5 biggest WWE backstage secrets that Bray Wyatt revealed

Bray Wyatt established himself as one of the most prominent WWE Superstars of the decade during his rivalries with big names including John Cena, The Undertaker, Roman Reigns and Randy Orton between 2013-2017.

Following the abrupt end of his 49-day WWE Championship reign against Orton at WrestleMania 33, the leader of the Wyatt Family moved to Raw in the 2017 Superstar Shake-Up and became involved in lengthy feuds with Finn Balor and Matt Hardy.

The multiple battles with Hardy culminated in an Ultimate Deletion match between the two men in March 2018, which Hardy won before throwing Wyatt into the Lake of Reincarnation at The Hardy Compound.

Once he re-emerged from the lake and returned to WWE programming, “The Eater of Worlds” formed an unusual alliance with Hardy and the former enemies became allies, known as “The Deleters of Worlds”, whose biggest success came when they won the Raw Tag Team titles.

After the duo split up in August 2018, Wyatt disappeared from WWE television, until he made a surprise return in April 2019 during a pre-recorded segment on Raw. Instead of his usual eerie promos from a rocking chair in a dark room, the former WWE champion spoke from the set of “Firefly Fun House”, where he sported a new look and enthusiastically promised fans that the days of him being a “bad man” are behind him.

Wyatt is one of the few WWE Superstars who often remains in character both on-screen and off-screen, but there has still been the odd occasion when he has opened up about life as a WWE performer in interviews that have been conducted completely out-of-character.

In this article, let’s take a look at five instances where he revealed backstage information that fans otherwise would not have known.

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#5 He had not met The Undertaker prior to their WrestleMania match

One year on from losing his undefeated streak at WrestleMania to Brock Lesnar, The Undertaker returned to in-ring action against Bray Wyatt at WrestleMania 31 in 2015.

The entire build-up to the match centred around Wyatt’s mind games on Raw and SmackDown Live, while The Undertaker did not appear on WWE television until he made his entrance for their much-anticipated encounter at ‘Mania.

Speaking during an interview on Wrestling with Rosenborg, Wyatt revealed that he met his opponent as a child, but their first meeting as adults was going to come when they stood across the ring from each other in front of 76,000 people at Levi’s Stadium.

Asked how much interaction he had with ‘Taker prior to the match, Wyatt replied:

“Zero. No joke, zero. As a child, I have, yeah. No, never [as an adult]. That’s 100 per cent legit, you know. It doesn’t get any more exciting. I can’t imagine something that would be bigger than this.”

#4 Dusty Rhodes made him go to jury duty in character

From 2010-2011, Bray Wyatt portrayed Nexus member Husky Harris on WWE’s main roster. The gimmick was nothing like the “Eater of Worlds” character that fans have seen over the last seven years, and Wyatt has mentioned in several interviews how he did not enjoy his time in WWE as Harris.

During an interview for WWE’s "NXT: The Future Is Now" book in 2017, Wyatt recounted an incident when he was called to go to jury duty at a time in his NXT career when he was beginning to develop his new character.

Dusty Rhodes, a writer and creative director for NXT at the time, told Wyatt to attend the jury duty in his ‘Bray Wyatt’ character, so that’s exactly what he did.

“I was going to jury duty in my hometown, and Dusty made me go to jury duty as Bray. Dusty told me, ‘This is the perfect exercise. Become Bray.’ I literally went to jury duty as Bray Wyatt. I was so immersed in the character that I didn’t break once. Obviously, I didn’t get picked for jury duty, but I had the white pants, Hawaiian shirt, the whole nine yards. There were no fragments of Husky Harris. Husky Harris was dead, and he was to stay dead. I was Bray Wyatt. We were one.”

#3 He was in a ‘bad place’ at WrestleMania 32

After facing John Cena at WrestleMania 30 and The Undertaker at WrestleMania 31, Bray Wyatt was originally expected to take on Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 32 but he ended up appearing in a promo segment with The Rock which resulted in “The Great One” defeating Erick Rowan in a six-second match.

The encounter between Wyatt and Lesnar had been set up perfectly at the 2016 Royal Rumble when the Wyatt Family joined forces to eliminate “The Beast” from the Rumble, but WWE decided to have Lesnar face Dean Ambrose at WrestleMania 32 instead.

Why? Reasons are still unknown, as Wyatt competed in matches against other Superstars in the weeks before and after ‘Mania, while the man himself explained on the Notsam Wrestling Podcast that he was in a “bad place” at the time of the event (quotes via Wrestling Inc.):

"I was in a very bad place at last year's WrestleMania [2016], emotionally and physically I was a little beat up. But it was like all that rage an anger is what kind of drove me this year [2017] and brought me to where I am now.

“That's the thing. I want to be The Rock. I want to be the next Rock. Being in there with him and seeing the energy that he can cause the fans to go through, it's an amazing thing. But I don't want to be the guy that gets beat up by The Rock. I want to be The Rock. I want to be better than The Rock."

#2 His promos are not scripted

In modern-day WWE, several Superstars are given bullet points or word-by-word scripts prior to interview segments or before they cut in-ring promos, but Bray Wyatt is an exception.

Widely regarded as one of WWE’s best talkers on the mic, “The Eater of Worlds” told WTOP's Chris "The Big Chee" Cichon in 2016 that nothing he says is scripted and he simply speaks from the heart in his promos.

He said (quotes via Wrestling Inc.):

“I don't have a script, I don't sit down and nobody brings me a paper and says 'It'd be really cool if you say this.' I speak from my mind and my heart and it's a lot easier to speak on something that I truly care about. I go on tangents obviously a lot, I'll have an idea when I go out there, and if I get lost I'll find my way and snake my way on back through the grapevine.”

#1 Paul Heyman called him after winning the WWE title

Paul Heyman is much more to WWE than Brock Lesnar’s on-screen advocate. The former ECW owner has given Superstars including Baron Corbin and Ronda Rousey guidance regarding their promos over the last year, while the likes of Renee Young and Edge have been dubbed off-screen ‘Paul Heyman Guys’.

It appears as though Bray Wyatt may also be an off-screen ‘Paul Heyman Guy’, as Wyatt revealed in an interview on the Notsam Wrestling Podcast that Heyman called him after his WWE Championship triumph in 2017 and informed him that he was the first person in his family to win the company’s most prestigious title.

“I actually didn’t know that. Paul Heyman told me that. He congratulated me, called me, and told me I was the first one and I didn’t know that. I never really measured my success with titles because I never really had any titles. I was just working hard and trying to be the best me that I can be. But when he told me that, it was a big ‘wow’. Out of all of us, I was the one to do it. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”