In the ultimate years of his WWE profession, Bray Wyatt became referred to as The Fiend, with a part of his presentation centered across the eerie Firefly Fun House segments, inspired by kid’s TV host Mr. Rogers. Former WWE author Nick Manfredini originally got here up with the concept, but as revealed during an episode of “Wrestling with Freddie,” many elements of the concept modified as time went on.
“It was never meant to be supernatural,” Manfredini said. “Once [the segments] became successful, it was like, ‘Oh, everybody’s involved.’ Everybody’s changing things, everybody’s getting their hands on it, when it was just a really small group at first. Then it became a giant thing. So it type of spiraled a little bit uncontrolled originally.”
Manfredini shared his understanding that Vince McMahon had a wholly different tackle The Fiend in comparison with himself and Wyatt. In response to the author, he and Wyatt saw The Fiend as a persona that Wyatt adopted, while McMahon thought it higher to portray The Fiend as something Wyatt couldn’t control.
“It wasn’t the unique vision,” Manfredini continued. “[Wyatt] was very frustrated with stuff like that, when any individual was trying to vary what he desired to do. And I used to be too, I mean, I’m not gonna lie, but we’re employees. We do not own this character.”
After debuting this new edition of the character within the spring of 2019, Wyatt continued performing as The Fiend until July 2021, when the choice was made to release him from his WWE contract. Wyatt (and The Fiend character) would return the next yr, after Paul Levesque had taken over booking the corporate. Sadly, Wyatt (real name Windham Rotunda) eventually became too unwell to proceed wrestling, and he died on August 24, 2023, after suffering a heart attack.
In case you use any of the quotes in this text, please credit “Wrestling with Freddie” and supply a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.