Erick Rowan (real name: Joseph Rudd), who was one of the recently released WWE Superstars, and who is now known as Erick RedBeard, was a guest on the “The Lewis Nicholls Show” not too long ago to talk about his start in pro wrestling and how he got into WWE. Rowan also talked about his last run in WWE ending in SmackDown and whether more could have been done with it.
This is what Erick Rowan said:
“They can always do more with it.” “Like you said, yes, it was too short, and I think a lot of that was a victim of having the draft coming up [and] switching networks to FOX. They didn’t have a plan for me going out because they didn’t think I was going to succeed.”
“I know they didn’t think I was going to succeed because I wouldn’t have had people going up to me backstage going, ‘oh my gosh. I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ and then week after week after week, all of sudden they’re letting me talk. They’re letting me do more and more, so they were trusting me more and more, and then it just stopped when I got put onto RAW.”
Prior to being released by the WWE, Erick Rowan’s final storyline in the company had him carrying around a mysterious cage and the reveal showed that an animatronic spider was the object inside the cage. Rowan talked about putting different things on different days just in case somebody peeked.
This is what Erick Rowan said:
“I put something just in case somebody peeked through.” “You never know if something is gonna fall out. Nobody told me to do it, but I put stuff in there just in case. One week, I didn’t have anything, so I took a t-shirt and some duct tape and made like a stuffed animal. I just did stupid things, so that if somebody looks through. They can see some sort of shape. I didn’t know what was going to be in there.”
Nicholls then asked Erick Rowan, “When they told you, were you a little bit underwhelmed?”
Rowan answered with, “Plead the fifth.”
Rowan then talked about being released by the WWE and still being young to be able to show people more of what he can do as a wrestler.
This is what Erick Rowan said:
“The thing about all this is we did get a message, like we have an app that we had, and it had a message from Vince.” “It kind of explained that there’s gonna be some lay-offs. There’s gonna be some furloughs. How the whole economy is churning, they basically have to let people go, and when I heard that, I was like, ‘well, I’m under contract, so I can’t be furloughed. So if they’re gonna let me go, they’re gonna let me go.’ To me, even the last time I was on television was when they killed the spider like the day after because of Backlash because I don’t know why else they would kill it.”
“There’s no plans for it, so I was just sitting at home. Like, a lot of guys were just sitting at home. You get that initial shock, and then it’s like, well, OK, what’s next because you got to keep going. My family, they know I got goals and things I want to do outside of wrestling as well as still in wrestling. I’m not event 40 yet. I haven’t even hit the peak of my career. These interviews that I do are so beneficial to show people that hey, I have a voice. I’m more than just some brute in the background of some weekly show or some guy that just terrorizes people with the cage that are smaller than them.”
Rowan then talked about possibly working for AEW in the future because the company has got great exposure but staying away from Brodie Lee as they just keep finding each other.
This is what Erick Rowan said:
“I haven’t had any conversations. I’m still under a 90-day no-compete clause.” “But as far as something like that, yes, that would be awesome to be able to show your talents on a national level because they do have a contract through TNT, and they get great exposure. They have a lot of really good guys that work there that know they’re doing, and they’re giving kids chances.”
“So yes, I do watch. I do find it entertaining at points and not entertaining at other points, which every show’s like that. There’s other guys on the independents that I’d love to work with. They got some big boys over at Impact. They got some big boys over at ROH. That’s not even getting into overseas stuff, but as far as AEW would go, for me, and I think Brodie would say this as well, we need to stay the hell away from each other. We just keep finding each other somehow.”
You can check out Erick Rowan’s full comments in the video below:
