The backend of their time together is a period that Gibson enjoyed.
Present day, the group once known as The Schism (Joe Gacy, Ava, James Drake & Zack Gibson) are separated. Gibson and Drake reverted to being the Grizzled Young Veterans and are no longer with WWE. Ava is the on-screen General Manager of NXT and Joe Gacy is a member of The Wyatt Sick6 on Monday Night Raw.
Gibson further spoke about the group in an interview with Daily Star. He feels that if a writer who worked with the group was asked what the long-term plans were, they would not know what to say. He feels The Schism were left in limbo.
He would go on to mention that he finds it ironic that the most he enjoyed the group was after him and James Drake requested their release from WWE.
The biggest problem with it for me is that — and I think people would be hard-pressed to deny this. I think if you sat the writers down, who were in charge of running The Schism and you just honestly asked them to tell you what that gimmick was and what the plan was, I think they would struggle to tell you… It’s not any individual’s fault. There’s a lot of things changing behind the scenes at this time in wrestling. But what that led to was this unfortunate scenario. We just sat in limbo with this gimmick that no one really knew what to do with. It didn’t really have any direction, yet people seem reluctant to make a big enough pivot to actually get it going in the right direction and the whole time, time’s ticking and it’s not like we were the only thing that they were dealing with so, new company directives were coming in, certain more athletes are trying to be featured on the show, more X, Y and Z that didn’t benefit us in any way and it just comes back to that same analogy of WWE stock was going up, our stock was going down. We needed to do something about that so, for the most part and again, I hope this is true — this was at least the image that was portrayed to us — I do think there’s a lot of understanding as to why we wanted to do it and then from their part… they wanted a couple more appearances from a contract that they did have with us. We did have that contract signed, right? We asked for an early release, which sometimes is granted, sometimes it’s not. In this case, it wasn’t and honestly, it probably played into our favor the way it actually played out and ironically enough, the most that I enjoyed The Schism gimmick was after we quit. Because then, I think there was an element of, well, they’re going to leave. Let’s get the last few ideas that we did have. Let’s get them out, let’s get them used… Immediately, there’s some mixed reactions because we wanted to get out there, we wanted to get stuck in. But ultimately, what that led to was a series of matches with The Creed Brothers, who myself and James (Drake) both have a lot of time for. We just had a lot of fun working with them and we got to culminate that in a big cage match on NXT and that ended up being our official sendoff and so now that I can look back at it in hindsight, I actually really like the way it played out and like I say, we actually had a lot more fun in those last months because we knew what we were gonna get in six months so we no longer had to worry about what was happening in the moment and we could just enjoy it for what it was… Those last six months were probably the most fun that we had with the thing.
Speaking about potential matchups for Grizzled Young Veterans post-WWE, he’s eyeing bouts against FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler), The Young Bucks (Matthew Jackson & Nicholas Jackson) and The Hardys (Matt Hardy & Jeff Hardy).
So, I do get asked about singles wrestling a lot. Obviously, I’ve still accomplished quite a lot as a singles wrestler but, in this moment I’m still very much committed to the tag team with James (Drake). I really feel like we’ve carved out our own little niche, and there’s still so much left on the table so, there’s still a lot for us to do as the G.Y.V. and that is currently what we’re pushing and what we’re pursuing. The match that we get tweets about daily is G.Y.V. against FTR. I do think that that’s a match that absolutely has to happen at some point. It’s one that we’re both excited about. I think the fans are excited about (it), I like to think that the FTR know that that’s a good match as well. So I would say that that’s probably that one that everyone wants to see. Another big match that I would really like myself is The Young Bucks. I think The Young Bucks are brilliant and their style clashes yet compliments ours. So for that reason, that’s a match that I’ve got my eyes on and then, just because three is a nice, lovely number, still on my bucket list is The Hardy Boys. They’re one of the reasons why I love tag team wrestling in the first place and when I was young, they were one of the teams that really made me wanna do this myself and I just say that the world’s our oyster. We have a couple of big things lined up behind the scenes which I don’t wanna give spoilers to but, if people are following, they’re gonna start seeing this stuff in the public eye very soon. The future’s very exciting for us as the G.Y.V. and for this project, Burning Heart (Pro Wrestling), which are two completely separate entities that are gonna be very exciting in their own way.
Drake and Gibson are backers of the Burning Heart Pro Wrestling promotion that kickstarted in the UK. The first string of shows took place in June. They fell in defeat in the match to crown the inaugural Tag Team Champions of the promotion.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Daily Star with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
