Brad Maddox was “stuck” in a cave after being fired from his role as the Raw General Manager by the WWE.
This was, to put it lightly, not a great time for Maddox.
This may sound like a ridiculous thing to happen to a former WWE on-screen talent, but it was actually a very poorly executed plan by Maddox to grow his career.
After he was fired by The Authority (Triple H and Stephanie McMahon) from his role as Raw GM in May 2014, Brad Maddox disappeared from WWE TV for a number of months.
His last match was at WrestleMania 30, where Maddox was a surprise entrant in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal (although he was one of the first wrestlers eliminated from the match).
After being attacked by Kane, Maddox was taken off TV for good. He was never referenced again, and the character of Brad Maddox was almost immediately forgotten about – despite being on TV for the past two-years, appearing weekly on Monday Night Raw.
In the meantime, Maddox attempted to showcase his acting skills while building a new gimmick for himself to use, when he returned to wrestling.
He posted a series of videos on his Youtube channel, named “The Real Brad Maddox Experience“, which started as a vlog about his vacation in South America but soon changed for the worse.
In the first video, he promised to “fight sharks” and “explore caves”, foreshadowing his later stint of being stuck in a cave.
Brad Maddox showcased himself relaxing on the beach in Brazil, while also complaining about being sacked from his “dream job” as the general manager of Raw – keeping up with kayfabe on his online videos.
Some weeks later, Brad Maddox posted the famous video about being stuck in a cave in South America.
He claimed that the nearest exit to the cave was in Mexico, which countered his previous claims of being in Brazil. Maddox asked people to tell the authorities, while explaining that he had food and water to survive for a period of time.
This video is only 53-seconds long, but has amassed over 3.3 million views, as of December 2023.
He posted three more videos claiming to be stuck in the cave in Mexico before the charade was finally revealed.
Brad Maddox released another video, titled “Where am I?” in which he revealed to his audience that he was not really trapped in a cave in Mexico – in fact, he noted that it was ridiculous for him to be able to upload HD videos to Youtube while in there.
Maddox went on a rant about how he lost everything after being fired from Monday Night Raw, revealing that him being stuck at home, jobless, was the real cave that he was trapped in. It was quite the stretched metaphor, and the acting that went with it did not quite do the idea justice.
The unhinged rant by Brad Maddox was clearly inspired by Heath Ledger’s joker, and came across as a poor imitation of the Oscar-winner.
With his messy hair and uncertain speech pattern, his homage to the star was clear, although his acting skills were clearly that of a professional wrestler. Overall, it did little to help get Brad Maddox over with the WWE fans, as this video had just over 10% of the views his original cave video did.
Maddox posted one more video in the same vein which nearly cracked a million views, but it did nothing to increase his standing in the WWE.
He was sent back down to developmental in WWE, joining NXT again and having his name and gimmick changed. The WWE did write about his videos on WWE.com, although it did little to get the attention of Triple H or Vince McMahon.
Reappearing on a dark match before Smackdown in 2016, Brad Maddox grabbed a microphone before the match to cut a promo.
Switching his messy brown hair for short, blond spikes, he erroneously called the WWE universe “Cocky Pricks“, which ultimately cost him his job with the WWE. Vince McMahon fired him almost on the spot, and Brad Maddox was never seen again in the WWE.
Even when a host of former Raw General Managers returned to Monday Night Raw for the 25th Anniversary of Raw, Brad Maddox was nowhere to be seen. While former stars like John Laurinaitis, Eric Bischoff and William Regal made appearances on stage on Raw 25, the show came and went without even a cursory mention of Brad Maddox.
His time as Raw general manager is long forgotten. However, his time being stuck in a cave has weirdly lived on, as something fans look back and think “that happened?”.
Well, it did. Sort of.
