Joseph Sawyer, formerly known as Joe Gacy, recently appeared as a guest on The FiveMarks podcast for an in-depth interview.
Featured below are some of the highlights.
On the cult leader character he portrayed in NXT and chatting with Shawn Michaels about the character: “I was working on this weird cult leader type thing going on in promo class, and then it kind of evolved into him (Shawn Michaels) pulling me aside and having another meeting and essentially was like, ‘Hey, I have this idea. You’re gonna do this’ and his wording was like, ‘I see it as a Scientology type of thing. Essentially, you’re gonna lure people in with the social justice warrior thing’ at the time because that was kind of a hot button at that moment, and he’s like, ‘You’re gonna lure these people in for this…’ It was always meant to kind of turn into a cult. That was always kind of the point of it.”
On going into a room with Shawn Michaels while Bruce Prichard was on the phone, and how they had a three-page promo that they wanted him to recite on TV: “I went out there and cut that first promo, which I was happy with it, and then it got headlines… thinking that the company and myself were making fun of the left which was never my intention. But, I could see how it came across, and then I got pulled off TV. So, Shawn had to call me and was like, ‘Hey, Vince saw what we did; he saw all the headlines. We’re gonna have to take you off TV’ and I said, ‘Oh, that sucks. Okay,’ and then a day later, apparently, Vince (McMahon) actually watched the promo, and totally did a 180 on it and then fell in love with the idea… This is kind of a crazy story. The most stressful moment I’ve had in my career. It was the week after my debut. I wasn’t supposed to do anything on the show. But, I was there; I was hanging out. 30 minutes before bell time, I get pulled in the office and it’s Shawn Michaels and one of the head writers and they’re on the phone — I believe Bruce Prichard’s on the phone and they’re just typing something and I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ He’s like, ‘Alright, they have this three-page, full-page promo.’ Give it to me and they’re like, ‘You’re gonna do this tonight,’ and I said, ‘Oh, okay.’ So I have like 45 minutes to learn this three-page promo and deliver it live on TV. So that was very stressful. I think the beginning of the ‘woke Joe Gacy,’ as people say, the very beginning was a very stressful time. Because it was heavy promo, with a lot of stuff that they wanted me to kind of read verbatim, rather than me kind of writing my own promos which down the line they did trust me enough to let me do a little bit of that. But, very early on… ‘We want this word for word. This is how we want it’ and I said, ‘Okay. I’ll do whatever you ask.’”
On not exactly expecting the WWE release, but remembering there being ‘weirdness’ towards the Wyatt Sicks during WrestleMania 42 weekend because those people likely knew the group was getting cut: “I don’t wanna say that I expected it, but I will say that when we were in Las Vegas for ‘Mania, it seemed weird. There was a little weirdness there, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. But there were little things that I look back at and I’m like, oh, okay, because everyone knew we were leaving.”
On his NXT 2.0 days and how there was a time when he mentioned that he used to breakdance and how he ended up turning down an idea from Shawn Michaels to do it on TV: “So the Performance Center, from time to time, we’ll do group activities and I guess to keep morale up. So, they were doing a talent show, and this was only in-house. Just the roster was there; nobody else. So there’s a guy that works there named Ryan Katz. Does a lot of work behind the scenes and helps out a lot at the Performance Center. So he basically had sent out an email and asked everybody, ‘Hey guys. We’re doing this talent show. Is there anybody that has a talent that people might not know?’ And I said, ‘Well, I have been known to breakdance in the past,’ which I should have known immediately was a mistake. So, they set up this whole thing. This is when Hit Row was still there, and we did this whole thing where Hit Row came out and then, it was really silly. I got wheeled out in a box. I came out of the box, and I did like a whole breakdance thing with them… This was like a Friday I think, and then the next Monday, I’m in class, and Shawn Michaels comes over, pulls me out, and this is maybe the second conversation I’ve ever had with Shawn Michaels, and he basically asks me, ‘Hey, would you wanna do the breakdancing on TV?’ And the first thing I said to him was, ‘No. I don’t wanna do that…’ He was great about it, first of all. He understood, but at the same time I feel like, ‘Oh no. Did I just shoot myself in the foot? Did I just screw myself over?’ I had a conversation with my wife about it. I’m like, ‘You know what? If he comes to me again with another idea, I don’t care what it is, I’m just gonna say yes.’”
On how it was originally supposed to be The Wyatts versus Andrade El Idolo and Rey Fenix at WWE Clash In Paris: “There’s very few crowds that I felt that kind of electricity from, and one of them was definitely Paris, France. It was one of those things where I just couldn’t believe I was there… I don’t even know if we were originally supposed to be on that show, to be honest. But it panned out that we were. I do know it wasn’t supposed to be Street Profits at first. But it did pan out to be that way. Originally, what we were told, it was gonna be us versus Andrade (El Idolo) and Rey Fenix. Which obviously I love Street Profits. But, we’ve worked them so many times at that point, and I loved being on that show with them. I didn’t wanna be in there with anybody else on a show like that. But I do think Fenix and Andrade would have been a different dynamic that me and Sam/Dexter was excited to do and excited to kind of sink our teeth into, just because it was different.”
Also during the interview, Joe Gacy says Bray Wyatt wanted to work with him in NXT before Wyatt Sicks plans.
