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Erick Rowan On The Original Plan For What Was In the Cage, His American Horror Story-Inspired Idea
Speaking with Sportskeeda on Instagram Live, Erick Rowan discussed his infamous “cage” angle that carried him through to the end of his WWE career. After being drafted to Raw, Rowan was given a covered cage that he would carry around that no one knew what it was. It was eventually revealed to be a large spider that Drew McIntyre destroyed, and Rowan talked about what the original plan was and one of the more out-there ideas he pitched. Highlights and the full video are below:
On first being told about the cage storyline: “I’ll never forget that. That was, I think it was over in the UK was the first day I was informed of that. And it was basically right after the Draft. So like, I just had a program with Roman [Reigns], reunited with Harper for a little bit and the Draft happens and they put me to Raw and everybody else was on Smackdown. And I was like, ‘Okay well, hopefully they continue with what I was doing and they can just explore that character.’ And I think I debuted on Raw against Seth who was champion at the time, and we had some Falls Count Anywhere match and they left me strong in that match. I felt like things were going great. Then I showed up to the UK and I was informed I was carrying a cage. And I said, ‘Well, what’s in it?’ And I was told, ‘You’ll find out.'”
On the original plan for what was in the cage: “Originally they had pitched that it was going to be some sort of rodent, a rat that was going to be killed by the babyface champion to show that I had cared about something. And then that babyface turned heel, so it was like ‘Okay, that didn’t work. Well, what is it now?’ And they just kept extending it, and extending it, and extending it. And yeah, I mean I pitched a couple different ideas the longer it went. But you know, it kind of fell on deaf ears, which sometimes your ideas do.
“And then I was pretty much told, ‘This is what it is.’ And yeah, I remember the day they told me I had to unveil it, and I was like, ‘No, no, it’s fake.’ It was like, all that build for something so trivial. It was kind of sucky for me. Because you know, we go to work, we put in all these things, you have all these ideas in your head and that’s what it is.”
On his ideas that he suggested: “I sent messages to [Paul] Heyman, I sent messages to the writers. I wrote out long things about what I thought it should be, ‘Here’s what we could pitch.’ I had over the top ideas about it. One was as crazy as, there was an actress in American Horror Story, the smallest woman of all-time. She was in American Horror Story: Freak Show. One idea was to build a slightly larger cage, and that would be the unveil, it would be this little woman. And me and her would be friends, and I protected her by locking her in the cage from the atrocities of the outside world. And I thought that would have been shock and awe.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Sportskeeda with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.
