During an interview with Sports Illustrated, Erick Redbeard spoke about his early concept for a gimmick that ultimately got scrapped in favor of his Erick Rowan gimmick in WWE.

“I was doing all these different gimmicks, and I tried a Viking gimmick. I was told that would never make any money, which is funny three or four years later, there’s the Viking Raiders and they’re great. So I tried all these different things, and I did all these promos with Windham and Jon.”

On where the sheep mask came from:

“Windham went to a Halloween shop and got all these masks, and one was a sheep mask. I tried all the masks on promo day, and I tried all these different mannerisms and characteristics. But back then, Dusty Rhodes didn’t want me to cover up my face. He said I was ugly enough without the mask [laughing], meaning I had a unique face.”

“Fast-forward, I debuted with the Wyatts in NXT. No one told me I was debuting that night at Full Sail. I had blue jeans, but I didn’t want to do that because that’s what Jon was wearing and I didn’t want to wear trunks, but I was lucky to have that jumpsuit in my trunk. It’s funny how things come together. When we filmed our Wyatt Family vignette, I decided to bring all those masks. So it just happened to be a series of funny coincidences.”