Joe Gacy saw a Stamford, Connecticut number lighting up his phone while WWE releases were going down and immediately knew this probably wasn’t a call he wanted to take. So instead of answering and finding out whether he was getting fired, the former Wyatt 6 member purposely ignored WWE, put his phone down and went to take a shower first.
While speaking to Wombeezy, Gacy explained that the writing had already started appearing on the wall before WWE ever called him. About two weeks earlier, things around the Wyatt 6 began feeling different, and by WrestleMania week he noticed the faction was being treated differently by certain people backstage. At first, he thought WWE might simply be preparing to break the group apart.
“It seemed like two weeks ahead of time I kind of noticed things seemed a little weird already. In my head I’m like, ‘Well, maybe they’re just not happy with the group as a whole, so maybe they’re just going to split us up and see what we could do after that.’ But I also had the thought, ‘There’s no way they would just get rid of all of us,’ and I was wrong.”
The biggest red flag came when the Wyatt 6 were told they were losing their street fight against MFT. Gacy stressed that he wasn’t complaining about doing a job, but he knew the faction badly needed a win. Once WWE told them they were losing anyway, he started wondering what the hell the plan even was after that.
“I’m not one to ever complain about winning or losing, but I think as a group we needed a win. We needed to win a match. So when we wrestled MFT in the street fight, we’re the babyfaces. I assumed, ‘Okay, we’re winning this match,’ and then they said that we’re not winning. I’m like, ‘Well, then what are we doing after that?’ I feel like losing just totally stopped us dead. That’s when I really thought, ‘It’s WrestleMania season. Maybe they’re done with the group.’”
Then WWE finally called. Gacy was about to jump in the shower when the Stamford number showed up on his phone. He took one look at it, decided whatever WWE wanted could wait, and deliberately let the call go unanswered.
“The day the call happened, I actually was about to get a shower and I got a phone call from Stamford, Connecticut. I didn’t answer it because I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s probably not good.’ So I just put my phone down, got a shower, came out, and then I texted our Wyatt 6 group chat and was like, ‘Hey, did anybody get a call?’”
Gacy got his answer before he ever called WWE back. Someone else from the Wyatt 6 confirmed they had received the same call, and when Gacy asked if it was what he thought it was, the answer was yes. Only then did he return WWE’s call and officially hear that his contract was being terminated.
“I said, ‘Oh, is it what I think it might be?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, it is.’ I was like, ‘Oh, all right.’ So then I called the number back and kind of knew what I was going into. The guy was nice enough, had a nice conversation, just basically said the company’s deciding to terminate your contract. My response was, ‘Yeah, I figured.’”
There was another twist: Gacy was already frustrated enough with WWE that he had started thinking about leaving on his own once his contract expired. He still had more than a year left on his deal, but had decided that if his situation didn’t improve during that time, re-signing might not have happened anyway.
“I already kind of made the decision before then that I had a little over a year left on my deal. I made the decision that if this next year just doesn’t get better and they keep doing this, I might not re-sign. I was kind of ready. I was ready to move on to the next thing. I didn’t want to leave the company, but I’m not going to stay or I’m not going to fight if they don’t want me because ultimately they make that decision and it is what it is. If you don’t want me, I don’t want to be there.”
So Gacy’s WWE exit didn’t begin with him anxiously grabbing the phone and waiting to hear his fate. He saw Stamford calling, figured WWE was about to fire him, ignored them, took his shower and checked with the Wyatt 6 group chat before bothering to call back. By that point, WWE was basically just confirming what he already knew.
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