Bray Wyatt apparently wanted zero confusion about how he was being treated backstage in WWE, even if that meant telling his own father to stop calling him “son” while they were at work.
Matt Hardy shared the story during a recent episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy while looking back on his time working with Wyatt. Bray’s father, WWE Hall of Famer Mike Rotunda, had transitioned from his IRS wrestling character into a backstage producer role, which put father and son in the same working environment. Hardy remembered one moment after a production meeting when Rotunda tried to correct Bray on something WWE wanted done.
“Something that comes to mind is when Bray was around and I was working with Bray. His dad, at one point, was an agent. He was a producer. Mike Rotunda was there — IRS, his dad — and I remember there was something where they were talking about something.”
According to Hardy, Rotunda addressed Bray the way any father naturally would, but Wyatt immediately shut it down.
“He said, ‘Son, that’s not what they wanted you to do there.’ And he said, ‘Dad, you can’t call me that. You can’t call me that.’”
Hardy said the exchange happened because Bray had been given instructions during a production meeting and was apparently relaying them differently afterward. Rotunda stepped in to correct him, but Bray was more concerned with how the father-son interaction might look to everyone else backstage.
“It was just such an intimate moment between them, but because he said, ‘Son,’ he called him back because there was something that he had been given to do in a production meeting. He was giving it back to his dad, and it wasn’t what they had said in the production meeting.”
Hardy remembered Rotunda again trying to correct Bray, only for Wyatt to remind him not to use that word at work. Hardy’s takeaway was that Bray didn’t want anybody backstage thinking his father was feeding him information, protecting him or giving him some kind of special advantage because of their relationship.
“His dad said, ‘Son, that’s not what they said.’ He’s like, ‘Dad, you can’t say that. You can’t say that.’”
“He was almost worried about, once again, that nepotism. Like, ‘Hey, well, this is his dad and his son, and he’s giving him info,’ or whatever. Because that’s really a thing.”
Hardy would later become closely tied to Wyatt on WWE television through the “Woken” Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt storyline. The two eventually became The Deleters of Worlds and captured the RAW Tag Team Championship in 2018 after defeating Cesaro and Sheamus.
Wyatt died on August 24, 2023, at just 36 years old. Stories like Hardy’s continue to show another side of Wyatt away from the character — someone who was extremely aware of how he was viewed backstage and didn’t want his family connection giving anyone a reason to question how he earned his spot.
What do you make of Bray Wyatt asking his own father not to call him “son” backstage because of concerns over nepotism? Let us know what you think and leave your feedback below.
