Former WWE Superstar Erick Redbeard has detailed how a potential feud with Seth Rollins over a dead rat of all things was nixed.
Before Erick Redbeard left WWE in April 2020 he was best known as Erick Rowan, one-third of the original Wyatt Family.
Before his WWE career came to an end, however, Erick Redbeard began bringing a covered cage with him to ringside for his matches. For weeks Redbeard showed affection and care to whatever was inside the cage while doling out beatings to competitors in the ring.
The storyline came to an end when Erick Redbeard revealed the creature as a giant spider before the cage – and spider – was crushed by Drew McIntyre.
Speaking to Wrestle Buddy, Erick Redbeard revealed that this was not the original plan for the cage, and instead he was meant to feud with Seth Rollins and the creature was going to be a rat:
“Originally, it [caged beast story] was supposed to lead to a feud with Seth [Rollins], involving the death of a rat accidentally which intrigued me as a character because you get the big guy who has to deal with this grief and then come to terms with this grief and then…”
“Yeah [Seth was supposed to ‘kill it’] and why would you not wanna feud with Seth in something that could have meant something? But then obviously, he went from babyface to heel maybe like two weeks after the fact so then that whole thing got dropped and then they just didn’t know what was in the cage.”
“They kept giving me TV time which you can’t get mad with TV time. You know, but how many people can you squash and not continue to tell the story. So, you know, to me it just got old and repetitive and you thought it’d make every squash match a little different and tell a little bit more story of the cage but you know, sometimes I wasn’t allowed to.”
Erick Redbeard recently competed at AEW Revolution on The Buy In where he teamed with Penta Oscuro and PAC in a losing effort against The House Of Black.