Erick Redbeard breaks down the difference between WWE crowds and AEW crowds.
The former Wyatt Family member spoke with Wrestling Headlines for an exclusive interview, where he touched on this subject and looked back on his last few years in the industry. Redbeard begins by detailing his time with WWE and how he was not always granted the best opportunities to showcase what he was made of.
You know it’s weird because to me I was pretty much constant besides being hurt with WWE for so long and that grind goes a long time and the atmosphere at times the morale is down, but that’s everywhere. And sometimes you have this quote unquote push and you have this revitalized outlook and like, ‘oh, they’re giving me promo time.’ This is like pumping me up and wants me to, you know, explore new avenues of like how to quote unquote get over. But it’s mostly just developing your character and letting people know who you are and who you wanna be portrayed as, as whatever character you are portraying no matter what storyline you have. And at times you’ll be given a storyline and they say, ‘don’t talk’ and ‘do this thing that makes no sense.’ And it’s not challenging and it obviously doesn’t like give you that adrenaline when you go out in front of the crowd that you should be having.
He would add that when he was given a chance to tell a story, even a simple one, the energy from the WWE crowd was unmatched.
There were times, especially towards the end with the cage gimmick where I’d walk out and I know I have a two minute squash match, which it’s not challenging to me. I was given time with Malakai (Black) for a couple matches and those were fun. Even though I had the gimmick in the cage, it was fun because it was a match and you had time and you could feel the crowd’s energy cuz you could tell the story at least within the confines of the match. So then fast forward to AEW for me it’s, it’s different because like I’d been gone for so long on a big stage to come back and there’s an arena full of people and it’s not just an empty warehouse.
However, Redbeard does say that getting to work for the hot crowds in AEW lit a fire under him and reminded him of why he loved this business in the first place.
And I think that kind of gets you…I don’t know…the workers always talk about that feeling you get when you walk out or the feeling you hear from a crowd and how it amps you up and it does, it amps you up. It gives you energy and gives you a new step and like, you know, that extra gear to, to really wanna push forward and move on. So in that aspect, when I went to AEW it kind of lit a fire under my butt. I still like this. I still like to do this. Whether or not I get opportunities to, to show it, I don’t care. I just know I love the business and I have a certain way of thinking about what I want to show and I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten to show the world what I can do and I would love to.
Elsewhere in our chat with Redbeard he spoke about his WWE pairing with Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) and how that came together. You can read about that here. Check out our full interview with Redbeard below.