Brody King is a big, mean fucker, and his big-mean-fucker status is the kind of thing that translates beautifully to both music and professional wrestling. As a musician, we know Brody King as the frontman of the extremely fucking sick California heavy hardcore band God’s Hate. Last year, God’s Hate came back from a long hiatus with a supremely stomp-ass self-titled LP that was one of my favorite hardcore albums of 2021. The reason that God’s Hate took so long between albums presumably had something to do with King’s other job as a successful pro wrestler. Tonight, that career reaches a new pinnacle.

King has spent the past few years building his name on the independent scene, wrestling for companies like Ring Of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling. Earlier this year, King signed with All Elite Wrestling, the company that’s been reminding many of us of how much we love wrestling. King made a great debut as part of the House Of Black stable, and he’s been a great presence on AEW TV since then, usually as the guy who comes in during six-man tag-team matches and beats a bunch of dudes up. But on Friday’s episode of AEW Rampage, King stepped up and won a 20-man battle royal, clotheslining former world champion Hangman Adam Page off the apron and then choking fellow punk Darby Allin until it looked like the guy was dead, then dumping his motionless body on the floor. It was cool as fuck.

By winning that battle royal, King became the first challenger for AEW World Champion Jon Moxley, who won the belt by beating Japanese star Hiroshi Tanahashi at the Forbidden Door pay-per-view. Technically, Tanahashi is the interim champion; CM Punk, still the champ, was injured after he won the title, and he’ll challenge the new champion whenever he comes back. (CM Punk is another punk; AEW has a lot of them. Jon Moxley probably doesn’t fit anyone’s definition of “punk.” However, in the memoir that he published last year, Moxley wrote that he wanted to choke out my former co-worker Robert Christgau because Christgau once gave a bad review to a Deftones album. If you have any kind of visual reference for both Moxley and Christgau, this is an extremely funny image.)

Tonight, Brody King will challenge Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship on AEW Dynamite. That fucking rules. King hasn’t yet been booked as a main-event star in AEW, so it would be a genuine shock if he actually won the belt. But it’s a sign of serious faith that he’s getting a title shot, and the match should be awesome. I am eagerly anticipating seeing these guys throwing bombs at each other, and I salute Brody King’s continuing ass-kickery in all aspects of his professional life.