Posted By James Walsh on 10/23/25


While appearing on Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Wrestling with Freddie podcast, former WWE writer Nick Manfredini discussed his time working with the late Windham Rotunda aka Bray Wyatt. At one point, Manfredini brought up criminal cult leader Charles Manson…

“So, he [Wyatt] was very Charles Manson-inspired, right? My YouTube search history back then was just Charles Manson and cult leader for anybody who looked it up. So I’ve probably seen every Charles Manson quote, every video, every promo that he ever cut. We were trying to take little pieces from each one, and that was the style we wanted to go for.

To get off topic, Charles Manson — I don’t know if this story has ever been told — Windham’s teammate, former teammate in college football, became a prison guard at Charles Manson’s prison. Allegedly, this guy showed Manson the Bray Wyatt promos, and he wanted to meet him, and this was a whole thing. I swear. It is 100 percent true, and so, Mike Rotunda knew about it, and I think he brought it up to somebody. I don’t know if it was Hunter or Vince (McMahon) or someone and they immediately squashed it. Obviously, that’s terrible… Because they were like, ‘Can we shoot a Network special with Charles Manson?’ It was immediately squashed, and then afterwards, I was like, ‘Let’s just go. Next time we’re in Northern California, me and you, let’s just put on a hat or something. Nobody will know it’s you. Let’s just go meet him.’ I thought more about it and obviously it was a terrible, terrible idea. Would have been a good story but, a bad idea… It was like, wait a minute, this would be so fun — weird to do. But, obviously, Bray Wyatt probably would have never seen TV again if we did that.” (quote courtesy of Andrew Thompson)