WWE star Bray Wyatt recently appeared on Busted Open Radio and below are some interview highlights:
On what’s next for him, considering the lack of a marquee opponent at WM32:
“That’s the million dollar question. I almost think that’s better. It’s got people asking and wondering again and it’s become its own thing. I can’t tell you how many people talk to me a day and they’re like, ‘Why?’ and they act like this has been some crazy disservice to me, but they don’t know. They don’t know… This is the problem with our society and our world. Everybody wants everything now, now, now, now, now. There’s no patience. There’s no thinking or thought process behind everything. This is not a sprint, this is a marathon. I’m 28 years old. They’re bringing up guys from NXT that are 34. I’m already there, you know? This is a slow process for me and, yeah, would I want to be working Hunter in the main event? Of course I would. Would I want to be going after Undertaker again? Of course I would, but that’s not where the cards fell this year. Who knows, that’s what I’m trying to explain to you. Everyone’s asking these questions, but they don’t know.”
On the perspective he has that allows him to be patient:
“There’s a level of understanding that comes with seeing it. I didn’t just see the good times. I saw all the horribleness in-between and the drop-off when it ends. My mind has always been prepped to be here. That being said, there’s no favors being done for me. When I was thrown away years ago, and I was. I was thrown away and no one ever thought I’d come back. I remember Hunter telling me something. Hunter told me, ‘When you walk in the door, no one is going to look at you and go, ‘This guy needs to be a world champion.’’ He’s like, ‘You have to find yourself and invent yourself and you have to grab them by the throat and make them watch, make them understand you’. That’s where I came from and that’s exactly what I’ve always tried to do and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that. Not to mention adding five giants behind me has kind of helped with that.”
On his moving past his previous incarnation in WWE as Husky Harris:
“I explain the old guy as a shell of a man that never really existed at all because that’s exactly what it was. It was ‘the man’ trying to make into something that they thought would be humorous for them, but it meant nothing to me. Never did and it never will.”
On whether true faces and heels still exist in wrestling today:
“TV and movies have changed everything about that. Stone Cold Steve Austin, for instance. There still is, to me, the cliche ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’. I really believe that, but there’s also guys like me and Roman that kind of blur the lines… Deadpool has this wonderful thing, and I think this explains this wonderfully. He tosses a guy up and he sticks him with two swords and he goes, ‘Hey, hold on. I know it looks like I’m a hero here, but I want you to know something. I am a bad guy’ and he slices the guy in half. That’s a great testament to, I think, what I am. I fight for what I believe in, but I’m not a good person. I never claimed to be and I’m not.”
On his relationship with Triple H:
“Me and Triple H, I think we have a love-hate relationship. I love him, he hates me. I’m just kidding. Hunter was there at the beginning of NXT. It was nothing, it was still FCW, it was a warehouse, and when he came in, everything started to change. It was a lot of cartoon characters. It was, I’m not going to name names, but a lot of goofs and, you know, guys just wearing trunks and going out there, baby oil all over themselves, and then there was me. When we started that first show, I was one of the first characters to ever come out and I was so different. No one understood that at that time because NXT was not what you see today with all these bright characters. Finn Balor coming out with all the, whatever, devil crap. It wasn’t like that then. It was just cartoon characters and when I walked out, it was just a great feeling because people immediately accepted what I was doing. They didn’t care about the other guy. They didn’t want to know about how it happened. They were just happy it did. They were very receptive and Hunter was instrumental in that for believing in me when not too many other people did… He’s carried me a long way and I owe him everything.”
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
