One of the great WWE mysteries of 2020 was "what's inside Erick Rowan's cage?"
For months, Rowan carried around a cage where the thing inside would scare opponents and even bite people. It was eventually revealed that a giant spider was inside the cage, leaving plenty of fans disappointed with the payoff. According to Rowan, he had higher hopes than a mechanical spider.
Speaking to Sportskeeda, Rowan detailed his pitches for what should have been in the cage.
"I was informed I was carrying a cage, I asked, 'What's in it?' They said, 'You'll find out.' Originally, they pitched it was some kind of rat that was going to be killed by the babyface champion to show that I had cared about something. Then the babyface turned heel, so, that didn't work. Then they kept extending it and extending it. I pitched a couple of different ideas the longer it went, but it fell on deaf ears, which sometimes ideas do. Then I was told 'this is what it is.' I remember the day they told me I had to unveil it and I was like, 'No, no, it's fake, it's fake.' All that build for something so trivial was kind of sucky for me. We go to work, you have all these ideas in your head, and they say, 'that's what it is.'"
He continued, "I sent messages to [Paul] Heyman and the writers, wrote out long things of what I thought it should be, I had over the top ideas. One was, there is this actress on American Horror Story [Jyoti Amge], the smallest woman of all-time, one idea was to build a slightly larger cage and it would be unveiled as this little woman and we would be friends, I protected her, by locking her in the cage, from the atrocities of the outside world. I thought that would be shock and awe. Not to capitalize on anything, but I'm so large and she's small, so it would show a different side of me to the fans. Everyone is trying to humanize people in wrestling today. I like the horrors of the world and how they have feelings as well, but nobody can sympathize with them because they are such horrible people. Those are the characters I like. Even when we did the spider, before Drew had killed it, I wrote a long email to Heyman and said 'please pitch this' and it was another idea about it being [opponents] worst fear. Like, I pray on their worst fears."
The big reveal of a giant spider didn't have many legs as Drew McIntyre squashed and the cage and killed the spider in the process. The death of his spider marked the last time Rowan appeared on WWE television as he was released on April 15.
Previously, Rowan said he would put different things inside the cage including a stuffed animal. You can find his past comments on the cage angle by clicking here.
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