a tag-team match near Pittsburgh. He was 48.

The collapse came as his bout was wrapping up at Enjoy Wrestling’s Five-Year Anniversary show, held at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, Pennsylvania, and an ambulance took him to a hospital. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office told TMZ he died later that night. A cause has not been made public, and additional examination is expected before one is settled on.

Collapse at a Five-Year Anniversary Show

Williams was in the match alongside Jesse “The Blade” Guilmette, with whom he had long formed the tag team The Butcher and The Blade, facing TME. The rest of the card was called off and the audience was sent home.

“Our doctors on staff tended to him immediately, administering CPR until the ambulance arrived,” the promotion wrote on X.

Rich Fann, who saw it happen, told POST Wrestling that Williams looked wobbly as the match moved toward its conclusion and then went down, and that Guilmette tried to help him back to his feet before signaling for help. By Fann’s account, ring crew, medics and audience members cleared a route out, and Williams received chest compressions, ice and a defibrillator before he was carried out on a board.

From Metalcore Stages to the Ring

Wrestling was a childhood passion for Williams, but he said on the “HardLore” podcast that the idea of doing it himself did not take hold until roughly 2014, when he caught a card staged by Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, an independent promotion based in Southern California. His first complete match came in 2015, at age 37, after he trained and picked up indie bookings on the side through the 2010s while continuing to tour with his band.

His debut as “The Butcher” in All Elite Wrestling (AEW) came in 2019, and he spent nearly seven years with the company and its sister brand, Ring of Honor. That chapter closed in June 2026, when his contract went unrenewed and he and Guilmette went back to working independent shows.

Outside the ring, people described Williams as mild-mannered and laid-back. Inside it, he swapped that for snarling menace, a heavily tattooed brawler performing as half of The Butcher and The Blade. He regularly framed music and wrestling as two forms of the same work, telling “HardLore” that someone who can write a song can also structure a match, because both are put together out of peaks and valleys.

Nine Albums and a New Band

Williams helped start Every Time I Die and played rhythm guitar from the band’s founding in 1998 through its 2022 dissolution. His playing turns up on every one of the group’s nine studio records, a run that closed with 2021’s “Radical.” Epitaph Records signed the band in 2008, and the split was announced in early 2022.

Growing up near Buffalo, Williams figured he would wind up in a factory, the way his father and uncles had. Learning disabilities including dyslexia meant he never learned to read music, though he told interviewer Renee Paquette in 2022 that the guitar itself clicked for him the moment he had one in his hands. Speaking with wrestling personality Alicia Atout in 2017, he said his true purpose in life was getting his friends to laugh.

Once the band wound down, Williams started Atomic Rule, which released a demo EP in 2025. In a video posted to the band’s Instagram account hours before his collapse, he said the group had finished writing new songs and had dates lined up with Gwar in November and December. “Get ready, because Atomic Rule is going to be coming and smashing it,” he said.

Tributes From Both of His Worlds

In a statement released Sunday, September 6, AEW said Williams’ death had saddened the company, describing him as a trailblazing musician with Every Time I Die and Atomic Rule who successfully moved into professional wrestling and drew deep respect from his peers both inside and outside the ring. The promotion offered condolences to his family, friends, and fans.

Once word got out that Williams had been hospitalized, Jordan Buckley, a former Every Time I Die guitarist, wrote on X asking anyone who prays to pray for him. Buckley is among three ETID alumni who went on to start the band Better Lovers.

Josh Eppard, the drummer for Coheed and Cambria, who got to know Williams on a 2019 tour, said the death was beyond heartbreaking and remembered how hard it had been to believe when a friend he assumed was just wrestling for fun with his buddies showed up on television. Colin Young, the actor, musician and “HardLore” host, said in a statement that anyone who knew Williams came away feeling loved by him. Matt Hardy, a wrestler who worked with Williams at AEW, remembered him as kind, funny and deep, and talented in both of his careers.

Guilmette, his tag-team partner for years, was in the ring beside him for what became Williams’ final match.