Before he was Bray Wyatt, before he was “The Fiend,” before he was the “Eater of Worlds,” and even before he had a thrown-together family from Florida, Windham Rotunda was Husky Harris, a light-hearted member of Nexus who came and went with a whimper, not a roar.

While to some, this could have been viewed as a clear demotion, or worse, a punishment for failing to connect with the WWE Universe, as Corey Graves recalled it in an interview with Kurt Angle on the Hall of Famer's podcast, Rotunda used it as an opportunity to create the Bray Wyatt character fans came to know and love.

“Windham, I got to know very early on in my WWE tenure because he had been up with the Nexus and got sent back down. Ordinarily, when you saw that happen, it wasn’t good. You were being sent back down to – you were being repackaged until they just decided that the next round of cuts was coming. And we saw that happen too many times to count. So, I think we all assumed he was on that same path. And I think Windham himself – and again, just like Brodie, when Windham, the loud mouth, hilarious. A Florida boy who just wants to hang out. He used to joke about how he and his brother were like The Dukes of Hazzard in real life. When Windham and Taylor [Bo Dallas] were together, and you wanted to be at that party or wherever they were going after the show, that’s where you wanted to be. Just because the vibe and the energy and the laughter were just constant with both of those guys,” Corey Graves told Kurt Angle via 411 Mania.

“And then I remember being in the promo class the very first time Wyndham unveiled Bray, and you could have heard a pin drop. We all sat there and sort of looked at each other, and everyone was watching Dusty, and I don’t think Dusty said anything for 30 seconds or a minute. No one had ever seen Windham do anything like that. Talk about how curt most of the guys that you interact with are. Their character isn’t that far of a stretch from who they are. Part of them, yeah, it is. It’s turned up to 11. The old adage is, ‘It’s me with my volume turned up.’ Windham was the antithesis of Bray Wyatt.”

Pretty incredible stuff, right? But wait, it gets better, as Graves had even more to share about the genesis of Wyatt.

Bray Wyatt's character work had Corey Graves mistified.

Discussing Windham Rotunda's transformation into Bray Wyatt even further, Corey Graves recalled the complicated cacophony of emotions he felt as he watched the future main event character come to life in front of his very eyes.

“And to see him disappear into a closet or an empty locker room before promo day, he would vanish for 20, 30 minutes, and then he would just walk in and walk right up in front of the camera and start to go,” Graves added. “And the stuff that came out of his mouth, we were all sitting here going, what, what, what does this have to do with wrestling? What is happening right now? It was just so amazing and captivating that none of us understood what the h*ll he was talking about. But we didn’t want to. We didn’t want him to stop speaking because he was just great. It was just like — it was confusing, but it was interesting, and it was terrifying. And the way he just became Bray Wyatt. And just as fast as he would become Bray Wyatt if you’d see him outside of the ring. ‘Oh, baby boy, give me a big hug.’ And he did the brother’s handshake. He loved all that, man. He was the absolute best and so much fun to work with.”

While Wyatt may be most fondly remembered for his efforts in the ring and his game-changing video packages with his Family, with his Uncle Howdy, with Matt Hardy, and as one of the most original characters in the history of professional wrestling period, “The Fiend,” for colleagues like Graves, who saw the journey from Husky Harris back to developmental, and all the way up to main event spot of basically every Premium Live Event WWE had to offer at the time, they will remember the fallen performer as a friend who was as innovative in the proverbial kitchen as he was a good friend to those he held dear outside of the ring.