Joe Gacy Believes WWE Saw Him As “Cheaper” Bray Wyatt

Joseph Sawyer, formerly known in WWE as Joe Gacy, believes the company may have viewed his NXT cult-leader character as a less expensive replacement for Bray Wyatt during Wyatt’s absence.

Sawyer repeatedly stressed that nobody in WWE ever told him this was the plan. His theory is based on the timing of Wyatt’s release, Vince McMahon and John Laurinaitis becoming involved in his character and creative directions he believed were moving too close to Wyatt’s presentation.

Speaking on the August 6 edition of INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet, available through the show’s official YouTube channel, Sawyer first established the limits of what he knew.

“I have opinions on that, and nobody’s ever said this to me. When I started the gimmick, it was when Bray was still with the company. Shortly after 2.0 started, randomly, they let Bray go for that short period of time.”

Wyatt was released from WWE in 2021, shortly before the NXT 2.0 era began. Sawyer said the timing led him to question whether WWE saw his developing character as a possible alternative.

“I don’t know this to be true, but I feel like they were trying to set me up as maybe a cheaper replacement.”

Sawyer said McMahon and Laurinaitis became heavily involved in what he was doing on NXT. He clarified that the individual character ideas were relayed by members of creative, rather than necessarily being pitched directly to him by McMahon or Laurinaitis.

“Vince and John Laurinaitis got heavily involved in what I was doing on NXT. Creative started 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.’”

Sawyer said he openly expressed concern whenever he believed a suggestion moved too close to Wyatt’s work.

“I would tell them, ‘This feels a little too close to Bray.’”

One proposed outfit made the similarity particularly difficult for him to ignore.

“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, but that’s literally almost the outfit Bray used to wear in NXT in his early-on days.’”

Sawyer was already seeing public comparisons between the two characters and did not want WWE’s presentation to encourage more of them.

“I’m already getting comparisons to Bray. I think the term I was calling it was, ‘I don’t want to be Diet Wyatt.’”

WrestlingHeadlines previously covered Gacy rejecting comparisons with Wyatt in 2023. At the time, he argued that their characters were fundamentally different despite both occupying darker areas of WWE programming.

His latest comments do not suggest that he wanted to imitate Wyatt. Instead, Sawyer says he actively resisted creative choices that he believed would make the similarities more pronounced.

“I was trying to make it different as much as I could.”

Sawyer believes WWE may eventually have intended to move that version of the character from NXT to the main roster.

“I feel like maybe they were trying to set me up as some kind of replacement to get called up eventually.”

He also believes that possibility may have developed differently had McMahon remained in control of WWE creative.

“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, but that was an opinion.”

Sawyer did not provide creative documents, contractual information or direct confirmation that WWE considered him a replacement for Wyatt. The claim remains his retrospective interpretation of the timing and creative suggestions he received.

Years later, Sawyer became a member of the Wyatt Sicks. WrestlingHeadlines recently covered Sawyer saying he learned that Wyatt had wanted to work with him in NXT before plans for the group took shape.

Looking back at the earlier period, Sawyer believes Wyatt’s eventual WWE return coincided with the company moving his character away from the direction he had questioned and more firmly into Schism.

“Thankfully, Bray came back, and I think that’s when they kind of shifted gears with me. That’s really when the Schism stuff kind of took off, was when Bray came back. So, it seems like they were really focused on me just doing the group thing at that time.”

If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet, with a h/t to Wrestling Headlines for the transcription.