Joseph Sawyer, who was known in WWE as Joe Gacy, revealed that Vince McMahon nearly scrapped his old NXT gimmick — the persona he had before joining The Wyatt Sicks — without even watching the segment that sparked the controversy.
The character debuted on Sept. 21, 2021, when Gacy said the ring would be a “safe space” and spoke about “microaggressions” and “male privilege.”
Two days later, the New York Post ran the headline “WWE pokes fun at the woke left with new wrestler,” while Fox News ran a similar story. That same day, WWE removed videos and posts related to the segment from YouTube, its website and social media.
In a recent interview with Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Gacy explained that Shawn Michaels created the concept and that it was supposed to gradually evolve into a cult leader-type character.
“It began as Shawn Michaels’ full idea. He kind of saw it, the way he explained it to me, as more of a Scientology-type thing turned into a social justice warrior kind of thing, but the whole idea was always going to be that it would eventually turn into kind of a cult thing. It was always supposed to be like, I have this nice smile, I’m a nice guy, but there’s just something underneath that’s not right. That was always supposed to be the idea.
So the debut, I did my first promo, I did a match against Cameron Grimes, and it was well received backstage. Everyone was super happy with it, and then I think the next day it got a bunch of headlines. I think the headline might have been, ‘WWE pokes fun at the woke left.’ I saw that and was like, oh, well, that’s not what it was supposed to be.
So the word is, this is when Vince McMahon was still in charge, he saw the headline and got very upset. Shawn Michaels called me and said, ‘Hey, Vince is not too happy with what happened. Unfortunately, we’re gonna have to take you off TV for a little bit,’ and I was like, ‘Okay.’ He’s like, ‘Don’t worry, we’re gonna figure it out.’ I was like, ‘Okay, understood.’
TV starts at eight, I think it’s maybe 6:45. I get a text to come to Shawn’s office. I go into Shawn’s office, and it’s him and one of the head writers, and they have, I believe, Bruce Prichard on the phone, and they’re just typing this promo, and I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And they’re like, ‘All right, so we’re gonna have you go out and cut this promo today.’ So it turns out Vince saw the headline and kind of freaked out, but then he actually went back and watched it and apparently loved it. So he was on board after he actually watched the actual promo.”
The gimmick, though, wasn’t scrapped for good. Gacy returned to TV, defeated Ikemen Jiro on Oct. 5, 2021 and, one week later, faced Tommaso Ciampa for a spot in that year’s NXT Championship match at Halloween Havoc.
The cult concept also remained. Harland began accompanying Gacy during that period before Gacy went on to lead Schism alongside Rip Fowler, Jagger Reid and Ava.