AEW's Swerve Strickland Discusses Getting A Character Over With Wrestling Fans

If you ask an AEW fan the question "whose house?" They will reply with "Swerve's house," as Swerve Strickland has become one of the most popular wrestlers in the company. Getting over with an audience is not an easy task, but Strickland has managed to do it despite playing the role of a heel for the past year. On 'Busted Open Radio,' Strickland went in to detail about his character and why he thinks he got over with the fans.

"It was all about creating an aura about myself that not a lot of people can provide on the show," Strickland said. The AEW star stated he is constantly watching what is going on around him, both in AEW and in the wider wrestling world, and needed to tap into something that would become a necessity to AEW instead of being someone who would show up sporadically. "For me, it was about providing an aura about myself, a look, a feel, and for me, the feel was fear."

Strickland felt like he tapped in to the feeling of fear by doing some reprehensible things on AEW TV, including kidnapping Billy Gunn and trying to cut his fingers off, assaulting Nick Wayne at his homemade gym, and breaking in to "Hangman" Page's house while his baby was asleep. Strickland admitted to taking inspiration from horror movies as he is a big fan of them, but not the movies with ghosts, ghouls and monsters, movies based more in reality. "Tapping in to movies like "Hostel," Strickland said. "Movies that made you feel uncomfortable, but it was also very real too. It wasn't too spooky, it was like 'no this could really happen,' and that's a very fearful thought and feeling to have."

Please credit 'Busted Open Radio' when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.