With Double or Nothing 2024 rapidly approaching, one would think Swevre Strickland would be focused on the task at hand, defending his AEW World Championship against Christian Cage and the Patriarchy in Las Vegas this Memorial Day weekend.

And yet, in an interview with Adrian Hernandez, Strickland wanted to set aside a few minutes to celebrate his fallen friend Bray Wyatt, who taught him a great deal about being a professional wrestler and a storyteller during their time together in the WWE Universe. Even though Wyatt is gone, Strickland still hopes to continue to carry his lessons into the future, as no one made characters better than the “Eater of Worlds.”

“The same thing. Making things, pace it out weekly. Before Bray came back on television, you were just getting barcodes everywhere. It wasn't giving you a whole lot of information, but it was something to keep you tuned in and watching for something every single week. A rabbit in the background, a puppet over here, Like it was small things, and it was layered and sprinkled out,” Swerve Strickland told Adrian Hernandez via 411 Mania. “Now today's society, it's hard for people to really grab, hold attention and keep them and keep them interested for so like so long of a time. Bray was just.. he was patient with that and he was meticulous and he was calculated. I was like all the brain, all the, like the, the inner workings of everything that he did, it came from him. I was always appreciative of that. For me, I would hope to have such a deep mind like that. Just his locker room morale was incredible too. Like I said, I wasn't in there with him long, but it was impactful. Just a little bit of time made such an impression on me to want to continue certain things that he did just in my personal life and my professional life.”

Considering Strickland has already tributed Wyatt once with his gear at Full Gear, it's safe to say his words aren't just performative but a legitimate gesture of support for a man who helped him learn valuable lessons about the sport. Regardless of how Strickland chooses to carry himself in Las Vegas this weekend, it's safe to say Wyatt's fingerprints will be on his success, whether it's obvious or not.

Swerve Strickland talks role in creating Lucha Underground's Killshot.

Speaking of creating characters within the wrestling world, in a recent interview with WrestleChat ahead of Double or Nothing, Swerve Strickland revealed how his Lucha Underground persona, Killshot, came together, with the “Realest” doing much of the legwork behind the scenes himself.

“I wrote it all myself. For me, I always take an initiative on things when I'm not asked to do certain things. I always have something ready to go, that's kind of how my career's path has carved the way it has. There hasn't been much, oh he's a blank slate, let's put him wherever. I don't want to just be an empty shape, I wanna have something and some life to it. They brought me on season one, I came up with the name Killshot, and they just kind of created the mask and an outfit based off of that name. I didn't have a background for the character,” Swerve Strickland explained to WrestleChat via Fightful.

“So when season one had the break going into season two, I wanted to flush out the character a little bit more. Through that time, I wrote the character out and put three different ways he can be incorporated into the show. The head writer, Christopher DeJoseph, he really liked all of them so he's like, ‘Okay, I love that, so I'm gonna kinda compile and mix and see what we can do to write this character into certain things. The next thing you know, Killshot is born and the vignettes of me doing combat in Iraq in the army. They started creating and it was a collab effort in the sense, that's where it really got to what it became later on and it got so unique that it created another character with Dante Fox and then it created match stipulations off the character from what I based it off of. When you give the idea, they started having fun with it and then I started having fun performing within the idea.”

Could a promotion like Lucha Underground work in 2024? By Strickland's own admission, no, probably not, but hey, that doesn't change the fact that, for a few short, very weird years, Robert Rodriguez figured out a way to combine his love of movies with his love of wrestling to create something unique; promoting stars like Chelsea Green, Ricochet, Rey Mysterio, and Strickland who now sit in prominent spots in other promotions. If that's the legacy of the promotion, then it's better than many can boast.