One of the more unusual angles in WWE in recent memory belonged to three-time tag team champion Erick Rowan and a cage covered in burlap. From November 2019 until February 2020, Rowan would carry this mysterious cage to the ring, occasionally letting jobbers peak inside and/or be attacked by whatever was in there. Then, it was revealed in March that there was none other than a big, extremely fake-looking spider inside of it.
Alas, Drew McIntyre squashed the cage — and presumably the fake spider inside of it — on one of Raw’s final pre-pandemic episodes, and shortly thereafter, Rowan was released. He’s kept a low profile since, rebranding himself as Erick Redbeard, but otherwise he’s been quiet. That changed recently when he appeared on the Lewis Nicholls Show to discuss his wrestling career, and most importantly, just what his thoughts were on his final angle:
“I had the cage thing, whatever that was, but it kept me on television. Good or bad, it kept me on, and that’s what I always say to people; good or bad, you try to make the best you can with it. Sometimes, you can make good out of it, but sometimes, the writing is the writing, and I don’t know what happened. I really don’t.
I put stuff in there, just in case somebody peeked through. You never know if something is going to fall out. Nobody else told me to do it, but I put stuff in there just in case. One week I didn’t have anything, so I took a T-shirt and some duct tape and made a stuffed animal. Just stupid things so if someone looked through it, there was some sort of shape. I didn’t know what was going to be in there.”
When asked if he was disappointed in the payoff of the angle, Rowan simply said, “I plead the fifth.”