While many were underwhelmed with Erick Rowan’s pet cage storyline conclusion, it was supposed to have a very different ending.
Erick Rowan is best known for his time as part of the Wyatt Family, but during his time in the WWE when the Family wasn’t together, he had a number of interesting singles ventures. During an early singles run in 2015, it was revealed on an episode of Raw that the behemoth ran his own vineyard, and he was also said to be a genius chess player. Neither of these personality traits had much bearing on his career, and he eventually reunited with the Wyatt Family.
Years later, after Luke Harper and Erick Rowan were split up in the October 2019 Draft, he began carrying around a cage that he kept covered at all times. It was eventually revealed in March of 2020 that he’d been carting around a giant spider as a pet, and the reveal was hailed as anticlimactic. After months of speculation, fans were hoping for more than a giant spider pulled out of a cage as No Way Jose danced by with his partygoers.
Erick Rowan competed in his last WWE match against Drew McIntyre the next week, and he was one of many stars released in April amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking with Steve Fall of NBC Sports Boston, Erick Rowan spoke about wanting his WWE story to continue and his disappointment at the timing of his release.
“I wasn’t ready for my story to stop on that adventure. It’s been a couple of years. I’ve stepped my toes into other avenues of entertainment which I fell in love with. I’ve been lucky enough to do some bigger arena shows in AEW and get that taste of the crowd, but I haven’t had a story. I haven’t told a story of what’s happened to me since I’ve stepped away from wrestling.
“To me, I would love to tell that story on some sort of stage because I think it could be very interesting to see what’s happened to me. I love continuity in wrestling. The last time anybody saw me I had a pet spider that died, so I would like to talk about my years of recklessly wandering the earth finding reason and purpose for life without my precious spider.”
Continuing, Erick Rowan revealed the original plans for his pet cage, saying that a pet rat was initially supposed to be inside of it instead of the giant spider.
“Seth Rollins was the big babyface at the time and I was told it was going to be a pet rat, which is great because it tied into my last feud where I tried to kill a man being Roman Reigns with a vehicle. Probably get a court appointed therapist who told me to get a therapy pet which would have been a rat. I’m like, this is great. This is going to be good for me, and hopefully draw some more eyes to the product and a great story, and Seth backstage was going to curb stomp it by accident.
“I was like, this is a great idea to start a feud even though I have to carry around the cage and not really tell a story for a couple weeks, but then he turned heel close to a few weeks after that and it just kept getting extended and extended until the awesome reveal.”
Erick Rowan’s former stable leader Bray Wyatt recently made a stunning return to WWE when he was revealed to be behind the White Rabbit QR code clues that have been present on Raw and SmackDown for months.
h/t WrestlingNews.co