Joseph Sawyer, formerly known as Joe Gacy in WWE, is of the opinion that the company may have viewed his NXT cult-leader character as a potential replacement for Bray Wyatt following Wyatt’s release.
Be that as it may, Sawyer repeatedly stressed that nobody within WWE ever told him that was the plan. His belief is based on the timing of Wyatt’s departure, the increased involvement of Vince McMahon. John Laurinaitis in his character, and several creative ideas that Sawyer felt were becoming too similar to Wyatt’s presentation.
Speaking on the August 6 edition of INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet, Sawyer maiden made it clear that he was offering his own interpretation rather than revealing something WWE had directly told him. The moment was when Bray was still with the company, when I kicked off the gimmick. “I have opinions on that, and nobody’s ever conveyed this to me. Meanwhile, shortly after 2.0 started, randomly, they let Bray go for that short period of time.”
Wyatt was departed from by WWE in 2021, around the period when the company was transitioning NXT into the NXT 2.0 era. Notably, looking back at the timing, Sawyer feels WWE may have seen an opportunity to develop his character as a less expensive alternative. “I don’t know this to be true, yet I feel like they were trying to set me up as maybe a cheaper replacement.”
Sawyer recalled McMahon and Laurinaitis becoming heavily involved with what he was doing in NXT. He clarified that specific ideas were communicated to him through members of the creative team and were not necessarily pitched directly by McMahon or Laurinaitis. Creative launched into pitching things to me like, ‘We want you to do this — do this.’ And in my head, I’m like, ‘Oh, that feels like Bray stuff.’” “Vince and John Laurinaitis got heavily involved in what I was doing on NXT.
Particularly because comparisons between Gacy and Wyatt were already being made, sawyer declared he wasn’t comfortable simply following those ideas without raising his concerns. “I would tell them, ‘This feels a little too close to Bray.’”
One proposed wardrobe change particularly stood out to Sawyer. “Originally, the outfit they wanted me to wear was a black button-up and white pants. And I’m like, ‘Guys, I’ll do it, on the flip side that’s literally almost the outfit Bray used to wear in NXT in his early-on days.’”
Sawyer said he was actively trying to avoid doing anything that would make him appear to be an imitation of Wyatt, with audience already drawing parallels between the two characters. “I’m already getting comparisons to Bray. I think the term I was calling things were, ‘I don’t want to be Diet Wyatt.’”
Sawyer previously rejected comparisons between himself and Wyatt in 2023, arguing at the time that their characters were fundamentally different despite both operating within darker areas of WWE programming.
His latest comments provide additional context for that position — as Sawyer noted he was consciously attempting to distinguish his character from Wyatt. “I was trying to make it different as much as I could.”
Sawyer in addition feels WWE may have been positioning that version of Gacy for an eventual move from NXT to the main lineup. “I feel like maybe they were trying to set me up as some kind of replacement to get called up eventually.”
He went a step further by suggesting that, had McMahon remained in control of WWE creative, the cult-leader version of Gacy may eventually have received an opportunity on the main list of performers.
Sawyer did not provide any creative documents or direct confirmation that WWE actually considered him a replacement for Wyatt. His comments were presented as a retrospective theory based on the timing and creative direction he experienced during that period.
Again, Sawyer stressed that this was his own belief rather than something WWE had acknowledged to him. “If Vince was around, I firmly believe I would have got called up probably as the button-up version of cult leader Joe Gacy — and maybe they would have tried to make a run with that. I don’t know that to be true, on the flip side that was an opinion.”
Years later, Sawyer would become part of the Wyatt Sicks. He has also shared that he subsequently learned Wyatt had wanted to work with him during his time in NXT before plans for the group eventually took shape.
Looking back, Sawyer holds the view that Wyatt’s return to WWE coincided with a noticeable shift in his own creative direction — as the company moved away from some of the ideas he had questioned and focused more heavily on Gacy’s leadership of Schism. “Thankfully, Bray came back, and I think that’s when they kind of shifted gears with me. Was when Bray came back, that’s really when the Schism stuff kind of took off. So, it seems like they were really focused on me just doing the group thing at that time.”
While Sawyer is of the opinion that WWE may have once considered positioning him as an alternative to Wyatt, he remains careful not to present that theory as established fact. What he does know is that he recognized similarities in some of the creative suggestions being made and actively tried to ensure Joe Gacy developed an identity of his own.