Swerve Strickland On His Relationship With Bray Wyatt, Having Jojo Offerman Sing Before His All In Entrance

In an interview with Wrestling Figure News (via Fightful), Swerve Strickland spoke about his relationship with Bray Wyatt and having JoJo Offerman perform his entrance at AEW All In. Offerman was the partner of Wyatt before his passing two years ago.

Swerve said: “To me, Bray Wyatt changed wrestling television, and I don’t think it’s going to be realized for some more time just how impactful he was. ‘This is so unique and different and much more captivating than people understood and realized.’ Even for me, I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was until I got put in the position to have to make interesting television. I took so much nuance from what he was doing and put my spin on it because he was meta-physical and very fourth-wall breaking and speaking to the people. He was leaving nuggets here and there and trinkets like ‘this represented his past, this was depression, this meant anxiety,’ all the puppets meant different things and past moments of his life. It was so cool and I wanted to take pieces of that, and even if I could get 10% of that creativity, I’m going to try and make it my own thing. When he passed, it was painful for me because I was with him in the locker room. Not for years, but I was with him when The Fiend was really taking off. When I was getting on 205 Live and on the road, he was the guy giving me hugs, and he would bust my balls because I was wearing pinstripes on my boxers. ‘You’re not going out there and wearing that, are you? I’m just playing, you can do what you want.’ He would do things like that. I’d be at the urinal and he’d be in full Fiend gear right next to me with the mask on and look over, ‘Sup, man?’ Just little things that he would do. He had a big impression on me in the short time I got to interact with him. I wanted to pay that forward to him. Having JoJo come out this year at All In and do another tribute with the fireflies on the titantron and have her sing Ain’t Nobody. Just mix those little trinkets, nuggets, and pieces of storytelling for her and show more appreciation to the family.“