Joseph Sawyer, formerly known as Joe Gacy in WWE, believes the company may have viewed his NXT cult-leader character as a potential replacement for Bray Wyatt following Wyatt’s release.
However, 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 and 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 first made it clear that he was offering his own interpretation rather than revealing something WWE had directly told him. “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 by WWE in 2021, around the period when the company was transitioning NXT into the NXT 2.0 era. Looking back at the timing, Sawyer believes WWE may have seen an opportunity to develop his character as a less expensive 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 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. “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 wasn’t comfortable simply following those ideas without raising his concerns, particularly because comparisons between Gacy and Wyatt were already being made. “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, but that’s literally almost the outfit Bray used to wear in NXT in his early-on days.’”
With fans already drawing parallels between the two characters, Sawyer said he was actively trying to avoid doing anything that would make him appear to be an imitation of Wyatt. “I’m already getting comparisons to Bray. I think the term I was calling it was, ‘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 said he was consciously attempting to distinguish his character from Wyatt. “I was trying to make it different as much as I could.”
Sawyer also believes WWE may have been positioning that version of Gacy for an eventual move 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 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 roster.
Again, Sawyer stressed that this was his own belief rather than something WWE had confirmed 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, but that was an opinion.”
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.
Years later, Sawyer would become part of the Wyatt Sicks. He has also revealed 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 believes 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. 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.”
While Sawyer believes 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.
